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А.А. Шунейко, О.В. Чибисова
Комсомольский-на-Амуре государственный университет, 681013 г. Комсомольск-на-Амуре, Российская Федерация
«Двух голосов перекличка» (Виктор Соснора и Иосиф Бродский)
В статье рассматривается специфика решения вопроса о соотношении правды искусства и правды жизни в творчестве Виктора Сосноры и Иосифа Бродского. Определяется совокупность значимых интертекстуальных связей между «Феерией» и «Посвящается Ялте». Показано, что текст «Посвящается Ялте» по своей разноуровневой художественной организации ориентирован на «Феерию». Сделан вывод о различии эстетических позиций двух поэтов и выявлены эти различия.
Ключевые слова: Виктор Соснора, Иосиф Бродский, «Феерия», «Посвящается Ялте», интертекстуальность.
А.А. Shuneyko, O.V. Chibisova
Komsomolsk-on-Amur State University, Komsomolsk-on-Amur, 681013, Russian Federation
"Two voices conversing aloud" (Victor Sosnora and Joseph Brodsky)
The article considers the specifics of addressing the issue of correlating the truth of art and the truth of life in the works of Viktor Sosnora and Joseph Brodsky. It defines a set of significant intertextual links between "Extravaganza" and "Homage g to Yalta". It shows that the text "Homage to Yalta" is focused on "Extravaganza" 5 in its multi-level art organization. A conclusion is made about the difference % in the aesthetic positions of the two poets with these distinctions revealed. ^
Key words: Victor Sosnora, Joseph Brodsky, "Extravaganza", "Homage to Yalta", intertextuality.
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The interaction of the truth of life and the truth of art is a question that, in one way or another, invariably excites every artist. The answer to it is directly related to understanding what kind of reality the creator builds, what is its place in the variety of material and mental reality forms. In its specific interpretation, this question breaks down into a mass of particular manifestations: what is truth, what are its types and where are its boundaries, whether it has verifying characteristics, etc. These manifestations are linked together in specific aesthetic declarations and become objects of search in independent art texts. In both cases, their literal perusal is impeded by the fact that they are translated through the use of an individual figurative apparatus. The study considers two different ways of solving this problem, proposed by two poets - Victor Sosnora in "Extravaganza" and Joseph Brodsky in "Homage to Yalta".
Russian culture knows a lot of poets opposing each other in aesthetic attitudes. But the couple Victor Sosnora - Joseph Brodsky, even on this extensive list, occupies a special place. It would seem, albeit with reservations, but nevertheless, the unity of external characteristics (generation, context, place, resistance to power and official literature) had to encourage to some common aesthetic positions. But it turned out the other way around. Sosnora was guided by the poetics of complexity ("the school of L. Brik"), Brodsky -by the poetics of simplicity ("the school of A. Akhmatova").
The poets were familiar with each other as is evident from the correspondence between Sosnora and Brik: "I met Brodsky, he was devastated" (the letter from 2.12.70) [Ananko, 2012a, p. 53]. They somehow kept under continuing consideration the vicissitudes of each other's destinies: "After all, Brodsky was made a referent ['Poet in Residence' at the University of Michigan]. I do not think that I know or mean less" (the letter from 19.08.74) [Ananko, 2012b, p. 80]. "What about Gleb Gorbovsky? And Brodsky? Brodsky has four grades, in my opinion, Gleb, has at least seven. But Brodsky's language is strong, despite the Nobel Prize, powerful. What is it? Reading? His poems make it clear that he read more foreign poets more than Russian ones. It is always clear from the verses" [Sosnora, 2006, p. 60]. "One day, when B. became world famous, you were asked about him. 'How is Brodsky, his room was covered with postcards" [Ilyanen, 2006, p. 66]. They knew and evaluated each other's work.
Sosnora's evaluations are contradictory: "Do you know that Brodsky died yesterday? In a dream. The easiest death. In his fiftieth year [in the fifty-sixth]. That's all. The last real Russian poet. Absolutely pure"; "Only two people have done something new in the Russian literature of our time. Brodsky. The second is me. But I'm an invisible being. They do not know me" [Ovsyannikov, 2011a]; "After them [Futurists] there was nobody of this
rank. Voznesenski, Aygi, Brodsky are remarkable in their kind. But the rank is not the same" [Ovsyannikov, 2011b]. "It was on that evening [18.10.89] that you uttered a sacramental phrase: "There are three Russian-speaking poets in the world today: I, Brodsky and Aigi." [Ilyanen, 2006, p. 68]. In the rendition of L. Losev the indirect assessments of Sosnora made by Brodsky are that Sosnora "did not differ too much from him in the eyes of the authorities" and more bravely experimented with the form [Losev, 2006, p. 44]. That is, a certain degree of unity was realized by both of them.
Reading generations assessed them in different ways. In the perception of their contemporaries they often stood side by side: "In our generation, mass Broadskyism began a little later, literally a year or two later ... And then Sosnora again became the second in the pair, as when he was 'Leningrad Voznesenski'. Appreciating his skill, the sharpness and height of the notes he took, we still could not put his world, which was somewhat agitated and controlled by the predictable (and from the mid-1970s - ever more predictable) laws, along with the broad and harmonious cosmos of Brodsky. But 'Brodsky and Sosnora' existed in our language for a short time" [Shubinskij, 2006, p. 75]. Sosnora was steadily given a place of the "second". But there are cases when in a particular situation the second is the first.
The parallel temporal existence of the poets, their significance in the literary environment and knowledge of each other's creativity could not help causing mutual controversy, especially as Brodsky was inclined to poetic disputes: remember his invectives of Evtushenko. The sharpest manifestation of the polemics between Brodsky and Sosnora is the poems "Extravaganza" and "Homage to Yalta".
"Extravaganza" was written no later than 1963, "Homage to Yalta" -in 1969. So, it is a matter of a unilateral response, a dispute with the predecessor, a retaliatory reply, the assertion of one's position through the rejection of somebody else's. The texts are literally saturated with parallels, which manifest themselves at the various levels of the artistic whole and create a wide choice of recognizable similarities. Here is the list of the main parallels.
Genre ambiguity. Both texts are large rhymes or small poems structurally organized on the principle of a polylogue, in which the boundaries between personage's speech, the personages themselves and the author's voice are extremely blurred. Who exactly speaks is simply impossible to tell in many contexts. A small volume of texts clearly indicates that all resemblances or parallels are not accidental. Brodsky repeats Sosnora in many significant details, including explicit references to him in his text, so that the opposition of aesthetic positions can be seen more clearly on this supposedly general background. These are references-deceptions, references-periphrastic nominations of the opponent.
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Primarily, similarities should be commented upon at length with the note that the links between the texts cannot be interpreted otherwise than direct references of Brodsky's words to Sosnora's text.
The unity of space in two works is determined by the fact that both places of action are localized through the accentuation of two opposing themes. First, the theme of the south, southern space in general, the sea coast and signs of the sea element. The action of "Extravaganza" is formally unfolding in Paris. But the text is included in the "Book of the South", it mentions the south: "Her face is like the stars of the south!" and the attributes of the coast - beacons, ocean, water: "On the Seine, the leaves flashed, / like little lighthouses"; "Hasty pedestrians' faces are / like little lighthouses"; "Turning of the ocean - / a river in a contour of stone"; "And the air is full of stars like water". "Homage to Yalta" mentions "the whole southern shore", and the action takes place in the south: "in front of you / all the time -there is a harbor. And the lights of the port." Sosnora distinguishes "pale green strokes", Brodsky depicts "Everywhere there are lights and fireflies on the roadstead" and "it looks like an emerald from above". Second, in both cases the urban space is detailed: Paris and Yalta. For example, Sosnora writes "the drivers' faces behind the windows", Brodsky echoes "cars go rushing".
The very duality of space, in which water and earth elements are combined, can also be perceived as a generality. In both texts, the space is borderline (as well as situations), at that the boundary itself symbolizes the union of the solid earth, striving to preserve any traces, and the soft mud striving to destroy these traces. And this is what happens in the texts: the consequences of certain almost identical actions (events) are washed away or smoothed out.
The unity of personage's characteristics. In both works there are two clearly expressed protagonists. In "Extravaganza" it is "a man with the face of Saturn" (an old man, a seeker), who "has lost his face". In "Homage to Yalta" it is "a congenial person", "he", a contused person, and an amateur chess player. The parallelism (link or even identity) between these two main characters is created in various ways.
Both are deprived of names, which emphasizes their extremely typed character and indicates that the text is not actually about them, but about a specific action in which they are invariant substitutions. This is confirmed by the fact that other characters have no names either. They are equally vague in terms of their fuzzy interaction with the author and the uncertainty of the author's assessment. They are both deprived of the past, it is given only by hints: "The old man spent all his life craving for collisions, / but did not shoot up to presidency" (Sosnora); "What do I know about his family? / Why, absolutely nothing" (Brodsky). Their uniqueness is emphasized: "In pajamas
made of paper prose" (Sosnora); "But he was not like all others" (Brodsky). This indication works only in the context of other indications. Both characters are from the surreal world: one loses his face, the other is dead. Both characters are nominally linked to the army: Sosnora's hero is called an admiral -"the admiral of the pariahs' world", and Brodsky's character-interlocutor-partner is shell shocked. Both characters are simultaneously contrasted and combined according to one characteristic: "All signs of alcoholism / were quoted on the face" (Sosnora); "At first we decided he was drunk. <.. .> But he did not drink. I know this for sure; / apparently, he had been crawling for a long time" (Brodsky). In spite of many particular differences, these seven dominant features allow admitting that Brodsky's character is clearly modeled after the character of Sosnora.
The number of the main heroines in the texts is also two; they are not so detailed, but very similar as well. The main theme of similarity is the close connection of both with the theater. The description of Sosnora's heroine, who found her face, consists of repeated references to the realities of the theater and cinema: she is called an extra "Having fussed so long / in a search, / eventually today / the extra FOUND HER FACE, / and it was time to master it"; "like the divine Brigitte"; she is called a member of the comedy, Juliet; her manipulations with the face is playing. Brodsky's main heroine serves in the theater and she is clearly not the leading lady: "I, / as you know, work in the theater". The primary role of Sosnora's extra is that she finds the face of the admiral. And the main function of Brodsky's utility actress is that she finds the dead man. They are both passive thieves of something belonging to others, as they get something extraordinary without any effort on their part.
The coordination between the admiral with the face of Saturn and the extra and the contused chess player and the actress on the sidelines also has an almost identical character. The couples both loved and did not love each other. Sosnora says about the love of his heroes: "Love was not from any ... <.> Everything was mixed up by somebody's mind. / Who is the husband? / Which is the wife? / She never saw / him, / and he did not want it! / Possibly they enacted / a farce?" The heroine of Brodsky says about her feelings: "No! I'm not talking about love!" Even these contexts indicate that in both cases there was no emotional tension between the characters; it was replaced by a semi-mystical, inexplicable relationship, the basis of which is there and there - beyond the narrative.
The color gamma of the two texts is the same. The green color of lights, emeralds and fireflies has been mentioned above. In general, this gamma is saturated with dull, seemingly faded colors. Here are some illustrative examples: "What poorness of colors!"; "Now the Seine has the color of flour"; "No faces, / no purpose / and no colors!" (Sosnora); "The world
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lived. But on the surface of things / both moving and still / there suddenly appeared something like a film, / or rather a dust, which made them / senselessly similar. / This way, you know, in hospitals they paint white / both ceilings, walls, and beds. / Well, now imagine my room, / covered with snow. Isn't it weird? / And at the same time, don't you think / that the furniture would only benefit from / such a metamorphosis? No? It's a pity" (Brodsky). The faded color scheme is associated with the theme of the south, where the sun burns colors, and with the uncertainty of what is happening, and with its monotonous monotony, the lack of event dynamics, the blurring of a single action. The faded color gamma is associated both with the theme of the south, where the sun burns colors, and with the uncertainty of what is happening, and with its monotonous uniformity, the lack of event-trigger dynamics, the blurring of a single action.
The absence of the main characters' names focuses attention on the action, which also turns out to be, if not identical, typologically unified. In both cases, it is a loss, which is not explained in the narrative. In "Extravaganza" the main character loses his face ("I LOST MY FACE"), in "Homage to Yalta" - his life. At the same time, the loss of face and the loss of life present themselves as contextual synonyms, nominations of an essentially single process substituting each other.
On the one hand, Sosnora makes his character lose his face, and Brodsky emphasizes the absence of his character's face: "but, you know, when the face is not visible", "But then I recognized him by the cloak", "he was reclining already in his former place, / his face covered with a newspaper". On the other hand, Sosnora's character was dying out: "he was dying out. / And that was not ordinary / he was immorally dying out", but Brodsky's character was already dead. Thus death in "Homage to Yalta" becomes synonymous with the loss of face in "Extravaganza" - and vice versa.
Such a number of detailed content parallels cannot be interpreted as a tribute to the literary tradition, as a desire to emphasize continuity, as an inspiration to develop an everlasting theme in a new way, as parody. This is Brodsky's detailed database for polemics: recognizability is intended to emphasize that he polemicizes not with anyone in general, but namely with Sosnora, openly and harshly.
Sosnora does not include any direct aesthetic declarations in the text. Brodsky, using the same event model, saturates the text with unequivocal formulations of his views on the coordination between the three categories: fact (the truth of the world), interpretation (the reflection of fact by man), art (the product of embodied comprehension). He gives them definitions, establishes the interaction between them from two points of view: from the standpoint of an average man (general ideas) and from the standpoint of himself - the creator.
From the point of view of an average man, everything is stereotypically simple: first arises a fact, then comes its comprehension, in the end appears its incarnation in art. It is this view (with certain reservations) that Sosnora accepts and preaches: "For example, an artist draws a chair. Does he copy it, paint everything as it is, God forbid anything to be missed? Certainly not. It would be another chair. That's all. Why do they have to be exactly the same? No, the artist looks, looks and finds in this chair something characteristic, distinguishing it from all the rest. Once - with a pencil, once more! Two or three strokes, absolutely exactly giving the very essence of this feature - that's all! A picture!" [Ovsyannikov, 2011a] - first a chair (fact), then the artist looks for something characteristic (reflection, comprehension), at last a picture (art). This is a traditional model.
From the point of view of Brodsky the creator, everything happens antithetically: first, art is born, then its comprehension, and only after all, as a consequence of the first and the second, a fact arises, that is, something appears in reality: "truth an element of Art, / which, in the last analysis, lies at / the heart of all events (though, to be sure, / a writer's art is not the Art of life, / it only forms a likeness)". It is important for Brodsky: "Herein lies an / example of how truth depends on art, / and not of art's dependence on the truth."
The comprehension component in both cases occupies the same medial position into which Brodsky places himself. He tells the reader, I'm engaged in interpreting, I'm in the middle on the threshold of art and life at the same time: "And life / we have been trained to treat as if it were / the object of our logical deductions. / And sometimes all it seems we have to do/ is interweave them - motives, attitudes, / environment, and problems - and events / will then take place."
Sosnora's artistic deformations are based on the fact that he goes from life to art, turning the first into the second: "It seems to me that in the beginning there's a fact, and I (the writer), by virtue of my own active intellect, fantasize around this fact. I recognize this peculiarity in my life as well [Goldstein, 1988]. Brodsky acts the opposite way - he goes from art to life, turning the first into the second [Schnittke, 2009].
In the context of this polemic, one can assume that the words of Brodsky's character "Of course, you are right . But this is . this is . / It's -an apologia for the absurd! An apotheosis of the meaninglessness! Delirium!" refer to Sosnora's poetry, which Brodsky overcomes in his work. Starting from Sosnora, he embodies his second model in a very interesting way: firstly appears the art (Sosnora's text), then comes its interpretation, and lastly arises the fact (his own text). Metaphorically at the level of intertextual links in a broad literary context, it turns out that Brodsky's murdered character plays chess with the character of Sosnora. Brodsky himself replaces Sosnora's
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narrative style with his own in this game. This is his artistic argument, supported by declarations.
For Sosnora and Brodsky these works are the fields of defending their views on poetry, art, creativity, life, the interaction of people and fantasy with the outside world. It is interesting that, judging from Sosnora's remarks of 1992, he remained on the position opposite to Brodsky, but allowed a minimal approximation to it: "My method is, in fact, not the one of a writer, but of a paintef'; "It is necessary to write only the action Ovsyannikov 2011a" [Ovsyannikov, 2011a].
Everyone has agreed to differ and thereby serves the variety of forms of the domestic literature.
It is important that the obvious contrast between Sosnora and Brodsky's views on the nature of the correlation between the truth of life and the truth of art is removed if we move to a different level of abstraction - an analysis of the nature of poetic creativity and its coordination with language. In this regard, Brodsky expressed a radical thought that balances the diametrically opposed positions: "There are, as we know, three modes of cognition: analytical, intuitive, and the mode that was known to the biblical prophets: revelation. What distinguishes poetry from other forms of literature is that it uses all three of them at once (gravitating primarily toward the second and the third). For all three of them are given in the language; and there are times when, by means of a single word, a single rhyme, the writer of a poem manages to find himself where no one has ever been before him, further, perhaps, than he himself would have wished to go. The one who writes a poem writes it above all because verse writing is an extraordinary accelerator of consciousness, of thinking, of comprehending the universe. Having experienced this acceleration once, one is no longer capable of abandoning the chance to repeat this experience; one falls into dependency on this process, the way others fall into dependency on drugs or alcohol. One who finds himself in this sort of dependency on language is, I suppose, what they call a poet" [Brodsky, 1987].
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Библиографический список / References
Ananko, 2012a - Переписка Виктора Сосноры с Лилей Брик. Публикация Ярославы Ананко // Звезда. 2012. № 2. C. 26-59. [Correspondence between Victor Sosnori and Lilya Brik. The publication of Yaroslava Ananko. Zvezda. 2012. № 2. Pp. 26-59.]
ji Ananko, 2012b - Переписка Виктора Сосноры с Лилей Брик. Публикация
^ Ярославы Ананко // Звезда. 2012. № 3. C. 60-96. [Correspondence between Victor Sosnori and Lilya Brik. The publication of Yaroslava Ananko]. Zvezda. 2012. № 3. 26 Pp. 60-99.
Ilyanen, 2006 - Ильянен А. Я, Бродский и Айги. Письмо учителю от Александра Ильянена // Критическая масса. 2006. № 3. С. 64-73. [Ilyanen A. I, Brodsky and Aigi. The letter to the teacher from Alexander Ilianen. Kriticheskaya massa. 2006. № 3. Pp. 64-73.]
Losev, 2006 - Лосев Л. Иосиф Бродский. Опыт литературной биографии. М., 2006. [Losev L. Iosif Brodskij. Opyt literaturnoj biografii [Joseph Brodsky: a Literary Life]. Moscow, 2006.]
Ovsyannikov, 2011a - Овсянников Вяч. Прогулки с Соснорой // Северная Аврора. 2011. № 13. [Ovsyannikov Vyach. Walking with Sosnora. Severnaya Avro-ra. 2011. № 13. ULR: http://reading-hall.ru/publication.php?id=3575]
Ovsyannikov, 2011b - Овсянников Вяч. Прогулки с Соснорой // Северная Аврора. 2011. № 15. [Ovsyannikov Vyach. Walking with Sosnora. Severnaya Avrora. 2011. № 15. ULR: http://www.avrora-lukin.ru/index.php?option=com_con-tent&view=article&id=45&Itemid=4]
Sosnora, 2006 - Соснора В. Я все время воюю. Виктор Соснора о языке, русских поэтах и снайперской стрельбе // Критическая масса. 2006. № 3. С. 58-64. [Sosnora V. I always fight. Victor Sosnora on language, Russian poets and sniper shooting. Kriticheskaya massa. 2006. № 3. Рр. 58-64.]
Shubinskij, 2006 - Шубинский В. От Обводного до Грибоедовского. Валерий Шубинский о ленинградских ЛИТО 1980-х. [Shubinskij V. From Obvodny to Gri-boyedovsky. Valery Shubinsky about the Leningrad LITOs of the 1980s. Kriticheska-ya massa. 2006. № 3. Рр. 73-76.]
Brodsky, 1987 - Brodsky J. Nobel Lecture December 8, 1987. ULR: http://www. nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1987/brodsky-lecture.html
Goldstein, 1988 - Goldstein D. An Interview with Viktor Sosnora. The New York Review of Books. Vol. 35. № 15. October 13.
Schnittke, 2009 - Schnittke E. Logic Questioned: The Communicative Act of Interrogation in a Distorted Poetic Space of Brodsky's "Homage to Yalta". Russian Journal of Communication. Vol. II. № 1/2 (Winter/Spring). Pp. 105-130.
Статья поступила в редакцию 1.08.2017 The article was received on 1.08.2017
Шунейко Александр Альфредович — доктор филологических наук; профессор кафедры лингвистики и межкультурной коммуникации, Комсомоль-ский-на-Амуре государственный университет
Shuneyko Alexander A. - Dr. Phil. Hab.; professor at the Department of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, Komsomolsk-on-Amur State University E-mail: [email protected]
Чибисова Ольга Владимировна - кандидат культурологии; доцент кафедры лингвистики и межкультурной коммуникации, Комсомольский-на-Амуре государственный университет ¡Ь
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Chibisova Olga V. - PhD in Culturology; associate professor at the Department of Linguistics and Intercultural Communication, Komsomolsk-on-Amur State University
E-mail: [email protected] 27
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