ART-ZINE REFLECT
REFLECT... КУАДУСЕШЩТ # 18 ::: ОГЛАВЛЕНИЕ
Sergey LЕVCHIN. Весь поэт на одном тире...
aвтор визуальной работы - R.Levchin
I would like to discuss two seemingly opposing trends in Tsvetaeva’s poetry. On the one hand, a frequent refusal to construct one metrical line at a time, inducing a clash between grammatical unit and metrical unit; on the other hand, a propensity toward recurrent lines (or refrains) that often function as a generative principle of an entire poem. Tsvetaeva’s poetry, therefore, seems to be caught in the interplay of speech that is unevenly dynamic (i.e. progressing in uneven periods) and speech that is too static even for poetry (i.e. refrain – mechanical repetition.) We will take up each moment separately.
1.1 Poetry of stream / the clash of grammatical and metrical units
Stream of consciousness or free association can have no recurrences, like an irrational number whose stream of digits in an endlessly refined value has no periods (e.g. π). The formal boundaries of poetry (i.e. meter and rhyme) are, therefore, always at odds with the stream of speech, because they are in fact nothing more than rules of recurrence, i.e. a priori allocation of periods. On this principle, seeing that her speech is often struggling against form, we will refer to Tsvetaeva’s poetry as a stream. Not that Tsvetaeva’s poems are devoid of free association, on the contrary, but we are now interested in their formal aspect, i.e. the clash of metrical units (poetic lines) with unregulated streams of speech.
This clash is an effect, achieved through sustained enjambment and occasional cut-off sentences. It seems to suggest that the poet’s speech is not projected forward in even periods, but is a stream, hastily broken up in accordance with self-imposed meter, that the rhyme gracing every chance cut is fortuitous. In this scenario, the poet is at all times struggling to extend his free-flowing speech, while at the same time trying to regulate it according to form. At times speech, at other times form, are on the verge of breaking down; the metrical line cuts off before a phrase can end, but the next line picks up the words falling off the edge – весь поэт на одном тире / Держится... Precisely this “тире” – the ability to connect, as though seamlessly, two adjacent lines – saves the poet from falling into nonsense or formlessness. Yet “тире” is a seam – and line break is a powerful marker – and one feels its strain quite plainly.
Later Brodsky will advance this technique even further, ending lines in mid-word, allowing stress to fall on unaccented syllables and enclitics (which Tsvetaeva allows to a great extent as well), stringing endless sentences across several stanzas, and even across formally marked sections of a poem (self-imposed breaks) – for maximum strain effect. At the same time, both Tsvetaeva and Brodsky drastically cut line length to increase the frequency of line breaks, thereby increasing the number of breaks per grammatical unit and the “speed” of the poem. Both poets often write in di- or trimeter, fitting complex sentences into very narrow form. The length of the sentence turns into a contest as the poem becomes a balancing act – how long can the poet sustain this balance between stream and period? Let us look at a few examples from Tsvetaeva:
Мне всё равно, каких среди
Лиц ощетиниваться пленным
Львом, из какой людской среды
Быть вытесненной – непременно –
В себя, в единоличье чувств.
(Тоска по родине! Давно...)
«Что я, снегирь,
Чтоб день деньской
Петь?
– «Не моги,
Пташка, а пой!
Назло врагу!»
(Разговор с гением)
and one example from Brodsky:
...Точка
загорается рядом
с колокольней собора.
Видимо, Веспер.
Проводив его взглядом,
полным пусть не укора,
но сомнения, вечер
допивает свой кофе,
красящий его скулы.
(Мерида)
This device is not limited to Tsvetaeva and her disciples. Incongruence of metrical and grammatical units is the crux of these famous lines from T.S. Eliot:
April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
(The Waste Land)
vs.
April is the cruellest month,
Breeding lilacs out of the dead land,
Mixing memory and desire,
Stirring dull roots with spring rain.
Here is Tsvetaeva, in a similar arrangement – save that her meter is tighter than Eliot’s and her rhymes are exact – where the grammatical unit seems almost to correspond to the metrical unit, but а shift somewhere along the way has hopelessly put the two movements out of sync:
... стена спины
За роялем. Еще – столом
Письменным, а еще – прибором
Бритвенным...
(Попытка комнаты)
Just as with Eliot, a shift of line break would straighten everything out:
...стена спины за роялем,
еще [за] столом письменным,
а еще [за] прибором бритвенным...
In the last two examples, Tsvetaeva and T.S. Eliot, it is worth noting that not only each grammatical unit approximately corresponds to a metrical unit, but that nearly all grammatical units are syntactically identical, i.e. just as the metrical line is a period, so each separate phrase tends to repeat the same construction. We will have occasion to return to this phenomenon in the second half of the essay.
Before moving on, let us have one more example of “stream vs. form” poetry from Brodsky, who does not seem to care for syntactic repetitions, seeking instead only the effect of overflow:
Вещь, помещенной будучи, как в Аш-
два-О, в пространство, презирая риск,
пространство жаждет вытеснить; но ваш
глаз на полу не замечает брызг
пространства.
[...]
Лишь воздух. В этом воздухе б вилась
пыль. Взгляд бы не задерживался на
пылинке, но, блуждая по стене,
он достигал бы вскорости окна...
(Посвящается стулу, II)
And here is a section of Tsvetaeva’s “Стол” – which cultivates the same effect, and which may well have been Brodsky’s inspiration – rewritten without line breaks to demonstrate the unevenness of Tsvetaeva grammatical units:
Спасибо за то, что – вслед срывался!
На всех путях меня настигал,
как шах – беглянку.
– Назад, за стул!
Спасибо за то, что блюл и гнул.
У невечных благ меня отбивал –
как маг – сомнамбулу.
1.2 Comparative analysis of the metrical unit
Although Tsvetaeva rarely breaks grammar rules, her speech, cut up by line breaks, often results in phrases that seem ungrammatical and even at times nonsensical. How does this happen? It seems we are tacitly expecting grammatical units to correspond to metrical units, i.e. we believe that a line break coincides with a natural break in speech – and there is good reason for it. A poetic line requires considerable planning to make words fit a given meter and produce a rhyme after a given period; this planning is assumed to take place on а line by line basis, i.e. we expect the poet – reasonably, I think – to project each line to the end, one at a time, often choosing the rhyme first, and then filling in the rest. Those who analyze a poet’s choice of rhyme must hold it as a premise that rhymes are planned. Tsvetaeva’s poetry appears almost entirely free of planned rhymes, though this may well be an illusion. We will presently show how this effect is achieved: let us compare Tsvetaeva’s compositions with (e.g.) Akhmatova’s, especially in her early writing:
Муза-сестра заглянула в лицо
[...]
И отняла золотое кольцо.
(Музе)
and again:
Улыбнется ль мне твое лицо?
[...]
Так красиво гладкое кольцо.
(Я сошла с ума...)
Как мне скрыть вас, стоны звонкие!
В сердце темный, душный хмель,
А лучи ложатся тонкие
На несмятую постель.
(Муж хлестал меня узорчатым...)
Слава тебе, безысходная боль!
Умер вчера сероглазый король.
Like most poets (even most good poets) Akhmatova employs a metrical safety-net: this involves forming one line at a time and projecting the rhyme into the couplet. The rhymes лицо/кольцо, боль/король, etc. seem pre-selected: this is largely a function of the conjunction of metrical and grammatical units, but one can even claim that the words themselves have some affinity.
Tsvetaeva seems to have a very different attitude towards formal composition. Speaking very broadly, for Akhmatova rhyme and meter are working with the speech, while for Tsvetaeva the two are opposed. Meter and rhyme appear accidental rather than deliberate in the latter’s poetry: instead of putting key words under final stress, Tsvetaeva allows stress to fall on unstressed syllables, enclitics and auxiliary words, breaking up natural accentuation; rhyme is “snatched” from speech rather than “arrived at.” In Akhmatova the line leads toward the rhyme – her rhymes may even be called cadences. These rhymes are not simply the ends of grammatical units, they are often corresponding parts of speech (боль/король, лицо/кольцо, хмель/постель, звонкие/тонкие), which creates a certain parallelism between the paired lines (parallelism and symmetry are both notions opposed to the idea of accident). Tsvetaeva’s rhymes often occur in mid-sentence, most often among different parts of speech, at times rhyming words that are not at all expected to serve as rhymes, as, e.g., the unemphatic “тот” and “то есть” in these examples:
Друг! не кори меня за тот
Взгляд, деловой и тусклый.
Так вглатываются в глоток...
(Так вслушиваются..., 2)
То, что вчера – по пояс,
Вдруг – до звезд.
(Преувеличенно, то есть:
Во весь рост.)
(Поэма конца)
Akhmatova “recognizes” the line break, first of all as existing and second of all as meaningful. As a result she tries to bring the most important (e.g. most symbolic) word of the line to the final stress; that is why we have called her rhymes cadences – the entire line leads toward the last word, as with “боль” and “король” – these two are obviously in some kind of correspondence. Tsvetaeva disregards the line break and tries to efface its significance, by bringing insignificant words to the final stress, satisfying the requirement, but as though reluctantly. Brodsky, of course, takes this reluctance even further, using non-words as rhymes, or cutting words in half at line break, so that the last stress fall on a meaningless syllable:
Сад густ, как тесно набранное «Ж»...
Вещь, помещенной будучи, как в Аш-...
For Akhmatova it is rare to end a metrical line without ending a grammatical unit, or at least some stbl collocation, to open up multiple syntactic possibilities for the next line. Tsvetaeva’s possibilities at the end of most lines are very narrow, and this is largely responsible for the illusion of imminent break down of speech or form. Akhmatova builds up her poems with even building blocks equal to the metrical line, ensuring that recombination, if needed, will prove easy, and that removal of one of the blocks will not disturb the general structure too much – line by line a sturdy poem is erected. Tsvetaeva builds stanzas that are just about ready to collapse, in fact they are in the process of collapsing and being caught. There are several instances where the poem ends before speech ends, so that the last words fall outside the structure:
Весь поэт на одном тире
Держится.
Над ничем двух тел
Потолок достоверно пел –
Всеми ангелами...
(Попытка комнаты)
Есмь я, и буду я, и добуду
Душу – как губы добудет уст
Упокоительница...
(Провода, 5)
Белокровье мозга, морга
Синь – с оскалом негра, горло
Кажущим...
Поскакал бы, Всадник Медный...
(Стихи к Пушкину, I)
The last lines actually occur in the middle of a poem: Кажущим... falls out of the stanza and is not picked up in the next.
I have argued that a metrical unit is expected to correspond to a grammatical unit because metered verse must be planned, “projected” to the rhyme. Besides this technical argument there is a simple one: the graphical break is expected to carry some meaning and is naturally assumed to be a speech unit break :
Кто же знает, спиной к стене?
Может быть, но ведь может не
Быть…
(Попытка комнаты)
In the last example “не” is emphatic, and it is almost fortuitous that the accent falls on it – but the strain of the enjambment is obvious because “не” and “быть” are unnaturally broken up; i.e. there is some natural division of grammatical units and an expectation that line breaks correspond to this division. When we read metered verse we take up a line at a time, relying on each line to end where sense dictates it. Therefore, even punctuation often fails to break the mode of perception imposed by the unity of a poetic line:
Царь отрекся. Не только с почты...
(не только с почты отрекся? )
Дует. Парусом ходит. Ватой...
(ватой ходит?)
One reads the second and third lines in following stanza as though they were unities, across sentence boundaries:
Не штукатур, не кровельщик –
Сон. На путях беспроволочных (Сон на путях беспроволочных.)
Страж. В пропастях под веками (Страж в пропастях под веками.)
Некий нашедший некую.
(Попытка комнаты)
It is clear that the line break is a powerful device. In the comparative analysis of Akhmatova’s composition vs. Tsvetaeva’s, I tried to show how the former makes use of the metrical unit, while the latter “disregards” it – this too is, of course, a way of using it. Akhmatova uses line breaks to give her speech a certain cadence and create parallelism between lines, while Tsvetaeva seeks to produce the effect of unplanned, free-flowing speech, accidental rhymes and imminent break-down of form. Tsvetaeva’s poetry, in this analysis, appears to be highly dynamic (because of its accidental appearance), and even reckless – poetry without a “safety net.”
Now, we can turn to another moment of this poetry – one that seems to be diametrically opposed to what we have spoken of here. This is the equally pervasive element of stasis, manifested through what may be called refrains or schemata. We have already come close to addressing this phenomena in the early examples, where we saw repeating syntactic structures, corresponding roughly to metrical lines, but shifted and out of phase with them:
... breeding / Lilacs ...
... mixing / Memory
... stirring / Dull roots ...
... стена спины / за роялем,
– столом / письменным,
– прибором / бритвенным...
2.1 Refrain as stasis
Poetry is a generative mechanism; meter a priori generates the form of each line, and a final accent of a line conditions the final accent of a corresponding line. In turn, lines tend to repeat each other not only in form, but even in content. We have already spoken of Akhmatova’s parallelism, which is not limited to parallel rhymes, but is a much wider phenomenon. Tsvetaeva’s “refrains” or schemata are obviously obeying the generative force of poetry. These are lines that recur, sometimes at regular intervals, always repeating the same construction, but replacing one or more of its members with some grammatical equivalent (i.e. rotation along the paradigmatic axis):
Коридоры: домов каналы
Коридоры: домов притоки
Коридоры: домов туннели
Коридоры: домов ущелья
(Попытка комнаты)
Пушкин – в роли монумента?
Пушкин – в роли Командора?
Пушкин – в роли лексикона?
Пушкин – в роли гувернёра?
Пушкин – в роли русопята?
Пушкин – в роли гробокопа, и т.д.
(Стихи к Пушкину, I)
The refrain is stasis in high degree, because its form is kept the same; it has a rigid structure with slots into which a set of syntactic equivalents may be inserted – this is why we have called it a schema. It is a pre-fabricated structure, entirely opposed to the stream of speech and spontaneity we have seen in the first section.
Moreover, refrains are generally periodic, which suggests a structural determination of a poem, also entirely opposed to the accidental nature of Tsvetaeva’s verse, as exemplified earlier. A typical feature of the refrain is that it coincides with the metrical line. As a prefabricated building block it naturally assumes the determined form of the poetic line. One is reminded of Homer, whose endlessly repeating epithets and formulaic constructions are often fashioned to equal a line or a hemistich; i.e. grammatical units that correspond to the metrical units, they are solid building blocks of a poem, independent of the rest of the structure, easy to manipulate within the poem.
Tsvetaeva’s refrain, however, is not simply a repeating line – it is a mechanism, capable of generating an indefinite number of lines of near-identical form. And it is this generative power of language that obviously attracts Tsvetaeva, so much so that for it she abandons her stream of speech:
Как живется вам с другою,
Как живется вам с простою / женщиною?
Как живется вам с любою
Как живется вам с подобием
Как живется вам с чужою
Как живется вам с товаром / рыночным
Как живется вам с трухой / гипсовой
Как живется вам с стотысячной
Как живется вам с земною / женщиною
(Попытка ревности)
2.2 Cliché and the generative powers of language
Tsvetaeva’s use of refrain or schema is closely associated with the idea of cliché. It seems a great deal may be said about Tsvetaeva’s use of cliché; we will limit ourselves to one observation only, i.e. the relation between schema and cliché. Both are extremely rigid structures, whose essence is recurrence in the same form. It is not uncommon, therefore, for Tsvetaeva to use as a refrain a cliché or a stbl phrase found in common speech. However, rotation of its members is not an operation that a cliché allows. Such rotations as Tsvetaeva performs with her refrains break the cliché and produce novel, idiosyncratic phrases, directly opposed to clichés in that they are not stbl, and their meaning is not conventionalized:
Как живется вам –
хлопочется
ежится
встается
Как живется вам
здоровится
можется
поется
The new constructions may be called cliché extensions. The phrase “Как живется…” is a common address; as a fixed collocation it does not allow its members to exist separately. Therefore, the individuation of “живется” and its replacement with other verbs of the same form (which is crucial to the generative element) results in unusual, unstbl phrases. Tsvetaeva’s mechanical generation of lines brings about the dismantling of cliché, i.e. its complete reversal: instead of stasis – the dynamism of breaking through the rigid structure: “Сквозит. Дует. Парусом ходит.” This device is not only found in Tsvetaeva; we have a superb example of cliché dismantling through rotation from Mandelshtam’s
...знакомый до слёз,
до прожилок,
до детских припухших желёз.
(Ленинград)
The dismantling of cliché is also occasionally found in Brodsky’s poetry, but there it does not assume the same form; Brodsky simply treats cliché as a loose phrase, and operates with its members as though they are free to enter into other phrases in their primary meaning, while retaining their interrelation:
На ветку садятся птицы, большие, чем пространство,
в них – ни пера, ни пуха, а только к черту, к черту.
(Кентавры, II)
When her refrains are not clichés, Tsvetaeva sometimes breaks up the coincidence of grammatical and metrical unit, creating the same effect as with the breaking up of a cliché. As we have argued before, line break imposes its unity on the text, compelling the reader to accept a metrical line also as a unit of meaning. Using this effect, Tsvetaeva makes “false substitutions” in the rotation that render the sentence cut by the line break meaningless. One is introduced to the form:
Потолок достоверно – был
Потолок достоверно плыл
Потолок достоверно пел
but the same form makes the next two lines difficult:
Потолок достоверно цел…
Потолок достоверно крен…
2.3 Splintering epithets and schematism
Tsvetaeva makes extensive use of the mechanistic powers of language besides the refrain as well. Recurring lines with rotating members are manifestations of a larger trend: Tsvetaeva continually tends towards repetitions and permutations, toward turning her language into a generative mechanism. Oftentimes a phrase, or even a word, will be picked up and mutated several times before it is released. Whenever possible, Tsvetaeva breaks up a phrase or a word into two or more:
Это уезжают-покидают,
Это остывают-отстают.
Это – остаются.
(Рельсы)
Нас рас-ставили, рас-садили...
Нас расклеили, распаяли...
Не рассорили – рассорили, / Расслоили...
Не расстроили – растеряли...
(Рас-стояние: версты, мили...)
Критик воя, нытик – вторя:
«Где же пушкинское (взрыд)
Чувство меры?» Чувство – моря
Позабыли – о гранит
Бьющегося?
(Стихи к Пушкину, I)
This last stanza exemplifies at once the sustained enjambment we have talked about in the first part and (first and third lines) the new tendency – toward repetition and alteration. A single epithet is often insufficient, but multiple epithets naturally turn into a repetition:
Та – риз моих, та – бус моих,
Та – глаз моих, та – слёз моих...
(Дом)
В наш-час – страну! в сей-час – страну!
В на-Марс – страну! в без-нас – страну!
(Стихи к сыну, 1)
Once more we see the emergence of schemata with slots to be filled by rotation. Moreover, the rotating members, besides being syntactically identical, have a certain sound affinity: риз, бус, глаз, слёз; наш-час, сей-час, на-Марс, без-нас. They are employed in creating splintering epithets, i.e. epithets reinforcing each other, having very similar meaning, and also similar in sound. There are, of course, endless examples of this double-duty splintering. It is, moreover, a universal phenomenon – double duty is perhaps the essence of poetry. In her use of splintering epithets Tsvetaeva comes closest, it seems, to the English pre-modernist Hopkins; I will give a few examples from the first stanzas of “The Wreck of the Deutschland”:
Springs the stress felt / Swings the stroke dealt
That guilt is hushed by, hearts are flushed by…
Warm-laid grave of a womb-life grey
And here is the whole of stanza 8, almost entirely dedicated to doubling of words and phrases in their meaning and sound:
…Is out with it! Oh,
We lash with the best or worst
Word last! How a lush-kept plush-capped sloe
Will, mouthed to flesh-burst,
Gush!—flush the man, the being with it, sour or sweet,
Brim, in a flash, full!—Hither then, last or first,
To hero of Calvary, Christ, ’s feet—
Never ask if meaning it, wanting it, warned of it—men go.
lash worst / word last (sound but not meaning)
lush-kept / plush-capped / flesh-burst
(we) lash/ (sloe) gush / flush / in a flash
the man / the being (meaning but not sound)
best or worst / last or first / (sour or sweet)
meaning it / wanting it / warned of it
We could also point to Hopkins’ defiant (of line breaks) stream of speech with sustained enjambment and – on the other hand – his strict though reluctant adherence to a complex meter (dol’nik) and a rigid rhyme scheme (ababcbca).
Now we can come to address an even broader phenomena that really seems to go against everything we have set out in the first section, i.e. a certain general schematism that pervades in Tsvetaeva’ poetry, quite opposed to the accidental stream we have looked at before. Incidentally, the dash – Tsvetaeva’s famous “тире” – is the greatest instrument of this schematism. The most common schema used by Tsvetaeva is the diametrical opposition, where the dash serves to indicate the polarization of notions, as in this passage from Theseus’ monologue in Tsvetaeva’s Федра.
Млат, не падай, и жнец, не жни!
Слава сына – позор жены.
Снег и дёготь, смола и соль.
Снег любимого – милой смоль.
Высотою его низка!
Вострым по сердцу! Воск? Доска!
Грудь – расколота пополам!
Честь любимого – милой срам.
Чистотою его черна... и т.д.
To schematize something is to get rid of all the accidental and inessential; this is where the dash comes in to fill in the resulting gap. It is to reduce the event to a kind of geometrical relation – hence the diametrical opposition. Speech is too elaborate and unstbl for a bare schema; instead of building complete sentences it is enough (or even desirable) to juxtapose two nouns or two events:
локоть – и лоб,
локоть – и мысль.
...вчера – по пояс,
Вдруг – до звёзд
A schema is a bare minimum that allows one to fill in the detail on one’s own (in this case the relationship between the nouns). Events reduced to a bare minimum become more and more universal – i.e. their form may be abstracted and reapplied elsewhere; this is why schemata possess great generative power. This is also why a schema is almost pure stasis. Even verbs lose their action (i.e. their dynamism) inside a schema:
Юность – любить,
Старость – погреться...
Of course, not all verbs are cast in the infinitive inside schemata. It is often the case that Tsvetaeva creates the effect of a schema almost exclusively with the power of the dash:
Краны – текут,
Стулья – грохочут...
(Тише хвала!...)
There is nothing particularly schematic about the two phrases: Краны текут, стулья грохочут. They are short but complete sentences – subject + predicate. The dash, however, destroys the sentence as a linear progression turning it into a geometric structure: Краны : текут :: стулья : грохочут. The twinning of sentences also helps create the effect of schematization, but unlike our previous examples, where a schema was used to generate splintering epithets of similar meaning and sound, here the goal is not proliferation but reduction – i.e. a schema is being imposed on several events allowing them to be understood through the same structure. In all, the nature of schema is dual: on the one hand, it is a generative mechanism, which can produce an indefinite number of individuals identical in form; on the other hand, it is an instrument of reduction, eliminating the accidental and the inessential.
We have now made what could be described as an introductory foray into the mechanics of Tsvetaeva’s poetry, where two major trends have been elicited by us: broadly, dynamism and stasis. In conclusion, we will not try to reconcile the two, particularly because they do not require reconciliation, but also because to reconcile them would be to close the matter. Yet I think that these two strands if pursued to their limit could unravel Tsvetaeva’s poetry to some profound understanding, so that the matter best be left open.
To sum up: on the one hand Tsvetaeva wishes to bring to poetry an element of spoken language. (We have not even addressed her cut-off sentences – symptoms of spoken discourse where it is not necessary to complete the sentence.) On the other hand, she is attracted by the mechanistic nature of language and tries to bring poetic language closer to a kind of mechanism through the use of schemata. The two moments so created – dynamism and stasis – seem to coexist within the same poem, at times interfering with one another, as we saw in the section on cliché, but at other times existing separately, each producing its peculiar effect, which renders Tsvetaeva’s poetry slightly enigmatic and its mode of being not immediately graspable.
следующая Kolter M. CAMPBELL. A WHIRLWIND OF SHAPE AND COLOR
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предыдущая Михаил БОГАТЫРЕВ. Симфонический Словарь Современности
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