And if by chance love should come calling
On our retreat, friendship’s abode,
Alas! your friend, the same as ever,
Will pay his homage to the god.
As a guest, overcome by feasting,
Gets up and quits the sumptuous board,
So I, lost in a lover’s rapture,
Uncaringly will quit the world!
(Essays, 274)
All the poems and letters sent to Gnedich failed to persuade him to come and stay in Khantonovo. At his friend’s request, however, Batyushkov wrote some verses to a “goddess of beauty,” the great tragic actress and singer Ekaterina Semyonova (who provides yet another link with War and Peace, since she sings in the opera attended by Natasha and so memorably described by Tolstoy). At the same time, soon after his return to Khantonovo, he was beginning to write in a more acid vein on the cultural life of St. Petersburg and Moscow, about which he was well informed, even though living at a distance. In August, he sent Gnedich some newly composed epigrams, including this “Madrigal for a New Sappho:”
You are Sappho, I Phaon, I agree:
But it’s a great sorrow to me
That you don’t know the way to the sea.
(Essays, 306)
Referring to Sappho’s legendary death by drowning, this is directed, no doubt unfairly, against the poet Anna Bunina, possibly referring to her love for the poet Ivan Dmitriev. Batyushkov admired Dmitriev and was later on good terms with Bunina; the main reason for his malice at this time was no doubt her alliance with the traditionalist camp of writers led by Admiral Shishkov. The Shishkovists were the main targets in the long satirical poem, “Vision on the Banks of Lethe” (1809), which was to make Batyushkov a fashionable figure in the metropolitan literary world.
Russian literature at this time was broadly split into two camps. The most prominent figure was Nikolay Karamzin (born 1766), now best known as the author of the great History of the Russian State, but in the years around 1800 seen principally as a reformer of the Russian literary language and the leader of the sentimentalist movement, which found expression in his periodical, the Moscow Journal (Moskovsky zhurnal). He and his numerous disciples (many of them based in Moscow) aimed to reform the language of Russian literature, reducing the number of Slavonicisms (expressions based on the archaic language of the Russian church), inventing new terms often based on French models, so as to create an easy, elegant, modern style, suitable for use in light society verse. This tendency was opposed by the conservative camp whom we now call the Archaists, grouped around the poet, statesman, and admiral Aleksandr Shishkov. In a Discourse on the Old and New Style published in 1803, Shishkov had criticized the modernizing cosmopolitanism of the Karamzinians. A believer in the classical poetics of eighteenth-century Russia, he championed Church Slavonic as the root of Russian, but also advocated the traditional language of the peasants as an additional source for literary Russian. In the “Vision on the Banks of Lethe,” Batyushkov coins the new word “Slavenophile” to describe Shishkov; the conflict between these two camps can be seen as a literary prefiguration of the Slavophile/Westernizer debates that were to be so important in nineteenth-century Russian culture.
Although he was later prominent as a critic of the Archaists, Batyushkov is not the champion of any one cause in the “Vision,” but shoots his arrows in all directions in a long satire that owes a good deal to French models. He avoids mentioning Karamzin, but the Moscow Karamzinians get their share of mockery. The basic notion of the satire is a dream in which all the currently active poets are struck dead by Apollo and have to come before a jury of the great dead poets; they throw their works into the waters of Lethe, the river of oblivion—those that sink will be forgotten. Here come the Karamzinians, sporting a variety of sentimental affectations, most of them easily identified by knowledgeable contemporary readers (the toupee-wearing “prince of fibbers” is the Karamzinian poet Shalikov):
But here appeared some other shadows;
They hailed from Moscow’s white-walled town
And sported wonderful apparel:
Their robes were copiously sewn
With leaves from head to foot; one gloried
In childish verse and childish prose,
One in a mausoleum, a churchyard,
One in the diary of his soul;
Some sang Melania, Ziulmisa,
The Moon or Vesper or a dove,
Glafira, Chloe, Militrisa,
Or rams, or cats and toms in love.
All these in melancholy verse
In every key, for charming ears
(O age of iron!). But the ladies
Had never once in sleep or waking
Noticed these miserable bards.
In all the pallid, doleful crowds,
One sporting a well-combed toupee,
A prince of fibbers, licensed poet,
Presents his new work to the court.
“And who are you?” “Alas, a shepherd,
A sigher, never taken short;
Here is my crook, my wreath of flowers,
Here my taffeta bouquet,
And here the list of stubborn beauties
For whom I lived and breathed all day,
And whom I wearied with my charms.
Here is my Aglaya, my sheep”—
He spoke and, yawning wearily,
Fell into Lethe half-asleep.
(Essays, 358–59)
The next victim is rather different. It is the poet Sergey Glinka, who was later to become a good friend of Batyushkov, in spite of the lines about him in the “Vision.” In his journal Russian Herald (Russky vestnik), he was a champion of all things Russian, which exasperated the more cosmopolitan, though patriotic, Batyushkov:
“Ouf, I’m so tired! A chair, your honor—
I’m very famous, let me sit;
I am immortal when I’m funny.”
“Your name?” “A Russian and a poet.
I chase after celebrity,
Foreign good sense is my enemy.
To Russians my twisted words are straight.
And by my pilgrim’s scrip I swear it.”
“But who are you?” “The Russian Rousseau,
The Russian Young, Locke and Racine.
I have composed three Russian dramas
For Russians: I have no more strength
To write more tearful plays for Russians.
My labors have been all in vain.
These foreign notions are to blame.”
With that, he vanished in the stream.
(Essays, 359)
Eventually it is the turn of Shishkov and his team, the devotees of noble Russian antiquity:
And then, on Hades’ sullen shore,
Appeared a great and wondrous spirit.
In a stupendous coach of yore
He quietly approached the river;
Instead of nags between the shafts
People were harnessed fore and aft,
And with a will they heaved and pulled him,
And in his wake like autumn drones
Thronging the air in light-winged squadrons
Shades of all kinds came floating on
To left and right. At the sound “Whoa!”
The pale shade shook his weary brow
And came out coughing from the carriage.
“And who might you be?” Minos queried,
“And who are these?” to which the shade
Answered: “From Neva’s banks we hail—
All Russian bards.” “But what misfortune
Has changed these people into horses?”
“This is my youthful regiment
Of poets fired by love of plaudits;
They sang Pozharsky and they lauded
The venerable Hermogen.
Their thoughts are aimed at heaven, their words
Are taken from the Holy Scripture,
Their lines may be a little rough,
But genuine Var
yago-Russian.”
“And you yourself?” “I too am one
Whom old Kurganov4 taught to write;
I did not deal in trifles, but
In patience, sweat and noble toil,
For I am a Slavenophile.”
(Essays, 360–61)
But though a comic figure, Shishkov is in a different league from his followers, and he and his works will escape drowning: “for his firm mind and his deeds he tasted the reward of immortality.”
The strongest approbation, however, is given to the eccentric figure of the “Russian La Fontaine,” the fable writer Ivan Krylov, a writer set apart from both camps, and always the object of Batyushkov’s affectionate mockery and real admiration:
A shade now came to Minos’ throne,
Unkempt and in the strangest costume,
Wrapped in a tattered dressing gown,
All fluffy, with a shaggy forehead,
Carrying a napkin and a book,
Saying: “Death deliberately took
Me unawares one day at table,
But I am ready, when you like,
To start again with you and sample
Hell’s offering of pies and wine:
Now is the time, good friends, to dine.
You know me, Krylov is my name!”
“Krylov! Krylov!” they all exclaim,
That band of shades, echoed above
By all the vaults of Hell: “Krylov!”
“Come and sit down, good friend, and tell us,
How are you feeling?” “Could be worse.”
“And what have you been doing?” “Just trifles—
Keeping my head down, letting time pass,
And mostly sleeping, drinking, eating—
Here you are, Minos, here are my works;
I didn’t bring a lot of writing:
Some comedies and some light verse,
And fables—throw them in the water!”
Lo! they all floated up, and soon
Krylov, life’s miseries forgotten,
Went straight to heaven to dine at noon.
More sights met my imagination,
But have you really got the patience
To hear my visions to the end?
It is unwise to gossip, friends—
Someone I know might be offended:
So—the least said, the soonest mended.
(Essays, 362–63)
And so the “Vision” ends. It did indeed give offense, particularly to the Shishkovists, and Batyushkov refused to let it be published. Before long he was reconciled to some of his victims. He had intended it for a small circle of friends and was rather alarmed when in St. Petersburg Gnedich read it and named its author to the very sociable Olenin, but by then it was too late. The poem was not published until 1841, but in 1810 it circulated in numerous handwritten copies and brought its author an instant reputation. The light rhyming verse (very different from his more ponderous youthful imitations of Boileau), the impudence, the fantasy and the wit of the satire quickly became canonical, and were imitated by many younger poets. One of its first admirers was a new friend, the young poet Vyazemsky, whose praise was so fulsome that Batyushkov, even though he was pleased with his poem, replied with another of his airy epistles:
Flatterer of my lazy muse,
You have created new-forged fetters
For me to carry now that you
Have transformed my sleepy Lethe
Into Jordan’s noble stream
And in laughter swung a censer
Spreading such a heady incense
That in an enraptured dream
I, forgetting poetry,
Nodded off and saw a vision:
Laughing friend, I dreamt that bright
Phoebus had me in his sights,
Dragged me to the dismal river
With my poems every one,
And drowned them in oblivion.
(CP, 245–46)
This ends on a self-deprecating joke, but the notion of drowning in the river of oblivion—perhaps an allusion to Derzhavin’s great fragment on the all-consuming river of time5—had serious overtones for someone as concerned with literary fame as Batyushkov. It was to reappear in some of the last poems he wrote.
Some time in 1810 Batyushkov wrote an essay (unpublished until 1986) about the advantages of solitude and society for the poet. He concedes that polite society teaches the manners and bon ton that a writer needs in an enlightened age, and that Virgil and Ovid lived in the palaces of Augustus, but he himself takes a more Rousseauist view of the bad effects of city life on the poet:
Experience of the world, knowledge of etiquette and of manners, society manners, which are as different from the manners of bardic times as the heroes of Homer are from Prussian generals; in a word, all this worldly wisdom dries up the heart and soul, and it is they that are the true and inexhaustible sources of poetry.
(SP, 38)
The society of fellow poets is essential of course, but ideally this should be combined with country solitude. Poetry thrives in a peaceful retreat.
In practice, Batyushkov was fully aware of the advantages and drawbacks of both the busy city and the quiet country. The city might be endlessly distracting, but rural solitude—in his case usually Khantonovo—could be desperately tedious. Though he was glad to escape the capitals, his attachment to the Lares and Penates of his estate was largely forced upon him by lack of funds. His tendency to dissatisfaction and skuka seems to have been rooted deep inside him; although partly hidden by his Epicurean posture, it comes to the surface again and again in his letters to Gnedich and other friends. Between 1807 and 1821, he was constantly on the move.
At the end of 1809, perhaps buoyed up by the success of the “Vision,” he went to live for the first time in Moscow, as a welcome guest of Ekaterina Fyodorovna, the widow of Mikhail Muravyov (who had died in 1807). The city was very different from St. Petersburg; a letter written to Gnedich a few weeks after his arrival shows Batyushkov still reeling under the mass of new impressions. He finds Moscow hard going at first:
I am very solitary here. I don’t play cards. I see just walls and people. Moscow is an ocean for me: not a single house except for my own, not a single corner where I can unburden myself with a friend. My only consolation is Petin: he’s a really good fellow. I sit by the fire and chat with him, and time passes somehow.
(SP, 295)
In spite of such characteristically melancholy notes, Batyushkov did get out and about and saw a lot of the city and its inhabitants. Rather than describing it in letters, he accumulated notes that together make up “Strolls Through Moscow,” a fascinating prose text that remained unpublished in his lifetime. It is a precious glimpse of the city before the great fire of 1812, written in a free, casual way (on the model of letters to friends). The author is a disengaged spectator on the Addisonian model, but equally a predecessor of the Baudelairean flâneur in the city. This is the persona he describes in a letter to Gnedich of November 1811: “an idler, a joker, an oddball, a carefree child, a scribbler of verse” (SP, 322). Similarly, at the beginning of “Strolls Through Moscow,” he writes:
My second reason [for not writing to his friend] is idleness, a very powerful reason! So in passing, going from house to house, from promenade to promenade, from supper to supper, I shall write a few notes on the city and the life of its inhabitants, disordered and disconnected notes, but you will read them with pleasure as they will remind you of your good friend.
(Essays, 379)
His attitude toward Moscow society is satirical, sometimes affectionate, sometimes less so. His sharply drawn pictures prefigure the realistic but heightened descriptions of a Gogol or a Leskov. Above all, he stresses the enormous contrasts in a city where luxury and misery live shockingly side by side:
A strange juxtaposition of ancient and extremely modern building, of poverty and wealth, of European and Asiatic manners. A marvelous, incomprehensible fusion of fussiness, vanity and genuin
e glory and grandeur, of ignorance and enlightenment, politeness and barbarism.
(Essays, 380)
And within this strange, labyrinthine world, he picks out particular scenes and characters. Here is Tverskoy Boulevard, at the time a place where society folk went to see and be seen:
What strange outfits, what faces! Here is an officer from Moldavia, the grandson of an ancient court beauty and the heir of a gouty old gentleman, both of whom can’t take their eyes off his brightly colored uniform and his childish pranks; here is a provincial dandy who has come to pick up the latest fashions and is feasting his eyes on a lucky individual who has just arrived posthaste from the banks of the Seine in blue breeches and a large and shapeless frock coat. Here a beauty is being followed by a crowd of worshippers, there an old general’s wife is chattting to a neighbor, and alongside them a weighty, pensive tax-farmer, who firmly believes that god created half the human race to be distillers and the other half to be drunks, struts slowly along with his beautiful wife and his little spaniel. A university professor in a gown that would be a credit to the late Crates,1 makes his way home or to his dusty lecture room. A merry fellow sings vaudeville songs and sets his poodle on the passersby, while an inveterate poet recites an epigram and waits for applause or an invitation to dinner. Such is the pleasure-ground I have been visiting every day, almost always with some new pleasure. The complete freedom to walk up and down with whoever you meet, the great concourse of familiar and unfamiliar people, all this has always had a special appeal for idlers, people with nothing to do, and people who like observing faces. I belong to the first and last of these categories.
(Essays, 385)
Batyushkov enjoyed being a spectator in the great theatre of the world, then, but what really mattered to him was the society of writers and poets, and he was very soon in the thick of it. As early as January 1810, he wrote to his sister: “I have made the acquaintance of all the local Parnassus except Karamzin, who is dreadfully ill. I’ve never seen such a collection of faces” (WP, 94). In fact, he met Karamzin by chance in the street not long after this, and found a good friend in him. As for the “collection of faces,” some of these were the poets he had mocked in the “Vision on the Banks of Lethe”—and with most of these he was soon on good terms. But there were two poets in Moscow who became his close friends: Prince Pyotr Vyazemsky and Vasily Zhukovsky.
Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry Page 6