In Koktebel, Mandelstam was writing his ‘Conversation About Dante’. It is called a conversation. But no one else is mentioned in the text. And I think that the real person to whom this conversation is addressed is Bely. For Mandelstam is writing about Dante’s Commedia: but really he is continuing the investigations of his former city of Petersburg – the constant probing of how to turn language into art. The Commedia, writes Mandelstam, is ‘a power flow, known now in its totality as a “composition”, now in its particularity as a “metaphor”, now in its indirectness as a “simile”…’ With this idea of a power flow, Mandelstam rejects all ideas of form and content: ‘form is squeezed out of the content-conception which, as it were, envelops the form.’ Instead, writing is pure performance: ‘Poetic material does not have a voice. It does not paint with bright colours, nor does it explain itself in words. It is devoid of form just as it is devoid of content for the simple reason that it exists only in performance.’ Or, in other words: ‘In talking about Dante it is more appropriate to bear in mind the creation of impulses than the creation of forms …’27
Constantly, Mandelstam laments the lack of vocabulary: ‘Again and again I find myself turning to the reader and begging him to “imagine” something; that is, I must invoke analogy, having in mind but a single goal: to fill in the deficiency of our system of definition.’28 And so, since ‘this poem’s form transcends our conceptions of literary invention and composition’, Mandelstam doesn’t offer theories, but improvised metaphors:
We must try to imagine, therefore, how bees might have worked at the creation of this thirteen-thousand-faceted form, bees endowed with the brilliant stereometric instinct, who attracted bees in greater and greater numbers as they were required. The work of these bees, constantly keeping their eye on the whole, is of varying difficulty at different stages of the process. Their cooperation expands and grows more complicated as they participate in the process of forming the combs, by means of which space virtually emerges out of itself.29
Yes, I think that Mandelstam is talking to Bely. Indirectly, he is offering a precise description, in fact, of Bely’s strange invention in Petersburg. For Mandelstam rejects the idea that Dante was an obscure mystic. Instead, he argues, Dante’s investigations into the meaning of what happens were part of his investigations into the art of composition: ‘the inner illumination of Dantean space derived from structural elements alone’.30 The illumination was an effect of art. Just as a third term, a sign, had emerged as the only true form of the real, in Bely’s investigations into words.
Tsvetayeva thought that Bely was a man in flight. And now – by chance – Mandelstam projects this flight into the structure of Dante’s composition, based on the principle of ‘convertibility or transmutability’:
… just imagine an airplane (ignoring the technical impossibility) which in full flight constructs and launches another machine. Furthermore, in the same way, this flying machine, while fully absorbed in its own flight, still manages to assemble and launch yet a third machine.31
The self-assembling flying machine: this fantastical metaphor seems to me to be the best description of what Bely invented in Petersburg: a process of metamorphosis and reversal, a multiple escape …
One must traverse the full width of a river crammed with Chinese junks moving simultaneously in various directions – this is how the meaning of poetic discourse is created. The meaning, its itinerary, cannot be reconstructed by interrogating the boatmen: they will not be able to tell how and why we were skipping from junk to junk.32
Adam Thirlwell, 2011
NOTES
1. Emma Gerstein, Moscow Memoirs, translated and edited by John Crowfoot (London: Harvill Press, 2004), p. 58.
2. Vladimir Nabokov, Nikolai Gogol (New York: New Directions, 1961), pp. 10–11.
3. Nikolai Gogol, ‘Nevsky Prospect’, in The Complete Tales of Nikolai Gogol, edited by Leonard J. Kent and translated by Constance Garnett, vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), p. 238.
4. Marina Tsvetayeva, ‘A Captive Spirit’, in A Captive Spirit: Selected Prose, edited and translated by J. Marin King (London: Virago, 1983), p. 100.
5. ibid., pp. 102 and 154.
6. ibid., pp. 151–2.
7. Viktor Shklovsky, Theory of Prose, translated by Benjamin Sher (Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 1990), p. 188.
8. Nikolai Berdyaev, Dream and Reality, translated by Katherine Lampert (London: Godfrey Bles, 1950), p. 196.
9. Quoted in Steven Cassedy, Flight from Eden: The Origins of Modern Literary Criticism and Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990), p. 48.
10. ibid., p. 53.
11. Stéphane Mallarmé, ‘Crise de vers’, in Igitur, Divagations, Un Coup de dés (Paris: Gallimard, 1976), p. 251, my translation.
12. Ivanov-Razumnik, Vershini (Summits) (Petrograd: Kolos, 1923), p. 110: quoted in Ada Steinberg, Word and Music in the Novels of Andrey Bely (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 93.
13. Andrei Bely, Masterstvo Gogolia (Gogol’s Craftsmanship) (Moscow: 1934), pp. 306–7.
14. Andrei Bely, ‘Vospominanija’ (‘Memoirs’), in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, nos. 27–8, p. 453.
15. Shklovsky, p. 187.
16. Boris Eikhenbaum, ‘The Theory of the Formal Method’, in Readings in Russian Poetics, edited and with a preface by Ladislav Matejka and Krystyna Pomorska (Champaign, IL: Dalkey Archive Press, 2002), p. 6.
17. ibid., pp. 6–7.
18. Quoted in Cassedy, p. 55.
19. Eikhenbaum, p. 9.
20. Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings, vol. 3, Poetry of Grammar and Grammar of Poetry, edited by Stephen Rudy (The Hague and Paris: Mouton, 1981), p. 750.
21. Eikhenbaum, p. 12.
22. ibid., pp. 18, 19 and 20.
23. Shklovsky, p. 171.
24. ibid., p. 176.
25. Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope Against Hope, translated by Max Hayward (London: Harvill Press, 1999), p. 155.
26. Osip Mandelstam, in The Collected Critical Prose and Letters, edited by Jane Gary Harris, translated by Jane Gary Harris and Constance Link (London: Harvill Press, 1991), p. 212.
27. ibid., pp. 402, 408 and 442.
28. ibid., pp. 439–40.
29. ibid., p. 409.
30. ibid., p. 411.
31. ibid., p. 414.
32. ibid., p. 398.
Prologue
Your excellencies, eminences, honours, citizens!
What is our Russian Empire?
Our Russian Empire is a geographical entity, which means: a part of a certain planet. And the Russian Empire comprises: in the first place – Great, Little, White and Red Rus; in the second – the realms of Georgia, Poland, Kazan and Astrakhan; in the third, it comprises … But – et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.1
Our Russian Empire consists of many towns and cities: capital, provincial, district, downgraded;2 and further – of the original capital city and of the mother of Russian cities.
The original capital city is Moscow; and the mother of Russian cities is Kiev.
Petersburg, or Saint Petersburg, or Piter (which is the same) authentically belongs to the Russian Empire. While Tsargrad,3 Konstantinograd (or, as is said, Constantinople), belongs by right of inheritance.4 And on it we shall not expatiate.
We shall expatiate more on Petersburg: there is Petersburg, or Saint Petersburg, or Piter5 (which is the same). On the basis of the same judgements the Nevsky Prospect is a Petersburg prospect.
The Nevsky Prospect possesses a striking quality: it consists of space for the circulation of the public; numbered houses delimit it; the numeration goes in the order of the houses – and one’s search for the required house is much facilitated. The Nevsky Prospect, like all prospects, is a public prospect; that is: a prospect for the circulation of the public (not of the air, for example); the houses that form its lateral limits are – hm … yes: for the public.6 In the evening the Nevsky Prospect is illuminated by electricity. While in the
daytime the Nevsky Prospect needs no illumination.
The Nevsky Prospect is rectilinear (speaking between ourselves) because it is a European prospect; and every European prospect is not simply a prospect, but (as I have already said) a European prospect, because … yes …
Because the Nevsky Prospect is a rectilinear prospect.
The Nevsky Prospect is a not unimportant prospect in this non-Russian – capital – city. Other Russian cities are a wooden pile of wretched little cottages.
And Petersburg is strikingly different from them all.
If, however, you continue to assert a most absurd myth – the existence of a Moscow population of one and a half million – then one must admit that the capital is Moscow, for only in capitals are there populations of one and half million: while in provincial towns there are no populations of one and a half million – have not been, and will not be. And in accordance with the absurd myth it will be seen that the capital is not Petersburg.
But if Petersburg is not the capital, then there is no Petersburg. It only seems to exist.7
Whatever the truth of the matter, Petersburg not only seems to us, but also does exist – on maps: as two little circles that sit one inside the other with a black point in the centre; and from this mathematical point, which has no dimension, it energetically declares that it exists: from there, from this point, there rushes in a torrent a swarm of the freshly printed book; impetuously from this invisible point rushes the government circular.
Chapter the First
in which the story is told of a certain worthy personage, his intellectual games and the ephemerality of existence
It was a dreadful time.
Of it fresh memory doth live.
Of it, my friends, for ye
I here begin my narrative –
Melancholy will my story be.1
A. Pushkin
Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov
Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov came of most respected stock: he had Adam as his ancestor. And this is not the main thing: incomparably more important here is the fact that one nobly-born ancestor was Shem, that is, the very progenitor of the Semitic, Hessitic and red-skinned peoples.2
Here let us pass to ancestors of a less distant era.
These ancestors (so it appears) lived in the Kirghiz – Kaisak Horde,3 from where in the reign of the Empress Anna Ioannovna4 the senator’s great-great-grandfather Mirza Ab-Lai,5 who received at his Christian baptism the name Andrei and the sobriquet Ukhov,6 valiantly entered the Russian service. Thus on this descendant from the depths of the Mongol race does the Heraldic Guide to the Russian Empire7 expatiate. For the sake of brevity, Ab-Lai-Ukhov was later turned into plain Ableukhov.
This great-great-grandfather, so it is said, was the originator of the stock.
A lackey in grey with gold braid was flicking the dust off the writing desk with a feather duster; through the open door peeped a cook’s cap.
‘Watch out, he’s up and about …’
‘He’s rubbing himself with eau-de-Cologne, he’ll be down for his coffee soon …’
‘This morning the postman said there was a little letter for the barin from Shpain: with a Shpanish stamp.’
‘I’ll tell you this: you’d do well to go sticking your nose into letters a bit less …’
‘So that must mean that Anna Petrovna …’
‘And that goes for “so that must mean”, too …’
‘Oh well, I was just … I was – oh, never mind …’
The cook’s head suddenly disappeared. Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov stalked into his study.
A pencil that was lying on the table struck Apollon Apollonovich’s attention. Apollon Apollonovich took a resolve: to impart to the pencil’s point a sharpness of form. Swiftly he approached the writing table and snatched up … a paperweight, which for a long time he twiddled in deep reflectiveness, before he realized that it was a paperweight he was holding, not a pencil.
The absent-mindedness proceeded from the fact that he was at this moment visited by a profound thought: and at once, at this inopportune time, it unfolded into a runaway sequence of thought (Apollon Apollonovich was in a hurry to get to the Institution). To the Diary, which was to appear in periodical publications in the year of his death, a page was added.
Apollon Apollonovich quickly noted down the sequence of thought that had unfolded: having noted down this sequence, he thought: ‘It’s time to go to work.’ And went into the dining-room to have his coffee.
As a preliminary he began to question the old valet with a kind of unpleasant insistency:
‘Is Nikolai Apollonovich up?’
‘On no account: his honour is not up yet, sir.’
Apollon Apollonovich gave the bridge of his nose a rub of displeasure:
‘Er … tell me, then: when does Nikolai Apollonovich, tell me, so to speak …’
‘Oh, his honour gets up rather latish, sir …’
‘What does that mean, rather latish?’
And at once, not waiting for an answer, stalked in to coffee, having glanced at the clock.
It was exactly half past nine.
At ten o’clock he, an old man, left for the Institution. Nikolai Apollonovich, a young man, rose from his bed – two hours later. Every morning the senator inquired about the hour of his awakening. And every morning he frowned.
Nikolai Apollonovich was the senator’s son.
In a Word, He Was the Head of an Institution
Apollon Apollonovich Ableukhov was notable for acts of valour; more than one were the stars that had fallen on his gold-embroidered chest: the star of Stanislav and Anna, and even: even the White Eagle.
The sash he wore was the blue sash.8
And recently from a small red lacquered box the beams of diamond insignia, or in other words, the decoration of the Order of Alexander Nevsky, had begun to shine on the abode of patriotic feelings.
What then was the social position of the person who had arisen here out of non-existence?
I think that the question is rather misplaced: Russia knew Ableukhov by the excellent expansiveness of the speeches he gave: these speeches did not explode, but flashing without thunder spurted a kind of poison on the opposing party, as a result of which the party’s proposal was rejected in the appropriate quarters.9 When Ableukhov was established in a senior post the Ninth Department10 became inactive. With this department Apollon Apollonovich waged a constant battle both in documents and, where necessary, speeches, in support of the importation of American sheafing machines into Russia (the Ninth Department was against their importation). The senator’s speeches flew around all the districts and provinces, some of which are not, in a spatial respect, the inferior of Germany.
Apollon Apollonovich was the head of an Institution: oh, that one … what is it called, again?
In a word, was the head of an Institution which is, of course, familiar to you.
If one were to compare the cachectic, utterly unprepossessing little figure of my respected man of state with the immeasurable vastness of the mechanisms he controlled, one might, perhaps, for a long time give oneself up to naïve astonishment; but after all, decidedly everyone was astonished at the explosion of intellectual energy shed by this cranium in defiance of all Russia, in defiance of the majority of departments, with the exception of one: but the head of that department11 had, for what would now soon be two years, fallen silent at the will of the Fates beneath a gravestone.
My senator12 had just passed his sixty-eighth birthday; and his face, a pale one, recalled both a grey paperweight (in solemn moments) and a piece of papier mâché (in hours of leisure); the senator’s stony eyes, each surrounded by a black-green concavity, seemed in moments of tiredness both more blue and more enormous.
For our own part, let us also say: Apollon Apollonovich was not in the slightest agitated upon surveying his completely green ears, enlarged to massive dimensions, against the blood-red background of a burning Russia. Thus had he recently been
depicted: on the front page of a humorous little street journal,13 one of those little Yid journals, the blood-red covers of which multiplied in those days with shocking speed on the prospects that seethed with humanity …
North-East
In the oak dining-room the wheezing of a clock was heard; bobbing and hissing, a small grey cuckoo was cuckooing; at the signal from the time-honoured cuckoo Apollon Apollonovich sat down in front of a porcelain cup and broke off warm crusts of white bread. And over his coffee Apollon Apollonovich would remember his former years; and over his coffee – even, even – he would joke:
‘Who is more respected than anyone else, Semyonych?’
‘I suppose, Apollon Apollonovich, that a real privy councillor14 is more respected than anyone else.’
Apollon Apollonovich smiled with his lips alone:
‘Well, you suppose wrongly: a chimney sweep is more respected than anyone else …’
The valet already knew the answer to the riddle: but of this, out of respect, he said – not a word.
‘But why, barin, may I be so bold as to ask, such honour to a chimney sweep?’
‘In the presence of a real privy councillor, Semyonych, people stand aside …’
‘I suppose that is so, your excellency …’
‘A chimney sweep … Before him even a real privy councillor will stand aside, because: a chimney sweep makes people dirty.’
‘Precisely so, sir,’ the valet interjected deferentially …
‘Yes indeed: only there is a post that is even more respected …’
And at once added:
‘That of lavatory attendant …’
‘Pff! …’
‘The chimney sweep himself will stand aside before him, and not only the real privy councillor …’
And – a mouthful of coffee. But let us observe: Apollon Apollonovich was after all himself a real privy councillor.
‘Oh, Apollon Apollonovich, sir, there was another thing: Anna Petrovna was telling me …’