It was in 1735 that V. K. Trediakovsky (1703-69) published his celebrated treatise, A New and Concise Handbook for Russian Versification. Much of poetry composed before Trediakovsky, and for some time after him, was of translational nature and based on western literary models (just as the preceding seven hundred years of Medieval Russia’s literature had been principally focused on translating Byzantine texts). But Trediakovsky’s 1735 application of the syllabotonic system of versification facilitated a remarkably rapid assimilation of western poetry’s broad spectrum in Russia—from Homer, Pindar and Ovid to Shakespeare, Boileau, Racine, and Pope. One hundred years later, in 1835, N. V. Gogol first published Arabesques, a seminal work of experimental Russian prose. Gogol’s immediate influence on prose was no less profound than Trediakovsky’s had been on poetry, and the Petersburg stories from Arabesques, such as The Portrait, Nevsky Prospect and The Diary of a Madman, had a similar formative effect on Russian literature. The intervening century thus can safely be called the period of the dominance of poetry over prose. The privilege enjoyed by the former over than latter was deep and pervasive. Trediakovsky, for example, felt compelled to render Fancois Fénelon’s novel Les Aventures de Télémaque (Telemakhida, 1766) into hexameter verse. And A. P. Sumarokov (1717-1777), one of Russia’s foremost neoclassicist poets—indeed the first to translate Shakespeare into Russian—had such disdain for the novel (the principal prose genre) that he vowed never to write one himself even if he were dying of hunger. There were other vows that he did not keep, but he kept this one despite being destitute toward the end of his life.
Sumarokov, of course, had in mind the most popular reading material among literate Russians who did not quite belong to the elite circles of his day—the picaresque novel. Fantastic elements, sudden shifts of fate, and rapid transformations of geographic settings, all typical of the fantastic mode, abounded in the narrative plots of these early Russian prose works. But most of these pre-Gogolian novels were dominated by migratory motifs borrowed from their western antecedents and will not be discussed here. Rather the emergence of highly original Russian poets began the long process by which Russian literature itself developed into a model for western emulation. The foremost of those who achieved such acclaim was G. R. Derzhavin (1743-1816), whose ode God, composed roughly at the midpoint of this period, had the distinction of being translated into a dozen world languages during the poet’s own life, and it is with Derzhavin’s craft that our main body of texts will unfold.
The aim of this introduction is thus to provide a new angle from which to view Russian literature as it ascends to universal esteem, but within the realm of the fantastic. Russia’s Golden Age coincided with the reign of Romanticism in Europe. The Grimm brothers, Herder, and other Romantic theorists stressed the importance to every nation of its own unique folkloric heritage. Russian Romantic poets, most of whom will not enter the main body of our anthology, must nevertheless be alluded to at this juncture, for they were among the first to turn in full force to the folklore heritage of their homeland, as well as to the very notion of Fantasy, the crux of this volume.5 Of these, the name of the aforementioned V. Zhukovsky, a most important literary figure of the early nineteenth century, comes certainly to mind. His fame rests largely on adaptations and translations into Russian of an almost dizzying variety of texts, including parts of the Mahabharata as well as The Odyssey and many works of his European contemporaries. Principal among them was the ballad—a poetic narration usually with a gothic or folk-tale backdrop featuring supernatural or occult overtones. Most of Zhukovsky’s ballads were translations from such poets as Goethe, Schiller, and Scott, although it might be more accurate to call them transformations. Before turning to these, let us note that in one of his original poems, To Myself, Zhukovsky elects to speak of the “Phantom of Phantasy” as a self-defining concept:
You that now mourn for the days borne away past recalling,
Ruefully pondering, hopelessly longing still to revive them—
Take but the Present to serve as your comfort and daimon!
Trusting the moment, live your life free from vexation!
Light are the pinions that bear Life’s precipitate passage!
Having no sooner attained to the ripeness of full understanding,
Having but glimpsed in the distance a goal worth our striving,
All of our time is fled like a wraith of our dreaming—
Phantom of Phantasy—now to the vision which offers
Bloom-studded meadows, with frolicsome mountains and valleys;
Now clad in sorrow’s dark raiment which rises, ascending
Over wild steppelands, forests and horrid abysses.
Follow the Sages! Be ever unchanging in spirit;
All that blind Fate may allot you, accept without murmur! ’Tis fruitless,
Filled with vain sorrow and grieving o’er bliss gone forever,
Thus to disdain the gifts we receive from the minute!6
This Romantic idea of a mysterious gap between the physical and the metaphysical, of man caught between two worlds, and of the enigma of human life within the flow of history, resembles the musings of Derzhavin’s poetic persona in the Magic Lantern, which is entered into our main body of texts. The two worlds are shown from another angle in Zhukovsky’s Lesnoi Tsar (literally “The Forest Tsar”), an original rendering of Goethe’s familiar anthology piece Der Erlkönig. Here subtle but telling departures from the original transform the Germanic Elf King into a Slavic forest deity. Sung to Schubert’s setting for the original, Zhukovsky’s Lesnoi Tsar enjoyed great popularity in nineteenth-century Russia, and is mentioned as a subtext in another work in this volume, namely Shtoss by M. Iu. Lermontov (1814-41). For this reason we cite it here in its entirety in our new rhymed translation:
Who knifes through the chill and the mist at a run?
A horseman rides late and he clasps his young son.
Atremble, the boy holds his kind father’s arm,
The old man enfolds his child, keeping him warm.
“My child, you cling close—why this timid despair?”
“The Tree King, dear father, I saw his eyes flare:
His beard is a thicket, he wears a dark crown.”
“Ah no, ‘tis the pale mist that covers the tarn.”
My child, glance behind you! Come boy, take my hand:
There’s much of delight you will find in my land.
There blossoms of lapis fringe streams pearly-cold,
The halls that I dwell in are cast of pure gold.
“Dear father, the Tree King calls me to his lair:
He promises joy and much gold to me there.”
“Ah no, my dear young one. Your hearing’s deceived:
The wind has awakened, it rustles the leaves.”
Come boy, come and enter my oak-grove with me,
My daughters you’ll meet there, all lovely to see.
By moonlight they’ll play with you, teach you to fly,
‘Mid playing and flying they’ll sing lullaby.
“Dear father, the Tree King his daughters has called,
They nod to me where the dark branches unfold!”
“Ah no, all is calm in the depth of the night,
There’s naught but the grey-tressed dry forest in sight.”
My child, I’m enslaved by your features so fine,
And will you or nill you—I’ll have you for mine!
“My father, the Tree King will catch us at last,
I labor for air and my breath comes so fast!”
Fear hastens the rider, how swiftly he flies
As anguish now seizes the boy midst his cries;
Yet faster he darts—then at once halts his steed …
His arms bear a dead child, now silent to plead.
A less morbid tone permeates Svetlana, one of Zhukovsky’s two famous adaptations of Gottfried Bürger’s Leonore. In the German original a dead man rises from the tomb and carries his betrothed off to the underwo
rld. Zhukovsky’s first version, entitled Liudmila, preserves this plot but gives the tale an atmosphere more mournful than horrific. Svetlana, arguably one of his most successful creations, strikes off in a more original direction. Svetlana is a ballad— the defining genre of European Romanticism ever since J. Macpherson (1736-96) published in 1760 his famous forgery, Fragments of Ancient Poetry Collected in the Highlands of Scotland and Translated from the Gallic or Erse Language, claiming that his texts were based on the works of the third-century Gaelic poet Ossian (orig. Oisín). Enchanted by the newly “discovered” worlds of magic visitations, monster-slayings, and heroic combat from ancient Scots-Irish lore, the developing Romantic movement sought inspiration in the medieval oral traditions of individual nations. Challenging the classicist notion of the supreme value of the Greco-Roman heritage, European cultures (German, Czech, etc.) aspired to a universal recognition of their distinct national traditions. Russian Romantics, such as Zhukovsky, were soon to follow with the rediscovery of their country’s medieval past—sampled in our introductory section—and learned that Russia possessed a particularly rich folk literature, largely dominated by poetic genres. The world of this ballad is entirely Russian, depicting the fortune-telling practiced by young girls on the eve of Epiphany:
Once, upon Epiphany, maidens told their fortunes:
Off her foot each slipped a shoe—past the gates they cast them;
Drew their sigils in the snow, listened at the window;
Fed the hen with numbered grains, scried the hot wax cooling;
In a bowl of water clear placed the ring of purest gold,
And the emerald earrings; spread the spotless kerchief out;
O’er the bowl then sweetly sang magic chants and carols.
Falling asleep in the expectation of prescient visions, Svetlana dreams she is riding in a sleigh with her corpse-like groom over snow-clad Russia:
They get in—the team’s away! Steam spouts from their nostrils;
From their hoofbeats rises up whirlwinds ‘neath the runners.
Swift their gait … Naught ‘round about, steppes her eyes encompass;
Darkly is the moon eclipsed, meadows faintly shimmer,
Trembles her prophetic soul; timidly Svetlana speaks,
“Why so silent, sweeting?” Not one word does he reply,
Fixed upon the moon his gaze—Pale and full of sorrow.
O’er the hillocks speed the jades, trampling down the snowdrifts;
To one side a distant kirk stands a lonely vigil.
Now a gale blows wide the doors, throngs the congregation;
From the censers brightest light is obscured by incense;
In the nave—a black-draped bier, and the priest goes droning on:
“May the grave receive you!” All the more she trembles now,
As they pass. Her love is mute—Pale and full of sorrow.
Suddenly a circling storm, snow in masses heaping;
Wings a-whistle, o’er the sleigh soars a night-black raven.
“Sorrow!” is the raven’s cry—Now the fleet-foot horses
Scan the dark with whitened eyes, and their mane-crests shiver.
Flickers in the field a light, there a quiet berth they spy,
‘Neath the snow, a cottage. Swifter now the horses run,
Breast the snow, make straight the way, rushing there together.
Zhukovsky ultimately chooses in Svetlana to transmute Bürger’s demon-lover theme into a joyful celebration of life and the protective power of love (of the poem’s twenty fourteen-line stanzas we have cited here the contents of four, but contracted for economy into septains in our translation). A different take on the subject of love is given in Russia’s most accomplished Novel-in-verse, Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin, in which each protagonist is fated to love—but never to possess—the other. Pushkin’s nuanced portrait of the novel’s heroine, Tatiana, has been hailed as an unsurpassed depiction of the ideal Russian female. Her terrifying dream (contributing a great deal to her psychological profile in Chapter 5, stanzas X-XXI of the novel) owes much to Zhukovsky’s earlier representation of Svetlana’s winter dream-scape, and is translated below into metered prose:
Tatiana, as her Nurse advises, prepares a night of sorcery; gives quiet orders that the bathhouse table be laid out for two. But suddenly Tatiana’s frightened … And I—just thinking of Svetlana—I’m frightened too. So be it, then … Tatiana’s spells are not for us. Tatiana now removes her silken sash, undresses, goes to bed. The love-god Lel’ now floats above her, while underneath her downy pillow, the maiden mirror lies secure. The world grows still. Tatiana sleeps.
An eerie dream comes to Tatiana. And in this dream it seems that she is walking through a snow-clad meadow, a somber gloom surrounding her; before her through the looming snow-banks there gushes in a steaming spate a seething freshet, dark and bleak, that winter chain’s could not subdue; two slender poles, cased in an ice-floe, a perilous and shifting bridge, were laid across the flowing stream; and she, before the freshet’s roar, her mind now full of doubt and fear, has hesitated and then stopped.
As if this obstacle annoyed her, Tatiana grumbles at the stream, sees no one on the other bank who might have offered her his arm; but then a heap of snow’s in motion, and who appears from underneath? A large and shaggy-coated Bear; Tatiana—“Ah!”—He starts to roar: his paw, its dewclaws sharp and pointed, he stretches out to her. She steels herself, with trembling hand she leans on it. With steps then hesitant and timid, she makes her way across the brook, walks on—what’s this? The Bear comes too!
She never dares a glance behind her, proceeds with still more hasty gait, but from her shaggy-coated footman cannot escape by any means. With grunts the horrid bruin lumbers, the wood’s ahead, the pine-trees stand unmoving, beautiful but dour. Their branches all are weighted down with clumps of snow, and through the tops of aspen, linden, bare-limbed birch, the rays of Night’s own torches beam. There is no path; the shrubs, the slopes are drifted over by the storm, and buried deep beneath the snow.
Now Maid and Bear are in the forest; the unpacked snow’s above her knees. A trailing branch, now of a sudden, scores her neck, and from her ears a golden earring rips by force. Deep in the snow she leaves behind the soaking slipper from her foot, and lets her silken kerchief fall. No time to pick it up, in dread she hears the bear still coming after her, and with her trembling hand she even fears to raise her hem. She runs, but he still follows close, and now her strength to run is gone.
Into the snow she falls. The Bear at once then deftly snatches her. She is near swooning now, and docile. She does not move and does not breathe. They rush along a forest pathway. Then—through the trees—a humble hut stands overgrown. The wild, bleak snow has covered it on every side. A tiny pane is brightly glowing, and in the hut are shouts and din. The Bear: “My kinsman lives inside: come in and warm yourself a little.” Straight through the entry-hall he goes, and on a threshold sets her down.
Tatiana stirs and looks around her: The bear is gone, she’s in a hall. Beyond the door she hears some shouting, and glasses clink, as at a wake. She makes no sense of this at all. With stealth she peers in through a cranny, and sees there … what? A table’s there, with monsters seated all around: One horned and with a dog-like muzzle, another bears a rooster’s head, a witch that sports a goatish beard, a skeleton, both prim and haughty, a dwarfish imp with tiny tail, and there—a thing half-crane, half-cat.
Still more to fear, and more to marvel: A crab there rides a spider-steed, a skull atop a goose’s neckbone there twirls, with scarlet cap adorned. A windmill does the Russian squat-jig, its wings are creaking now and flailing. Loud barks and laughter, whistling, claps; now humans sing and horses stamp! But what thoughts came to our Tatiana when, there among the guests, she spies the one most dear and dread to her—the hero of this very novel! Onegin sits there at the table and slyly glances through the door.
He gives a sign—the creatures bustle; he drinks, they all d
rink too, and shout; he laughs, and they all break out laughing; he frowns, and all are mute at once. He is the Master here, that’s certain. And Tania, somewhat less disheartened and pricked by curiosity, has opened up the door a bit… A sudden wind-gust, and the night-lights’ flames are snuffed out all at once. The goblin-horde’s in disarray. Onegin, eyes now burning brightly, forsakes the table with a roar: all rise, he’s heading for the doors.
Afraid again and in a flutter, Tatiana tries her best to run. But she’s unable. Thus impatient, she twists about and wants to scream. She can’t—Evgeny’s at the door-side, he swings it wide. The Maid’s now standing revealed to all the hellish crew. Ferocious laughter sounds—their eyes devour her; their trunk-like noses, their hoofs, long tufted tails and fangs, mustaches, bloody lolling tongues, their horns and skeleton-like fingers—all point as one at her alone, and all shout out: it’s mine, it’s mine.
It’s mine, exclaimed Evgeny fiercely, and all the gang was gone at once. The youthful maid, in frost and darkness, remained with him now tête-à-tête. Onegin gently draws Tatiana into a corner; down he lays her upon a shaky bench. He rests his head upon her shoulder. Then comes Olga brusquely, Lensky follows, and suddenly—a flash of light—Onegin lifts his arm to strike, his eyes in frenzy, wildly roaming, he chides his uninvited guests; Tatiana lies there half alive.
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