Россия и Запад

Both Akhmatova and Pasternak as mature poets would agree with a view of lyrical art as the creation of the «miraculous»: the inspired transfiguration of the ordinary things of this world through a singular voice and poetic persona that allow the reader or listener to perceive in a fresh way. The goal of poetry for both of them is to transform the quotidian and to see and let others see the miracles of the everyday. Although from her earliest poetry on Akhmatova’s poetic idiom was imbued with references to Orthodox life, Pasternak would begin to immerse himself in the Christian tradition only at the end of the 1920s. Then, I will argue, he would actively compete with Akhmatova for the status of the moral voice of his epoch, building his authority in part on an appropriation of crucial Christian themes absorbed both from from Akhmatova, as well as other poets of the Russian renaissance.

The use of biblical themes and archetypes by both poets would eventually contribute to the state’s relegating both poets to the status of «inner exile», surviving through literary translation, though still writing poetry «for the drawer» (not for publication), and at great risk to their lives[339]. Despite political repression, both would employ forbidden biblical archetypes to infuse their own poetic voices with subtle but powerful authority in an effort to withstand tyranny and to create literary monuments that would outlast the tyrants themselves. Akhmatova developed this strategy quite a bit earlier than Pasternak. And Pasternak adopted it, partly in response to Akhmatova

The typical interpretive argument about Pasternak’s engagement with the Orthodox heritage and Scripture stresses the strong influence of another of the four great poets of this generation, Marina Tsvetaeva Though after 1921 Tsvetaeva lived in exile in Europe, Pasternak carried on what can euphemistically be called a creatively passionate relationship with her in letters and poems throughout the mid — 1920s. Tsvetaeva’s cycle of three very sensuous poems devoted to Mary Magdalene, written in 1923, show a Christ resurrected through Magdalene’s love. These poems made a deep and well-demonstrated impression upon Pasternak[340].

The goal of this essay is to show that the much longer-lived but more subtle creative rivalry between Pasternak and Akhmatova was vitally important for the development of Pasternak’s art, as well sustaining the legacy of the Russian religious renaissance during Stalin’s terror. Akhmatova’s and Pasternak’s poetic conversation converges in two of the poets’ greatest works, both written in deepest secret, Akhmatova’s cycle, «Requiem», composed in the late 1930s, and Pasternak’s Nobel-prize-winning novel, «Doctor Zhivago», written in the late 1940s and early 1950s, another period of gathering persecution. This story proceeds in three episodes: 1) Akhmatova’s bold poetic «opening the Bible» in the years of a young and virulently anti-religious Soviet society and Pasternak’s overt dismissal of this gesture; 2) Akhmatova’s fearless witness to Stalin’s terror, which Pasternak seemingly ignores; and finally 3) Akhmatova’s late-life quarrel with one of Pasternak’s most famous religious poems[341].

Akhmatova reached full poetic maturity in the awful years of the Russian Civil War, especially at the end, when her estranged husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilev, was shot August 1921 as a White counterrevolutionary. In one of her greatest books, «Anno Domini МСМXXI» (first published 1922), Akhmatova adopts the role of the poetic chronicler of her age. The title of this fifth volume of poetry bears a Latin calendar date with numbers written in Roman numerals, linked deliberately to the birth of Christ and acknowledging the dominant nomenclature of the West-em calendar and Western history. One of its finest poems, «Lamentation [Prichitanie]», paraphrases lines from Psalm 29:2, «Bow down to the Lord / In His Holy Court». Here Akhmatova bids farewell to the objects of Russian religious culture, the icons and bells, as well as its figures, the holy fool, the bishops, and Russian saints. The only figure remaining will be the crucial Orthodox Christian archetype of the Mother of God:

Спит юродивый на паперти.На него глядит звезда.

И, крылом задетый ангельским,Колокол заговорилНе набатным, грозным голосом,

А прощаясь навсегда.

In contrast to Mayakovsky’s irreverent, aggressive Christ, Akhmatova describes the Russian saints emerging from their icon covers and returning to their village homes: