Россия и Запад

The present discussion treats Akhmatova and Pasternak in tandem because, as I will argue, it was their poetic rivalry that helped to keep religious themes and, to a degree, the Orthodox high culture of the Russian Renaissance alive in the deadly 1920s and 1930s, when Orthodox institutions and believers were severely persecuted. Moreover, this rivalry worked creatively toward more than each rival’s diminishing of the other. Poets make their distinctive voices heard, and they develop their own signature style through creative and sometimes rivalrous dialogue with contemporary poets. This dialogue — hidden in the depths of their poems and invisible to most readers — might directly address the poetic rival or it might just mention obliquely a specific image strongly identified with that poet. The conversation between Akhmatova and Pasternak has been relatively little studied in the literary commentary, in contrast to more obvious, years-long creative dialogues between, for example, the two great Moscow poets, Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva, on one hand, or the two great Petersburg poets, Akhmatova and Osip Mandelshtam, on the other.

What is the gist of this poetic conversation between Akhmatova and Pasternak? Although Pasternak is supposed to have proposed to Akhmatova — even a number of times — their relationship was relatively distant[333]. Each a principal figure in one of Russia’s two capital cities, Akhmatova and Pasternak became trusted allies who helped to protect one another. They were co-survivors of a hellish time. Respected and admired poetic colleagues, neither was a genuine poetic soulmate of the other. At the end of their lives they became quite fierce competitors vying for poetic laurels and poetic legacy. What is important about this relationship in the context of the Cunningham Lecture is that it had everything to do with the survival of Orthodox high culture under the Stalin regime.

A brief review of the two poets’ biographies shows several parallels in the quite different trajectories of their careers. They were bоки within months of each other, Akhmatova — in June, 1889 and Pasternak in February, 1890. Both were allegedly Orthodox Christians. Akhmatova was baptized in the Orthodox Church and, even after the revolution, was broadly acknowledged to be «the last and only poet of Orthodoxy»[334]

. Even in the 1920s, when it was risky to do so, Akhmatova occasionally went to church. And when Stalin died in early March of 1953, Akhmatova made a personal pilgrimage in spring 1953 to Russia’s holiest shrine at Sergiev Posad[335].

Pasternak’s situation was more complicated. He was born into the family of one of Russia’s leading pre-revolutionary painters, Leonid Pasternak, and one of its most talented young pianists, Rosalia Kaufmann. Jewish, from the Pale of Settlement, they resisted the normal path of forced conversion to Orthodox Christianity as a condition for living in the capital cities[336]. They kept their distance from all religion. Nevertheless, Pasternak claimed in a letter from 1959 that he was baptized early on by his nurse, though recent biographies on Pasternak have found no evidence to corroborate that claim[337]

. Though familiar with Scripture and the Orthodox liturgy, Pasternak certainly developed a strong interest in Christianity only later.

Although the poets occasionally converge in a style marked by a tendency to write in fresh, conversational language about everyday subjects, their poetic projects diverge in many points. The young Akhmatova came from the classical Russian and European traditions. Pasternak, in contrast, was to start his career in close proximity to the poets of the avantgarde, who threw the classics «from the ship of modernity»[338]. He was particularly taken with Maiakovsky, though avoided the «in-your-face» irreverence of a Maiakovsky.

Early on, Akhmatova’s themes were private life and love relationships. She was the first Russian woman to develop the large following of a poetic celebrity and to make a distinctive woman’s voice really audible a wide audience. No longer merely the male poet’s muse, now the beloved knows her own mind, speaks for herself, and responds with wit and passion to the male other. Pasternak focuses less directly on human relationships than on embracing and transfiguring the objects of everyday life. Ecstasy at the ordinary things of life illuminates Pasternak’s verse. Weather, rain, sun, window frames, or a train schedule — each of these things can become an active, energetic being, enlivening both natural and built environments.