Swallowing his grief in a deep wordlessness,
Homer took flight from all the cares of court.
And now a wretched Samian orphan boy
Leads the blind bard from land to land, a son
To him, but in Hellas they seek in vain—
Talent and poverty never find a home.
(Essays, 248–49)
We may remember that the life’s work of Batyushkov’s closest friend and editor was the translation of Homer’s Iliad.
The second of these substantial poems, written in the winter of 1816–17, was “The Crossing of the Rhine,” discussed in chapter 4. Here Batyushkov, far from the peaceful pleasures of his Epicurean verse, paints a battle scene with all the colorful expansiveness of a Homer. Immediately after this, almost at the end of the “Miscellany” section, and thus offering a grandiose conclusion to the Essays, is another long poem, the historical elegy “Tasso Dying.” In letters to Gnedich and Zhukovsky, Batyushkov anxiously asks their opinion of this poem: “Did you like my ‘Tasso’? I hope you did. I wrote it in the heat of the moment, with my mind full of all I had read about this great man” (SP, 407).
He had previously translated Torquato Tasso, had addressed a poem to him that prefigures this elegy, and was seen by friends as the Russian Tasso. Whether or not he had intimations of his own forthcoming collapse, he could identify with the Italian Renaissance poet who led a nomadic, tumultuous life, spending seven years in confinement with mental illness. At points Batyushkov’s poem echoes the Romantic legend that Tasso’s confinement was due to the jealousy and cruelty of the Duke of Ferrara. He writes in a long note that his “magnanimous protector shut him up in the hospital of Santa Anna—i.e. the madhouse—without trial or fault,” and goes on to mention Montaigne’s famous visit to the mad poet—“strange meeting in such a place of the foremost sage of modern times and the greatest poet!” There is no mistaking his personal involvement as he continues:
To complete his misfortune, Tasso was not completely mad, and in moments of lucidity he felt all the bitterness of his confinement. Imagination, the principal source of his talent and his woes, never deserted him. Even in confinement he wrote unceasingly. At last, on the urgent request of all of Italy, and almost all of enlightened Europe, Tasso was freed (after a confinement of seven years, two months and a few days). But he did not enjoy his freedom for long. Somber memories, poverty, constant dependence on cruel people, the treachery of friends, the injustice of critics—in a word, all the griefs and misfortunes that can afflict a man, destroyed his strong constitution and brought him by a path of thorns to an early grave. Fortune, malicious to the end, reserved one final blow for him, scattering flowers on her victim. Pope Clement VIII, persuaded by the appeals of his nephew, Cardinal Cintio, and by the voice of all Italy, ordered a triumph for him on the Capitoline.
(Essays, 331)
This is the point at which Batyushkov’s poem begins, though the long speeches given to the dying poet carry the reader back over his whole life with references to his Jerusalem Delivered (La Gerusalemme liberata). The poem is one of his most formal, written in a high poetic style, with a sprinkling of archaic forms and expressions to create a solemn tone far removed from the playfulness of “My Penates.” The meter is a Russian equivalent of the Greek elegiac couplet, with alternating masculine and feminine line endings. The epigraph from Tasso bewails the brevity of fame:
TASSO DYING
…E come alpestre e rapido torrente,
Come acceso baleno
In notturno sereno,
Come aura o fumo, o come stral repente,
Volan le nostre fame; ed ogni orore
Sembra languido fiore!
Che più spera, o che s’attende omai?
Dopo trionfo e palma
Sol qui restano all’alma
Lutto e lamenti, e lagrimosi lai.
Che più giova amicizia o giova amore!
Ahi lagrime! ahi dolore!
(Torquato Tasso, Torrismondo)3
What festival is being made ready in old Rome?
Where are they bound, these floods of people?
Why this sweet-smelling smoke of spices and of myrrh,
These baskets full of aromatic grasses?
From Tiber’s waters to the towering Capitol,
Above the thronging universal city
Why have they hung these priceless rugs among
The laurels, the flowers, the imperial purple?
And why this din, the thunder and the roar of drums,
Is this a day of revelry or conquest?
Why does the vicar of Christ make his slow way
Into the house of prayer with sacred banners?
And who will wear the garland in his trembling hands,
The priceless present of a grateful city?
Whose triumph?—It is yours, who with your heavenly voice
Sang of Jerusalem and liberation!
The noise of celebration carries to the cell
Where Tasso is struggling with his final sickness
And where the spirit of death has stretched his wings
Over the godlike forehead of the victim.
Neither the tears of friendship, nor the prayers of monks,
Nor the honors heaped too late upon him,
Nothing can shield him from the iron hand of fate
That knows no pity for our human greatness.
Already, half destroyed, he feels the lethal hour
And welcomes it and calls it blessed,
With a sweet swan song once again, for the last time,
He says farewell to life, exclaiming:
“O friends! let me once more look upon Rome the great
Where an untimely grave awaits the poet.
Let my eyes rest upon your hills and on the smoke
That rises from an ancient city’s ashes.
O sacred land of heroes and of miracles!
Eloquent dust of noble ruins!
Azure and purple richness of the cloudless skies
And poplar trees and venerable olives,
And you, eternal Tiber, where the peoples drank,
Where bones of the world’s citizens are scattered,
I greet you all, a captive of these cheerless walls,
Condemned to die before my days are reckoned!
All is fulfilled! I stand above the dark abyss,
And shall not hear the Capitol applauding;
Nor will fame’s laurels sweeten the bitter taste
That fills the air above my weary deathbed.
From my first days I was the people’s laughingstock;
When I was still a boy I lived in exile,
And like a poor vagabond all through Italy,
Beneath its blessed skies I wandered.
What twists and turns of fate did I not suffer then?
Where was my little boat not driven?
Where could I find a resting place? Where did my bread
Not crumble in the tears of bitter sorrow?
Sorrento! Cradle of my unhappy days,
Where in the depths of night, like sad Ascanius,
Destiny tore me from my mother’s side,
Her sweet embraces and her kisses,
As a boy you know how many tears I shed!
Alas! since then, fate’s constant victim,
I have known life’s miseries, her bitterness,
The fortune-furrowed waves lay open
Beneath me, and the thunder’s voice was never hushed!
Still driven from house to house, country to country,
I sought in vain the shelter of a port:
Everywhere finding—her unrelenting finger!
Everywhere—thunderbolts to discipline the poet!
And nowhere, not in the poor peasant’s cottage,
Or safe from harm in Alonso’s palace walls,
Or in the quiet of some hidden dwelling,
In thickets or in hills, was there a place to lay
M
y head, oppressed by fame or by its absence,
The head of a fugitive who from his earliest days
Was the marked victim of the cruel goddess.
My friends! what is this weight that presses on my heart?
Why does it shudder so? Why is it aching?
Where have I come from? What is the infernal road
That I have traveled, what glimmers through the darkness?
Ferrara…Furies…and the envious hiss of snakes!
Where shall I fly to, murderers of talent?
Rome is a place of refuge—place of brothers, friends,
Their tears, the sweetness of their kisses…
And Virgil’s laurel wreath, here in the Capitol!
I have done everything that Phoebus ordered.
I was his zealous acolyte from my first youth,
Harried by lightning and the wrath of heaven,
I sang the greatness and the fame of bygone days,
And even in chains my soul did not betray him.
The Muses’ heavenly fire was never quenched in me,
In suffering my genius grew stronger.
It lived among the miracles, beneath the walls
Of Zion, on the flowering banks of Jordan,
Haunting the peaceful havens of Lebanon,
And questioning the Cedron’s troubled waters.
Before my gaze you rose again, heroes of old,
Exalted in your warlike stature.
I saw you, Godfrey, leader, overlord of kings,
Calm, majestic in the hiss of arrows;
And you, Rinaldo, like Achilles in the fight,
Heaven-favored conqueror in love and battle,
I saw you flying over bodies, once your foes,
Like fire, like death, exterminating angel…
And Tartarus was laid low beneath the shining cross.
O paragons of valor without equal!
O holy triumph of our distant ancestors
Now gone to endless sleep! Pure faith triumphant!
Torquato rescued you from the deep chasm of time:
He sang—and you will never be forgotten—
He sang and won the crown of immortality
Woven by fame and by the seven Muses.
It is too late. I stand above the dark abyss,
And shall not see the applauding Capitol;
Nor will fame’s laurels sweeten the bitter taste
That fills the air above my weary deathbed.”
He said no more. His eyes burned with a dusky flame,
The last gleam of a dying poet’s spirit,
As if he hoped to snatch out of the hand of Fate
A day of triumph in his final moments.
His gaze still searching for the Capitol,
He tried in vain to rouse his dying body;
But, worn out by the fearful agony of death,
Could only lie stretched on his bed, unmoving.
The sun was gliding westward to its resting place
And sinking in a glow of crimson;
The hour of death drew closer…now for the last time
A light shone from his somber features.
With a tranquil smile he looked out to the west
And animated by the cool of evening,
He raised his right hand to the watchful heavens
Like a righteous man who speaks of hope and comfort,
And said to his grieving friends: “Look there, how in the west
The sun, greatest of all the lights, is blazing!
He calls on me to follow him to cloudless lands,
Where the eternal Light will rise upon me…
Already an angel stands before me as my guide
And overshadows me with wings of azure…
Bring me the sign of love, the sacramental cross,
And pray with hope and tears of supplication…
All earthly things can only die—fame, laurel wreaths…
The mighty works of art and of the muses:
But there all is eternal, like the eternal God
Who gives the crown of never-failing glory!
There, there is all the greatness that inspired my soul,
All I have lived for since the cradle.
O brothers, friends, you must not shed your tears for me,
Your friend has won the treasure that he longed for.
He will go from this world, and given strength by faith,
He will not feel the terror of his passing:
There, there…o joy! among the uncorrupted souls
Among the angels Eleonora will meet him!”
Speaking of love, the heavenly poet breathed his last;
His friends stood weeping over him in silence.
The day burned slowly out, a bell’s transparent voice
Carried the sorry tidings to the city.
“Torquato our poet is dead!” a weeping Rome exclaimed,
“The bard is dead, he deserved a kinder fortune!…”
The next day they beheld the torches’ somber smoke,
And the Capitoline was draped in mourning.
(Essays, 325–30)
Batyushkov concluded his note on the poem with the words: “May the shade of the great poet not be offended that a son of the gloomy north, who owes to the Gerusalemme liberata the best and sweetest moments of his life, has ventured to bring this meager handful of flowers to his memory!” In fact, he thought the poem the best he had written, and originally wanted it to begin the volume, in place of an author’s portrait. Contemporaries saw in it a reflection of the poet’s own tribulations, especially after his mental collapse, and most thought highly of it. It does not actually conclude the Essays, being followed by a happier and less grandiloquent poem written in the summer of 1817; this celebration of the construction of a summerhouse strikes once more some of the chords of Batyushkov’s earlier epistles to friends, the praise of country solitude, the pleasure in poetry:
THE MUSES’ ARBOR
Here, under the bird-cherry’s creamy shade,
Beneath the acacias’ golden beauty,
I build an altar to the blessed muses,
Companions of my younger days.
I bring them flowers, the amber of the bees,
And the first fruits of the meadow,
And may my humble presents bring them pleasure,
My grateful song beneath the trees!
The poet does not pray to them for gold;
They have no time for riches;
They are the allies of the poor and needy,
In huts, not palaces, at home.
He does not pray for fame’s resplendent gifts;
Alas! his voice is feeble.
A bee can never, like the mighty eagle,
Soar boldly to the heights.
He prays the muses that they will return
To his tired soul the love of beauty,
And the bright cheerfulness that used to burn,
And freshness to his flagging feelings.
And may care with its heavy load
Drown in the river of oblivion,
And greedy time not touch the muses’ favorite
In this, his calm abode.
May he, no longer young, but young in heart,
The carefree child of the carefree graces,
Sometimes come here to rest in the deep shade
Of the bird-cherries and acacias.
(Essays, 333–34)
Two more poems were completed just before the publication of the Essays. The first is another verse epistle; it is addressed to Batyushkov’s cousin Nikita, a close friend and the son of his former protector Mikhail Muravyov. Nikita was more than ten years his junior, but the two had both fought in the Napoleonic wars. In 1812, at the age of fifteen, Nikita had run away from home to join the army; to his regret, however, he had not had the thrill of riding into Paris with the Russian army. In his earlier writings and letters, Batyushkov often spoke of the tonic effect of military life on his leth
argic and depressive nature; here, finding common ground with his young cousin, he recalls one last time the glory days of wartime and contrasts them with the dull and forgotten existence he lives in Khantonovo. Vivid passages in his realistic description of military life anticipate much later writing by Lermontov, in particular his long poem “Valerik.”4
TO NIKITA
Comrade in arms, I love to see
Spring bursting out in gay abundance,
And then for the first time to hear
The lark’s bright song above the meadow.
But it’s sweeter far to see the fields
Coming alive with tents and banners
And to lie carefree by the fires
Waiting for daybreak and the battle.
What happiness, my gallant knight,
To gaze down from a hillside lookout
At the green valleys stretching bright
Beneath the endless ranks of soldiers!
How sweet to hear outside the tent
The far-off roar of cannon at evening
And sink ourselves deep into sleep
Beneath our greatcoats till the morning,
When we shall hear in the dewy sun
The early horses’ trot and clatter
And the long-drawn-out growl of guns
Stirring the echoes on the mountains.
What joy it is to race along
The ranks of soldiers on your charger,
And plunge the first into the throng,
Shouting and slashing with your saber!
What joy to hear the order: “Charge!
Infantry, cossacks!—Charge, hussars!
After the enemy, chasseurs!—
Highlanders, Bashkirs, Tatars!”
Whistle and buzz, bullets of lead!
Grapeshot and shells, come flying over!
What do they care for you, our men
Made for the battlefield by nature?
Like a forest the columns move…
O what a glorious sight!—none better!
They march—their silence speaks of war;
They march—their muskets at the ready;
They march…Hurrah! It’s all knocked out,
Everything scattered in the rout.
Hurrah! Where are the enemy?
They’ve run away. We’re in their quarters.
O happy warriors!—and now we
Drink captured wine from shining helmets
Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry Page 16