Научная статья на тему 'SHADOW RHYMING: ANDREY BELY'S METHOD IN O. SEDAKOVA'S STANZAS IN MEMORY OF NABOKOV'

SHADOW RHYMING: ANDREY BELY'S METHOD IN O. SEDAKOVA'S STANZAS IN MEMORY OF NABOKOV Текст научной статьи по специальности «Языкознание и литературоведение»

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Ключевые слова
NABOKOV / SEDAKOVA / ANDREY BELY / VERSE STUDIES / ALLUSION / LYRICAL PLOT / NATURAL PHILOSOPHY / RELIGIOUS POETRY

Аннотация научной статьи по языкознанию и литературоведению, автор научной работы — Markov А.V.

The paper exposes the inner plot of O. Sedakova’s stanzas In Memory of Nabokov, based on Nabokov’s reception of Andrey Bely’s doctrine of verse. Andrey Bely understood rhythm as a way to achieve the autonomy of individual themes within a large work, while referring to the digressions of rhythm from meter as “shadows”. Nabokov embraced Andrey Bely’s scholarship not only in his practice as a poet, but also in his natural science, describing the reproduction of butterfly patterns while isolating their habitats according to the same principles by which Andrey Bely had described the isolation of themes in a poem. Sedakova’s stanzas reproduce plots and images from the poems of Nabokov’s novel The Gift, while showing many parallels with the interpretation of this novel in Soviet structuralism (Yuri Levin, Mikhail Lotman), where the confusion of points of view, the unusual relationship of narrative persons and temporal plans were interpreted partly with the help of Andrey Bely’s terms and categories. I explain the general subject of Sedakova’s poem in these terms, understanding rhythm as an optical effect of light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance about the future: game as the only way to tell a poetic giftedness, so that these stanzas appear to be transitional to the Sedakova’s De arte poetica. The image of billiards, the rolling ball from Nabokov’s novel, the consideration of the universe from outside as part of the big game, does not simply combine Nabokov’s figurative speech with a metaphysical consideration of time and the universe catastrophes, but introduces a particular rhythmic pattern. The lines in which the meter coincides with the rhythm turn out to be gnomic, containing a memorable aphorism, and Sedakova’s technique continues the one used by Vyacheslav Ivanov. Other lines iconically depict this random movement of balls, which Nabokov tried to put into the basis of poetry. The theme of forms as shadows usually requires one missed accent, forming a rhythmic shadow in the original rhythmic form. And the theme of the changing conditions of vision usually requires two misses, which gives rise to a representation of unusual catastrophic vision. The overall plot of these stanzas is therefore reconstructed as a transformation of the habits of sight on the way to the mastery of verse.

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Текст научной работы на тему «SHADOW RHYMING: ANDREY BELY'S METHOD IN O. SEDAKOVA'S STANZAS IN MEMORY OF NABOKOV»

СТИХОВЕДЕНИЕ

Verse Studies

DOI 10.54770/20729316-2023-1-52

A.V. Markov (Moscow)

SHADOW RHYMING: ANDREY BELY'S METHOD IN O. SEDAKOVA'S STANZAS IN MEMORY OF NABOKOV

The paper exposes the inner plot of O. Sedakova's stanzas In Memory of Nabokov, based on Nabokov's reception of Andrey Bely's doctrine of verse. Andrey Bely understood rhythm as a way to achieve the autonomy of individual themes within a large work, while referring to the digressions of rhythm from meter as "shadows". Nabokov embraced Andrey Bely's scholarship not only in his practice as a poet, but also in his natural science, describing the reproduction of butterfly patterns while isolating their habitats according to the same principles by which Andrey Bely had described the isolation of themes in a poem. Sedakova's stanzas reproduce plots and images from the poems of Nabokov's novel The Gift, while showing many parallels with the interpretation of this novel in Soviet structuralism (Yuri Levin, Mikhail Lotman), where the confusion of points of view, the unusual relationship of narrative persons and temporal plans were interpreted partly with the help of Andrey Bely's terms and categories. I explain the general subject of Sedakova's poem in these terms, understanding rhythm as an optical effect of light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance about the future: game as the only way to tell a poetic giftedness, so that these stanzas appear to be transitional to the Seda-kova's De arte poetica. The image of billiards, the rolling ball from Nabokov's novel, the consideration of the universe from outside as part of the big game, does not simply combine Nabokov's figurative speech with a metaphysical consideration of time and the universe catastrophes, but introduces a particular rhythmic pattern. The lines in which the meter coincides with the rhythm turn out to be gnomic, containing a memorable aphorism, and Sedakova's technique continues the one used by Vyacheslav Ivanov. Other lines iconically depict this random movement of balls, which Nabokov tried to put into the basis of poetry. The theme of forms as shadows usually requires one missed accent, forming a rhythmic shadow in the original rhythmic form. And the theme of the changing conditions of vision usually requires two misses, which gives rise to a representation of unusual catastrophic vision. The overall plot of these stanzas is therefore reconstructed as a transformation of the habits of sight on the way to the mastery of verse.

Key words

Nabokov; Sedakova; Andrey Bely; verse studies; allusion; lyrical plot; natural philosophy; religious poetry.

А.В. Марков (Москва)

СТИХОВЕДЕНИЕ ТЕНЕЙ: МЕТОД АНДРЕЯ БЕЛОГО В СТАНСАХ О. СЕДАКОВОЙ «ПАМЯТИ НАБОКОВА»

Аннотация

В статье раскрывается внутренний сюжет стансов О. Седаковой «Памяти Набокова», исходя из рецепции Набоковым учения Андрея Белого о стихе. Андрей Белый понимал ритм как способ достичь автономии отдельных тем внутри большого произведения, при этом отступления ритма от метра описывал как тени. Набоков воспринял стиховедение Андрея Белого не только в своей практике поэта, но и в естественнонаучной практике, описав воспроизведение узоров бабочек при обособлении ареалов их обитания по тем же принципам, по которым Андрей Белый описывал обособление тем в поэме. Стансы Седаковой воспроизводят сюжеты и образы из стихов романа «Дар» Набокова, при этом показывая множество параллелей с интерпретацией этого романа в советском структурализме (Юрий Левин, Михаил Лотман), где смешение точек зрения, необычное соотношение лиц повествования и временных планов интерпретировалось отчасти с помощью терминов и категорий Андрея Белого. Стиховедением Белого и Набокова, где ритм понимался и как оптический эффект света и тьмы, знания и незнания о будущем, объясняется общий сюжет стихотворения Седаковой: игра как единственный способ сказать о стихотворной одаренности, так что эти стансы оказываются переходными к следующим «De arte poetica». При этом образ бильярда, закатившегося мяча из романа Набокова, рассмотрения мироздания извне как части большой игры, не просто соединяют образные достижения Набокова с метафизическим рассмотрением времени и трансформаций всего мироздания, но позволяют ввести особый ритмический рисунок. Строки, в которых метр совпадает с ритмом, оказываются гномическими, содержат в себе запоминающийся афоризм, здесь техника Седаковой продолжает технику Вячеслава Иванова. Другие строки иконически изображают это случайное движение шаров, рисунок ритма как движения шаров, который Набоков пытался положить в основу стиховедения. Тема форм как теней требует обычно одного пропуска ударения, формирующих «тень» и оригинальную ритмическую форму. А тема изменения условий зрения требует обычно двух пропусков, благодаря чему можно изобразить необычное зрение с его метаморфозами. Общий сюжет этих стансов поэтому реконструируется как преобразование привычек зрения на пути к мастерству стиха.

Ключевые слова

Набоков; Седакова; Андрей Белый; стиховедение; аллюзия; лирический сюжет; натурфилософия; религиозная поэзия.

Introduction

O. Sedakova's poem "In Memory of Nabokov" [CegaKOBa 2010, 287-291] is part of the mid-1980s cycle "Stanzas in the Manner of Alexander Pope" [CegaKOBa 2010, 275-292], in which the form of English classicism is invoked to catagorize the advances of world and Russian modernism, allowing formal attainments and semantic innovations to be presented as a visual standpoint to revise in the midst of their testing the very premises of poetic optics. For Se-dakova this cycle was a kind of transition from finished poetry books based on such models as Ezra Pound's "Cantos" or Alexander Blok's "Three Volumes" to her open cycles such as "The Unfinished Book" [CegaKOBa 2010, 349], "Elegies" [CegaKOBa 2010, 277], and "The Beginning of a Book" [CegaKOBa 2010, 399].

The Stanzas "In Memory of Nabokov" is the fourth poem in the cycle. The first poem [CegaKOBa 2010, 275-278], dedicated to Elena Shvarts, incorporates the Leningrad poet's astronomical, natural-philosophical, and apocalyptic imagery into a general plot that joins the Dante-inspired journey to heaven and the return of the prodigal son. The second poem, "On the Death of a Kitten" [CegaKOBa 2010, 279-282], attempts to convey how the metaphysical imagery of modernism could be perceived by an animal; how the play of a dying kitten with objects and space can embrace the most implausible patterns of contemplation in the vein of T.S. Eliot. The common plot becomes the fate of Sodom and the salvation of Lot, who did not turn back. The third poem, "Wine and Voyage" [CegaKOBa 2010, 283-286], subordinates the imagery of Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and the poètes maudits to episodes from Dante and the general Christian plan of the "Divine Comedy". There are also "De Arte Poetica Fifth Stanzas" [CegaKOBa 2010, 305-308], not included in the cycle, which are an exploration of how various images of the future that exist in Christian culture, such as of the liturgical experience or of the existential concept of Augustine, afford a poetic statement. In this way, the stanzas all work with different versions of individual poetry, showing how a classicizing form can render images of Baudelaire or Elena Shvarts part of a Christian understanding of the soul's journey through repentance to return to the Father's House. The rare in Russian verse absence of female (double) rhymes reinforces this classicism.

In this paper I pose the question of how exactly Nabokov's doctrine of verse is perceived in the poem. I argue that this doctrine is rooted in Andrey Bely's idea of rhythm not as sound but as synaesthetic regularities, where the missing accent is to be perceived as a mysterious shadow that constructs its own plot. Sedakova's poem is varied rhythmically, but not only does a specific plot emerge, but also special lyrical optics associated with rhythmic figures.

Materials and Method

The stanzas "In Memory of Nabokov" contain, first of all, images from the novel "The Gift": in addition to the fact that this is the key word of the first and subsequent lines (I translate it as talent for verification purposes), memorable images from Godunov-Cherdyntsev's poems are introduced, such as the

sunken ball to be lit by candlelight, and themes from the novel as the antithesis of gift and talentless mass, as well as the contradiction of images of gift: play vs. inner experience. The gift is identified in the stanzas with the image of the Goblet from Goethe's ballad "Konig in Thule", 1774), which symbolizes both the ascendancy of the creative gift over all earthly gains and the close bond of gift and destiny; for Sedakova, Goethe's ballad acts as a pretext for Nabokov's novel.

This novel is the only one that was honored in the Soviet period with a series of studies by philologists of the Tartu-Moscow semiotic school: it enabled the use of such acquisitions of this school as the study of divergent points of view within one work of fiction and the study of the semantics of grammatical forms, such as the personal and impersonal forms of statement, which produce the play of points of view. Yuri Levin (with him Sedakova had a great deal of contact at that time at Alexander Zholkovsky's workshop, and listened to his papers), after giving an excellent analysis of the novel [Левин 1981], made two discoveries by supplementing structuralism with Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of externalism (outside-being, vnenakhodimost') [Левин 1981, 207]. The first is that the third-person narrative does not produce an authoritative point of view, but allows different points of view to be brought together and made open to the future that the hero sees before him [Левин 1981, 196-197], modifying both the mode of statement, the time of statement, and the implied time of future action. Such a technique is used in Sedakova's poem, for example, in stanza 11, where the narrative subject "he" puts together the lyrical subject of the entire poem and any conditionally gifted poet, as well as any person, what Levin calls "transmigration into another" [Левин 1981, 197], that is, a change of both the person of the utterance and the permissible temporal mode or temporal intuition of the utterance. Levin introduces the notion of an "implicit" author [Левин 1981, 201], who can be identified in the development of the novel with one of the characters, Nabokov himself or a conventional play author, including as well "total impersonality" [Левин 1981, 205]. The second is that the basis of imagery, which refers to the gifted composing of poems, is not the traditional notions of the poet and poetry, but the contamination in which the rhythms of the surrounding reality determine the rhythms of the poem as well, thanks to the personal tempo, which allows the translation of the statement from the primary personal, from the lyrical experience, to the general fixation of the situation, when the content and the techniques of poetry are as if produced by the Culture (Levin calls it "complexes"):

(F.K. is composing a poem while walking down a night street under lanterns swaying in the wind.) Here the description of A's inner state (the creative process) and B's outer environment are contaminated; a kind of isomorphism of A and B is established (the next stanza is the next lantern; the pace of walking [and distance between lanterns - A.M.] is the pace of composition; the swaying of the lantern is the rhythm of the poem). [Левин 1981, 211]

This is most reminiscent of Andrey Bely's theory of rhythm, which absorbed Rudolf Steiner's philosophy of proper rhythm as the basis for all imaginative solutions. While we cannot expound all of Bely's theory, we should note that another Soviet article on "The Gift", by Mikhail Lotman, Yury Lotman's son, which for censorship reasons was devoted to 'the Godunov-Cherdyntsev poems" (Nabokov's name could not appear in the Soviet press), presents the poetics of these poems in the same way that Andrey Bely combined formal analysis and the mysticism of Steiner: overcoming the "automatism of life" and the "automatism of sound associations" [Лотман 1979, 46], a return to the "authenticity" of their existence [Лотман 1979, 47], and, finally, a resistance to "shifts", that undue associations of words, as Yuri Lotman wrote about in his "Lectures on Structural Poetics", just in praising the teaching of rhythm by Andrey Bely, which let him discern the own semantics of words beyond shifts [Лотман 1994, 125], while contrasting it with the radicalism of the Futurists. "A variety of rhythmic boundaries are superimposed on the word, crushing it, but not fragmenting it" [Лотман 1994, 127]. Lotman the Senior, directly continuing Andrey Bely's teaching of on minimal units, which make personal statements and the intuition of time part of poetic experience, but not the basis for its negation, as in the Futurists, made it possible for his pupils to investigate both the dramatic change of points of view and the alternation of the character and subject of statement in "The Gift".

Results

Nabokov spoke of its own semantics beyond shifts, resisting the doctrine of mimicry, which caused the same irritation to him as the futurist Kruchenykh's "shiftology" (sdvigologiya) did to Andrey Bely. He proved that some butterflies reproduce pattern designs through generations, contrary to the principles of mimicry [Blackwell 2009, 38-39], with the butterflies beginning to inhabit separate habitats, no longer interbreeding but continuing to belong to the same species [Blackwell 2009, 44]. This biological discovery was also contained in Andrey Bely's poetry, which Nabokov continues in "The Gift" [Blackwell 2009, 45]: the own rhythmic figures of each stanza allow the themes to exist separately, no longer mixing and influencing each other, without breaking the unity of the work. Thus, in his culminating work on Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" [Белый 1929], Andrey Bely argued that the variety of rhythm allows Pushkin to introduce a revolutionary theme among other themes, without violating either the general plot or the imagery.

The parallels between Nabokov's biology and the versification intuitions in "The Gift" are sufficiently outlined in Blackwell's book, although he does not draw material from Russian structuralists. I need to note that Nabokov's study at a new level was echoed by the contemporary ecological philosopher [Raffles 2010], who, on the example of flies, proved that flies not only mimic in case of ecological danger, but their mutations lead to the composition of new ecosystems, not new species. And Andrey Bely's doctrine of verse includes a certain notion of rhythm as a system of shadows, as Blackwell writes, also citing

Nabokov's drawings in which he marked missed stresses with dark spots and linked them together, so that they appeared something like the pattern of balls on a billiard table as they hit each other and fly in different directions, as well as repeating patterns in the evolution of butterflies:

This discussion of species is particularly striking in its similarity to Nabokov's metaphorical treatment of other aspects of reality in various works. It can also be related directly to Nabokov's interest in Andrey Bely's diagrams of lyric poetry: in these, poems are found to cast an ideal, negative pattern based on the position of unfulfilled stresses, something of a graphic "shadow" of the poems (see figures 4 and 5). Richer poems reveal richer patterns. Bely, a symbolist theoretician as well as literary artist, suggests that these patterns are in some way connected to the hidden value of a work (and hence to its ideal existence or essence). Nabokov was fascinated by these patterns from his youth onward, and he filled many notebooks with such schematic analyses of Russian poetry [Blackwell 2009, 41-42].

On this basis, with the help of Nabokov's drawings [Blackwell 2009, 4243], I constructed a rhythmic scheme of Sedakova's Stanzas (italics are present in the original). For technical reasons we replaced the dark point (skipping the stress, shadow) with the 0, and the stress, as per the metrical scheme, with the 1. Since all the clauses are masculine, we did not mark the final stress of the clause in the scheme. Also, we did not mark the superscheme accents, which are often placed on pronouns, which shows that the poet increased her attention to the person of the utterance as the basis of the expression. This effort made it possible to translate the poem to reproduce partly this rhythm and rhyme, which gives it a research advantage over most English translations of Sedako-va's poems.

Стансы четвертые Fourth Stanzas

Памяти Набокова In Memory of Nabokov

And then the gradual and dual blue. Накатывая. синь. отражена. 1101

As night unites the viewer and the view. Глядит во тьму. где взгляду нету сна. 1111

Pale Fire Бледное пламя

Есть некий дар. не больший из даров; как бы расположение шаров. почти бильярд но если сразу сто. задетые одним. летят в ничто. Мой бедный друг. воображаешь ты корзину беспримерной темноты? ничут ь не так. Вот замысел игры: There is a talent. not the greatest of alls. Like an alignment of spheric balls. almost billiards but if a hundred at once. fly into nothing. hit by only one. My poor friend. do you now imagine a basket room of blackness matchless? Not at all. This is the game intent: 1110 0010 1111 1011 1101 1010 1110

Стансы четвертые Fourth Stanzas

его объем есть острие иглы. its volume is the precise needle point. 1101

2 Дремучая зима, солнцеворот, The slumbering winter, the solstice, 1010

когда мороз свою лучину жжет. when the frost its firebrand sizzles. 1111

Суровое созвездье-полуконь The fierce constellation half-horse 1010

стоит, нацелясь в низовой огонь stands targeting the lowest blaze 1101

огнем другим - и чу, свистит стрела. with another fire and hoo, hisses an arrow. 1111

И чучело альпийского орла And of the alpine eagle the scarecrow 1010

за перевалом бренности земной, beyond the pass of earthly frailty, 0110

словно рожок, беседует со мной. like a trumpet, now speaks to me. 0110

Как странно: быть, не быть, потом начать How strange: to be, not to be, then to start 1111

немного быть; сличать и различать, to be a bit; to conflate and differentiate 1110

как бабочка, летающий шатер a flying marquee, like a butterfly, 1010

с углом и лампой, с линиями штор, with lines of drapes, with an angle and a lamplight, 1110

кончать одно и думать о другом, to end one thing and think of the other, 1110

как облако, наполнить целый дом, like a cloud, to fill a whole house, 1011

сгуститься в ларчик, кинуться в иглу to condense in a stall to a needle point 1110

и вместе с ней скатиться в щель в углу. and roll with it into the crevice in the corner. 1111

И триста лет лежать себе в пыли - And for three hundred years lay in the grass, 1111

и вдруг звучать, как бой часов вдали. and suddenly sound like a clock in the distance. 1111

Неслышимая музыка звучней. The inaudible music is more distinct. 1010

Собрав мирьяд рассеянных лучен, Collecting a world of dispersed bits, 1110

она для нас играет за углом it plays for us in a short distance 1110

огромным зажигательным стеклом. with an enormous incendiary glass. 1010

И нравится ее простая весть And I love its announcement clear, 1011

Стансы четвертые Fourth Stanzas

о том, что все не здесь - и снова здесь, that all here again and is not here; 1111

что искрится хрусталик слуховой, that sparkles the crystal aural lens 1010

как снежный порох в бездне меховой... like snow powder in a furry abyss. 1110

6 Что это, арфа, клавиши? мой друг, What is it, harp, keys? my friend, 1110

ничто нам не напомнит этот звук. nothing will remind us of that sound. 1011

То в Альпах непроглядная пурга, It's an obscuring blizzard in the Alps, 1010

то легкий дух трубит в свои рога. then a light spirit trumpets its horns. 1111

То дух созвучий, двух и снова двух, The concord spirit of two and two again, 1111

и тот далеко отлетевший дух, and that spirit that has flown away, 1101

который наполняет этот стих, that fills this versification steps, 1011

как фульский кубок в глубинах морских. like a Thule Goblet in the ocean depths. 1101

7

Среди старинных стесанных монет Amidst the antique coinage stitched 1110

и денег государств, которых нет, and the money of states that do not exist, 1011

дукатов, и цехинов, и гиней - ducats and zecchins and guineas, 1010

среди всего, что умный казначей among all that the prudent exchequer 1110

собрал по свету и послал назад, collected and dispatched from all over the world, 1101

где все сочтет подводный нумизмат, - where the underwater numerist will count it all, 1110

дух говорит, как клады из волны, the spirit speaks like hoards from the surf, 0110

изъеденные солью глубины. 8 eaten away by the deep salt of the earth. 1010

Клянусь: и дар, и несравненный труд, I swear: the talent and the work incomparable, 1101

и этот все вмещающий сосуд, and this all-consuming receptacle, 1110

который сохраняют времена which the ages strictly retain 1010

для некоего нового вина, for some new appeared wineskin, 1010

мы берегли ревнивей, чем король more jealously than the king we spared 0110

из неизвестной Фулы: только соль of the unknown Thule: only the salt 0111

возьмет его, когда я предпочту, will gird it when I shall opt for me, 1110 59

Стансы четвертые Fourth Stanzas

как пустота, увидеть пустоту. being the hollow, the vacuum to see. 0110

9

Затем, что, замирая перед ней, Then that, swooning before this case, 1011

живая плоть исполнена теней the living flesh is filled with shapes 1110

или видений: дуя на ожог, or visions: whiffing on the burn, 0110

бессмертие играет, как рожок. immortality plays like a horn. 1010

И сладостно меж образов своих, And voluptuous among its forms, 1010

шаров, шатров и коридоров их spheres, marquees, and their corridors 1101

существовать. Но сладостней всего to exist. But happiest of course 0110

уйти из них, не помня ничего. is to leave them without remembrance. 1110

10 А эти все, кто мучает других, And these are all those who torment others, 1110

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кто скверными губами скверный стих Who, with their filthy lips, chew the filthy verse 1011

разжевывает, кто сует в гробы and chews it up, and puts it in their graves 1011

учебники рабов: мы не рабы, - the textbooks of slaves: we are not slaves, 1010

кто хочет зла, как будто зло - еда, who, as if evil were bread, want evil 1111

и сам себе отвратен навсегда and are abominable to themselves for ever. 1110

и выветрится, как кухонный чад, - and weeded out like a kitchen smokestack, 1001

мне жалко их. Но пусть они молчат. I pity them. But let them keep their mouths shut. 1111

11

Никто не знает, где он будет жив No one knows where he will be laid 1111

и где живет, разлуку разложив and where he lives, if the splitting is decayed 1110

на колебанья зрительной волны into a swaying visual disturbance 0110

фосфоресцирующей глубины, of a phosphorescent profundity, 0100

как дух и тень. И все соединит, like spirit and shape. And he will connect 1110

и все рассыплет. Царственный магнит, and scatters everything. A royal magnet, 1110

дар привлекает множество даров the talent attracts a multitude of talents 0110

и катится, как ливень из шаров. and swirls like a downpour of spheres. 1010

Стансы четвертые

Fourth Stanzas

Так выпьем кубок, сложенный, как соль,

за эту жизнь, похожую на боль -и все же на пастушеский рожок. За дальний звук, который ум зажег и сердце отогрел - и не могло перемениться смутное стекло. Еще за то, что мы прискорбно злы.

So let us drink a goblet, folded like salt, 1110

For this life that is painful thought 1110

and yet shaped as the shepherd's trumpet. 1010

For the distant sound, that has the intellect 1111

kindled and heated the very depth: 1010

the vague glass could not be reversed. 0110

For we are deplorably wicked. 1111

За милосердье - острие иглы.

For mercy is the point of a prick.

0101

Discussion

Thus, we see lines in which the meter corresponds to the rhythm, and lines in which there are shadows, missing accents, like balls scattering and disappearing in the darkness. The stanzas can be considered iconic: the rolling ball of the poem in "The Gift" leaves an empty space and requires a lamp, while the movement of the poem, which allows the fate of people to be highlighted, can be presented as a billiard both in its intended image and in its metaphysical idea. We can see other examples of iconicity, for example, the final line of stanza 8 directly depicts the void that looks into the vacuum at the other end, then in Russian it is enhanced by the muffled and as if dark u sound. Or, for example, the first four lines of the fifth stanza symmetrically depict the process of the incendiary glass concentrating the rays and creating flames on its other side, with new shadows, so that the orbs seem to pass through this facet, creating a mirror-like configuration. But the interpretation of the iconicity and the resulting whimsical patterns of each stanza would be unconvincing without more general regularities. I have distinguished three types of lines: with full conformity of the meter to the rhythm (1111), with one 0 (one shadow), and with two 0.

The lines with full conformity to metre rhythm should be recognized as "gnomic," in the sense in which Averintsev wrote of the similarly constructed lines of Vyacheslav Ivanov:

This also includes the tendency to mark "oracular" utterances by matching the borders between words and the borders between stops, which requires two-syllable words in iambic verse (and one three-syllable at the end, to close the pentameter iambus with a feminine clause):

Троих одна на крест вела дорога... The three led to the cross alone...

Or without a feminine clause and without a three-syllable word, as in the sonnet "Transcende te ipsum" from Transparency:

Рахиль: «Себя прейди - в себя сойди»

Rachel: "Transcend thyself - into thyself descend," [Аверинцев 1996, 10].

In these lines, the coincidence of meter and rhythm appeals to memory, inspires the idea of an unambiguous perception of meaning, and thereby conveys philosophical maxims. Most lines with such a scheme easily become aphorisms, or at least emphatic philosophical constructions somewhat detached from the plot.

Poems with one shadow I conventionally call poems with aesthetic metaphor, and poems with two shadows (or a poem with three, conventionally of the same type) are poems with synesthetic metaphor. Aesthetic metaphor requires a simple comparison: this looks like this, this appears under such and such circumstances, this happens there, and therefore looks like this. Here the comparison simply allows us to clarify the image of the action or the circumstances of the action. Synaesthetic metaphor, unlike aesthetic metaphor, makes one experience one sense as another, e.g., sight as heat, or deafness as loss of balance, or fire as a particular aural wave. It is the synaesthetic metaphor that requires scientific imagery related to the perception of the world around us, whereas the aesthetic metaphor remains close to everyday causation.

To learn the difference between aesthetic and synaesthetic metaphors, I give a commentary on one of the stanzas (stanza 9):

(lines 1-2, aesthetic metaphors) If you are afraid of emptiness, you see that you yourself are horrible.

(lines 3-5, synesthetic metaphors) at the same time you see your own pain, and immortality becomes a message, and images of immortality are pleasure.

(line 6, aesthetic metaphor) we are used to perceiving any images as ordered sequences.

(line 7, synaesthetic metaphor) the hierarchy of sequences can pass into a hierarchy of pleasure and reveal unprecedented enjoyment.

(line 8, aesthetic metaphor) forgetting this unprecedented pleasure turns into forgetting other pleasures as well. The pool game was lost.

In each stanza there is a definite movement from aesthetic metaphors to synaesthetic ones, from awareness of one's situation by means of language, where and how one is now, to a transformation of sensuality. Already from this new sensuality, a new aspect of being, one has to proceed in the next aesthetic metaphor. In this way "billiards" is a change in the way shadows are illuminated, when you change many times the habits of sensuality and thereby gradually move from the recognition of everyday laws to the recognition of metaphysical laws. For example, one such law turns out to be the ability of being to restore itself, which corresponds to the Christian restoration of being.

The general plot of the poem continues the plot of the second stanzas "On the Death of a Kitten", only it presents the play not of the kitten, but of language itself. The overall plot can then be called the transformation of vision in acquiring poetic mastery, which anticipates Sedakova's later poems, where the constant metamorphosis of vision and the way of seeing reality determines the open form because poetic mastery is always subordinated to the more general conceptual and ideological task of the religious poet.

Литература

1. Аверинцев C.С. Гномическое начало в поэзии Вячеслава Иванова // Studia Slavica (Budapest). 1996. Vol. 41. P. 3-12.

2. Белый А. Ритм как диалектика и «Медный всадник»: исследование. М.: Федерация, 1929. 280 c.

3. Левин Ю.И. Об особенностях повествовательной структуры и образного строя романа В. Набокова «Дар» // Russian Literature. 1981. No. 2. Vol. 9. P. 191-229.

4. Лотман М.Ю. Некоторые замечания о поэзии и поэтике Ф.К. Годунова-Чер-дынцева // Вторичные моделирующие системы. Тарту: Издательство Тартусского университета, 1979. С. 45-48.

5. Лотман Ю.М. Лекции по структуральной поэтике (1964) // Ю.М. Лотман и Тартусско-московская семиотическая школа. М.: Гнозис, 1994. С. 17-245.

6. Седакова О.А. Стихи. М.: Университет Дмитрия Пожарского, 2010. 432 с.

7. Blackwell S.H. The Quill and the Scalpel: Nabokov's art and the Worlds of Science. Cleveland: Ohio State University Press, 2009. 294 p.

8. Raffles H. Insectopedia. New York: Panteon Books, 2010. 480 p.

References

•Articles from scientific journals

1. Averintsev S.S. Gnomicheskoye nachalo v poezii Vyacheslava Ivanova [Gnomic Principle in the Poetry of Vyacheslav Ivanov]. Studia Slavica (Budapest), 1996, vol. 41, pp. 3-12. (In Russian).

2. Levin Yu.I. Ob osobennostyakh povestvovatel'noy struktury i obraznogo stroya romana V. Nabokova "Dar" [On the Features of the Narrative Structure and Figurative Structure of the Novel by V. Nabokov "The Gift"]. Russian Literature, no. 2, vol. 9, 1981, pp. 191-229. (In Russian).

•Articles from proceedings and collections of research papers

3. Lotman M.Yu. Nekotoryye zamechaniya o poezii i poetike F.K. Godunova-Cherdyntseva [Some Remarks on the Poetry and Poetics of F.K. Godunov-Cherdynt-sev]. Vtorichnyye modeliruyushchiye sistemy [Secondary Modeling Systems]. Tartu, Izdatel'stvo Tartusskogo Universiteta Publ., 1979, pp. 45-48. (In Russian)

4. Lotman Yu.M. Lektsii po struktural'noy poetike [Lectures on Structural Poetics]. Yu.M. Lotman i Tartusko-moskovskaya semioticheskaya shkola [Yu.M. Lotman and the Tartu-Moscow Semiotic School]. Moscow, Gnosis Publ., 1994, pp. 17-245. (In Russian)

Стиховедение | Verse Studies •Monographs

5. Blackwell S.H. The Quill and the Scalpel: Nabokov's Art and the Worlds of Science. Cleveland, Ohio State University Press, 2009. 294 p. (In English).

6. Belyy A. Ritm kak dialektika i "Mednyy vsadnik": issledovaniye [Rhythm as Dialectics and "The Bronze Horseman": A Study]. Moscow, Federation Publ., 1929. 280 p. (In Russian)

7. RafflesH. Insectopedia. New York, Panteon Books, 2010. 480 p. (In English) Alexander V. Markov,

Russian State University for the Humanities

Doctor of Philology, Professor at the Department of Cinema and

Contemporary Art. Research interests: theory of literature and art.

E-mail: markovius@gmail.com

ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6874-1073

Марков Александр Викторович,

Российский государственный гуманитарный университет Доктор филологических наук, профессор кафедры кино и современного искусства. Научные интересы: теория литературы и искусства. E-mail: markovius@gmail.com ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6874-1073

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