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5. Глембоцкая Я.О. Творческая рефлексия в контексте художественной циклизации на материале русской поэзии ХХ века. Автореф. дисс. ... канд.филол. наук. Новосибирск, 1999. С. 16.
6. Сафарова Т.В. Жанровое своеобразие песенного творчества Владимира Высоцкого. Автореф. дис. ... канд. филол. наук. Владивосток, 2002. С. 11.
7. Словари этой особенности употребления не отмечают, однако все примеры употребления союза “да” в этом значении взяты из пословиц и произведений с речью, стилизованной под старую разговорную норму. См. “Словарь русского языка” (под ред.. А.П. Евгеньевой) М., 1999. С 360. “Словарь русского языка” (под ред. С.И. Ожегова и
Н.Ю. Шведовой) М., 1999. С. 150.
© Ярко А.Н., 2007
Qualin Anthony
Texas
THE MESSIANIC SKOMOROKH:
FROM CATHARTIC LAUGHTER TO THE TRANSCENDENT WORD IN THE WORKS OF ALEXANDER BASHLACHEV
Куалин Энтони Техас
СКОМОРОХ-МЕССИЯ: ОТ ДУШЕРАЗДИРАЮЩЕГО ХОХОТА
К ТРАНСЦЕНДЕНТНОМУ СЛОВУ В ПРОИЗВЕДЕНИЯХ А. БАШЛА ЧЕВА
Настоящая статья посвящена исследованию образа “Поэта” в произведениях А. Башлачева. Автор выделяет три его ипостаси: “шут”, “рок-н-ролльный герой” и “мистик”, прослеживая его трансформацию и развитие на протяжении трех основных этапов творческого пути поэта. Сложный выбор между “чистым искусством” и “продажей души рок-н-роллу” является одним из ключевых эмоциональных переживаний А. Башлачева, автобиографично оживающим в образах его “Поэта”. На начальном этапе творчества поэт осознает, что рок-поэзия представляет собой жалкий суррогат реальности, однако вскоре он находит истину в зрелищности этого “скоморошечьего ” представления, и наконец, осознав могущество своего “шута”, поэт лишает его дешевого обаяния и отправляет на поиск просвещения, которое было должно, но не смогло преобразить самого поэта.
***
Although his entire oeuvre appears to have been written in the course of under five years, Alexander Bashlachev created a corpus of works that left him with a reputation as the most gifted poet among Russia’s Eighties’ rockers. Indeed, critics seem compelled to use the epithet “poet” (at times going so far as to capitalize the ‘p’) in regard to Bashlachev, as if to underscore his superiority to others who compose rock lyrics1. Perhaps inspired by the critics’ perception of him, Bashla-chev exhibits a pervasive interest in “the poet” in his works, which in turn sharpens his audience’s perception of them as being more literary than most rock poetry. This is not to say, however, that there are not
many other reasons that Bashlachev enjoys his reputation as a poet. Yet, while his masterful wordplay and his ability to superimpose folk-loric and literary material upon images from daily Soviet life are worthy of our attention, for the purpose of this paper, we shall focus on the portrayal of the figure of “the poet” in Bashlachev’s works.
There seem to be three manifestations of “the poet” in Bashlachev’s verse: the shut, the rock and roller, and the mystic. Far from being mutually exclusive, these categories overlap and bleed into one another to the extent that may be said to collapse into a single category. As we shall find, however, over the course of Bashlachev’s career his image of the poet exhibits a marked increase in spiritual elements, while displaying ever fewer of the traits associated with the shut.
Although the length of time over which Bashlachev wrote poetry was unusually short, his verse exhibits sufficient stylistic and thematic change to allow us to speak of two or even three stages in his development as an artist. S. V. Sviridov divides Bashlachev’s works into three periods: 1983- mid-1984, mid-1984-85, and 1986, discussing the artist’s path “через чувство небытийности сущего, через переживание реальности людской жизни и смерти - к прорыву в высшее бытие”2. Sviridov classifies the dominant stylistic traits of Bashla-chev’s early writing as irony, sarcasm, and negation, while the second stage of Bashlachev’s writing, Sviridov argues, is characterized by increased symbolism and use of metaphor. In the third stage, according to Sviridov, Bashlachev attempts to “магическим словом пробиться в сферу запредельного бытия и не остаться безучастным к преображению национального и всеобщего мира, к преображению человека”3.
While one might quibble with Sviridov’s periodization or with the categorical nature of his conclusions, it is impossible to argue with his fundamental premise that the nature of Bashlachev’s verse grows increasingly serious over the years. In tracing the development of the image of the poet in Bashlachev’s works, we hope to demonstrate that one element of the increasingly serious tone his works is a movement from carnival treatments of the theme of resurrection to a much more mystical approach to the subject.
In Bashlachev’s 1982 song “Мы льем свое больное семя,” an intertextual echo of Lermontov informs us that the Poet is dead:
Погиб поэт -- невольник чести,
Сварился в собственном соку.
Unable to become poets, the fools, jesters and prophets find rock and roll to be the appropriate outlet for their self-expression:
Шуты, фигляры и пророки
сегодня носят «фендера», чтоб воспеть в тяжелом роке интриги скотного двора.
At this early stage in his career, Bashlachev seems to feel that rock poetry is a surrogate for the real thing. Rather than singing about fate (the existence of which is brought to our attention in the phrase тяжелый рок) or the eternal, our heroes “praise” (in an extremely ironic sense) the intrigues of the Animal Farm. Indeed, the entire text of the song teems with images of incongruity and failed expectations. Bashlachev’s treatment of Blok’s narrator’s search for truth in a glass results merely in vomiting. The sun is lackluster (тусклый), their seed is diseased, and love is comparable to gonorrhea. If Bashlachev’s rock musicians aspire to become Christ figures, they fall short, as their crosses ‘кресты’ are replaced with playing cards in the suit of clubs ‘крести.’ Our heroes slit their wrists, only to release beer instead of blood. Bashlachev mentions two western imports by brand name. This connection between the Gillette razor employed to slit our rock and rollers’ wrists and the Fender guitars that they use to play western style music evokes a parallel between rock and roll as a placebo for poetry and drunkenness as mock suicide. The fools, jesters, and prophets play Dionysian carnival games, but their form of selfdestruction lacks the element of Christian sacrifice made by a true poet. Christ’s blood is wine offered to his apostles as a symbol of his sacrifice. Bashlachev’s rock skomorokhi, in contrast, simply soil the floor with their beery blood. Thus “Мы льем свое больное семя” expresses a subverted desire to be a poet, while satirizing the conditions that seem to have killed true poetry.
The pitfalls of substituting rock and roll for true poetry are explored in Bashlachev’s 1984 song “Минута молчания.” Addressed to a nameless musician in the second-person singular, this song is highly critical of those who mistake the superficial material trappings of rock culture for its essence. The musician’s dream to become “the number one star in his own hit parade” has led to his death. Bashlachev’s poetic persona offers an alternative, saying:
Я жил радостью встреч И болью прощания.
Смотри на меня. [Emphasis added in the text, although it is stressed Bashlachev’s performance of the song.]
Ведь мы говорим, значит, можем петь песни.
Постой! Нас может сжечь минута молчания.
Не бойся огня.
Ведь, если сгорим,
Значит снова воскреснем.
In contrast to the carnival suicides in “Мы льем свое больное семя,” the poet is willing to make a true sacrifice in “Минута молчания.” Moreover, his offer of resurrection to those who follow his path paints him as a Christ-figure. In contrast to this spiritual world of truth, the musician to whom the song is addressed is shown to seek fulfillment in earthly things, such as his walkman (a status symbol at the time), his Telecaster, his groupies (несколько Лен, несколько Зин), and his picture in the-day-before-yesterday’s paper. In his quest for fame and fortune, which the dating of the picture shows to be fleeting, the musician has betrayed his calling, speculating in a tale of better worlds and turning to drugs. He is entangled in a lie that has metamorphosed into fear. He seems to possess the rainbow makeup of a shut, but he sells it rather than wearing it. After listing the musician’s failings, Bashlachev’s smug poetic persona finally realizes that his sermon is fated to fall on deaf ears, saying:
Ты не поймешь меня.
Ты не шагнешь через себя к себе.
Так не лги о борьбе -- велики все слова Тебе -- лилипуту в стране Гулливеров.
Despite the hostility toward rock sell-outs found in this song, the final line of the above-cited stanza implies that such Lilliputians are still a rarity among the Gullivers of the 1984 rock scene. While I have used this work to illustrate a point, I do not consider it to be among Bashlachev’s better works. The author himself, seemed to have been of a similar opinion as he only recorded it once and does not appear to have performed it after the year it was written.
Bashlachev’s exploration of the theme of the death and resurrection of a poet is much more complex in “Похороны шута,%Ы^ was also written in 1984. While “Минута молчания” begins at the grave of the other, “Похороны шута” starts off with the funeral of the poetic persona himself. The line “Средь шумного бала шуты умирают от скуки” may imply that Bashlachev has grown weary of his role as a mere entertainer--that he is ready to become something more. Soon thereafter Bashlachev evokes Pushkin with the line “Лошадка лениво плетется по краю сугроба.” This playful reference to the oft-quoted winter scene from Chapter Five, Stanza Two of Pushkin’s Evgenii Onegin may be indicative of Bashlachev’s desire to engage more serious poetry. Pushkin, however, is not the only poet that Bashlachev’s horse imagery brings to mind. Yet Bashlachev’s “лошадка” who trudges lazily along the edge of the snow bank, is but a pale reflection of Vladimir Vysotsky's “кони” who gallop hurriedly along the edge of the abyss. Indeed the juxtaposition of Vysotsky’s poetic persona’s out
of control journey toward oblivion and Bashlachev’s jester’s journey to his final resting place as a parody of Pushkin’s sleigh ride through a winter wonderland paints Bashlachev’s shut as a carnavilized version of the poet.
The song is roughly divided into thirds by descriptions of six recurring funeral attendees. When we encounter these characters for the first time they are all in a proper state of mourning. The priest and the carpenter are linked in that both are performing their professional duty at the funeral: the priest is reading the eulogy and the carpenter has fashioned the cross. The actor and the major, on the other hand, have removed their mask and helmet respectively, temporarily emerging from their professional shells. The lady and the dog seem to mourn in sincerity. The presence of the carpenter and his cross introduces the image of Christ, while the wandering actor appears to be the fool’s kindred spirit.
In the second section of the work, the fool’s Dionysian resurrection leads to a comic bacchanalia. The characters become drunk on laughter. In the second version of the chorus everything is the opposite of what it had been the first time around. The priest and carpenter have abandoned their duties, while the actor and the major, though both engaged drinking, have become reattached to the trappings of their trades. The lady and the dog, who earlier mourned the loss of their love, seem to have found solace in one another’s arms. The power of the fool’s comic gift is striking. His carnival inversion leaves nothing untouched. He is able to heal the afflicted (the priest’s cheek), intoxicate the sober, and bring love to the grieving.
In his rebellion against death, the fool employs the power of laughter to disarm devils and eventually death herself. Having done so, however, he finds that no one else is left awake at the wake. Perhaps realizing that his power of transformation is only temporary, the fool himself approaches death to inform her that it is time for them to take their leave.
There are many parallels between the texts of “Мы льем свое больное семя” and “Похороны шута.” Yet while both songs contain references to jesters and drunkenness, there are significant differences in tone and content between the two works. In “Мы льем свое больное семя” the poet is dead and his legacy is left to the fools, jesters, and prophets who play rock and roll. In contrast, it is the fool who is dead in “Похороны шута.” This fool, however, has more in common with the poet than with the rock and rollers of the earlier work. I have already mentioned the intertextual parallels to the verse of Pushkin and Vysotsky the latter of whom Bashlachev is said to
have admired considerably in 19844. There is also a possible reference to Esenin in the poem. The fool sings, “Я красным вином написал заявление о смерти.” As beer takes the place of blood in “Мы льем свое больное семя,” wine represents Christ’s blood at the Last Supper and may be seen to serve as blood for our resurrected fool, as well. This evokes images of Esenin’s suicide poem, which he is said to have written in his own blood. In contrast to the blood beer that “merely soils the hardwood floor” in “Мы льем свое больное семя,” the fool uses his wine in the act of writing. Thus the images of the fool, Christ, and the Poet are brought together in a single character. While both songs contain many carnival elements, in “Похороны шута” they do not directly affect the poetic persona. His death, resurrection, and power are all real, if not permanent. It is the carpenter, not the fool, who profanes the cross as a carnival Christ. Finally, “Похороны шута” is virtually devoid of the political elements that mark “Мы льем свое больное семя.” Perhaps this is because the fool is dead and the poet who has risen in his place has more important things to do than to lampoon the intrigues of the Animal Farm.
In contrast to the above-discussed works, “На жизнь поэтов,” written in 1986, contains no references to fools or jesters, who seem to have given way completely to the figures of Christ and the poet. Indeed, the impression created in “Похороны шута”--that the fool’s decision to depart along with death marks the end of his era and the beginning of the reign of the Christ-like poet--is reinforced by the gravely serious tone of “На жизнь поэтов.” With no one to play the fool’s role, however, the song grows almost oppressive in its gloomy mysticism. The poet’s social function has essentially been reduced to a cliche (Что у всех на уме -- у них на языке), while his path of suffering and sacrifice is the focus of the work.
The theme of the poet’s death is raised in the song’s first line: “Поэты живут. И должны оставаться живыми.” The statement that poets must remain alive seems to indicate that either the poets themselves or some outside force is seeking their death. Indeed the phrasing of the line makes remaining alive appear to be a tribulation of some kind. As the song continues we find that life loves the poet “to death” and cuts him again and again. Death becomes less abstract as we are told:
Не плачьте, когда семь кругов беспокойного лада
Пойдут по воде над прекрасной шальной головой.
Yet death by suicide is not necessarily a reason to cry: the seven rings that will form above the head of the drowned poet evoke images
of haloes and the phrase “пойдут по воде” is reminiscent of Christ’s walking on water.
In spite of earlier images of death, the poets are seen to be alive again as we are told that they, unlike the dead “имут свой срам.” Following another suicide image: a gun in the mouth, we are treated to a number of images that illustrate our poets’ difficult relationship with the material world:
Шатаясь от слез и от счастья смеясь под сурдинку,
Свой вечный допрос они снова выводят к кольцу.
В быту тяжелы. Но однако легки на поминках.
Вот тогда и поймем, что цветы им, конечно, к лицу.
Не верьте концу. Но не ждите иного расклада.
А что там было в пути? Метры, рубли...
Неважно, когда семь кругов беспокойного лада Позволят идти, наконец, не касаясь земли.
Other than the muted laughter mentioned in the first line of the above-cited stanza, the images from life are of tears, hardship, or obsession with material things, while death is associated with lightness, flowers, and flight.
The song’s final image of death is a crucifixion that appears destined to be repeated in that it will lead back to Pilate. Then, after a reaffirmation of the poet’s indomitable spirit, we are finally offered hope that the cycle of death and rebirth will end after seven repetitions and that the poet will be released to the eighth circle.
If we return to the third stanza we shall find that the beer that soiled the floor in “Мы льем свое больное семя,” before becoming wine used to write with in “Похороны шута” is finally able to realize its potential as blood in this poem: “Поэты в миру после строк ставят знак кровоточия.” The neologism “знак кровоточия” seems to imply that writing poetry is a sacrifice that leads to eternity. This work contains no remnants of Bashlachev’s earlier carnival vision. Both the poet and his image in verse have become dead serious.
The title of the poem “Пляши в огне” (also written in 1986) would seem to imply a return to the motif of merriment as a carnival release from the difficulties of daily life. A close reading of the text, though, reveals the extent to which the fire dance in this song is not mere escapism, but an ecstatic neoshamanistic dance of a mystic rather than comic nature.
The song’s first line - если я с собой не в ладу - makes it clear that the poetic persona’s problem is not necessarily social - his difficulties are with himself. The subsequent image of the broken string could symbolize nervous breakdown, a creative crisis, or both. Thus the hell in this work is not necessarily of society’s making.
The poetic persona’s desire to throw heaven down casts doubts upon the desirability of this song’s version of heaven. If, then, heaven is negatively charged, perhaps hell’s value is reversed, as well. Alternately, however, the poetic persona may simply be trying to make heaven more accessible by bringing it closer to Earth.
The first three lines of the third stanza do raise the possibility that the social conditions of the times have created the work’s hell. The epithets used to describe today’s world are profanations of apocalyptic religious terminology. While this subversion of sacred language may be seen to emphasize the spiritual corruption of modern society, it also raises questions as to the nature of a heaven associated with such terms. If this song’s heaven afflicts the world with “страшный зуд” and “скудный день,” then perhaps the flames of its hell can bring salvation. As in “На жизнь поэтов” grief and laughter stand together in the same line and, once again, laughter is overwhelmed by grief, which is trumpeted, while laughter appears to be cold and muted, though lavishly dressed.
Suddenly a shift occurs and the listener is summoned into the flame. The poetic persona himself seeks an ecstatic feverish state and then he offers to set the sky afire. Thus, fire is no longer a bane that we dance to forget, but rather the source of purification and beauty. The use of dance and magic words in rituals is then evoked by the image of the witch’s sabbath in the line: “Мне с моею милою - рай на шабаше.”
The ecstatic poetic persona who summons the listener into the flame and attempts to light the sunrise has taken on attributes of a shaman. Having done so, his words become similar to incantations: “Ой, не лей елей, да я не пью, я пою, да нынче мне в седло.”
On one level, the poetic persona’s need to take leave (“мне в седло,” “время выйти в лес,” “я уйду, раз я пришел”) can be read as a parallel to the wandering mystics of the Russian tradition: the yurodivye. On another level, however, the poetic persona’s need to embark on a journey symbolizes - as it almost always does in Bashla-chev’s verse - crossing over into death. The holy fields found in the woods and the large number of flowers are evidence of this passing.
The impassioned chanting and word weaving of the final five stanzas do prove to be effective and we are left with the image of the poetic persona looking down upon himself dancing in the fire at the bottom of a river that flows through the clouds. That his transcendence is accompanied by a dance amongst all four elements adds to the shamanic imagery of the work.
While some of the carnival elements in Bashlachev’s early songs are present in “Пляши в огне,” the role of the artist is quite different in this work. He does not seek to create a diversion or criticize the social order. His goal is to seek truth and achieve transcendence and to reveal that path to others. When in the eighth stanza he sings: “Я тобой живу, но прости мне сны - не житье,” he implies that our world is one of dreams and it is the poet’s task to awaken himself and others to a higher reality. If this is the case, then the poetic persona’s fire dance is not a simple dance of joy or a way to spend a weekend evening - it is the ecstatic dance of a dervish or a shaman.
These works written in 1982, 1984, and 1986 show that in each period Bashlachev had a different idea of the role of the rock lyricist and his relationship to true poetry. In “Мы льем свое больное семя” rock poetry is clearly a surrogate for the real thing. Eternal themes are raised only in carnival form and the rocker’s role is limited to social satire and amusement. In “Похороны шута” the poetic persona is aware that his power is real - if only temporary - and he seems ready to move on to another higher incarnation. The works written in 1986 are virtually devoid of carnival humor. They seek rather to use the power of the magical word to transform both the poet and those who would heed him. Having limited poetic options to truth-seeking and mystic transformation, Bashlachev seems to have set a standard that he could no longer consistently achieve as a writer. This may have contributed to his creative crisis and eventual suicide.
ПРИМЕЧАНИЯ
1. See, for example, Iurii Domanskii. “Poet.” Tekst smerti russkogo roka. Tver’: Izdatel’stvo Tver’skogo universiteta, 9.
2. Sviridov,S.V. “Magiia iazyka: Poeziia A. Bashlacheva. i986 god.,” in Russkaia rok-poeziia: tekst i kontekst 4, Tver’: Liliia Print, 2000, 57.
3. Ibid. 59.
4. See Sviridov,S.V. “Poeziia A. Bashlacheva: i983-i984,” Russkaia rok-poeziia: tekst I kontekst 3, Tver’: Liliia Print, 2000, i70-i72.
© Qualin Anthon, 2007
Erin Collopy, Anthony Qualin
Техас
SASHBASH AND THE REFRIGERATOR PEOPLE: ALEXANDER BASHLACHEV IN NINA SADUR’S “ЧУДЕСНЫЕ ЗНАКИ СПАСЕНЬЯ”
Эрин Коллопи, Энтони Куалин САШБАШ И ЛЮДИ ИЗ ХОЛОДИЛЬНИКА :
АЛЕКСАНДР БАШЛАЧЕВ В “ ЧУДЕСНЫХ ЗНАКАХ СПАСЕНЬЯ” НИНЫ САДУР
