Pushkin's Scene from Faust (1825), in which
Mephistopheles compares himself to an harlequin, was inspired by Goethe's
Faust. In 1914-16 Andrey Bely (the author of The Harlequinade)
participated in the construction of the Goetheanum, the world center for the
anthroposophical movement in Dornach (Switzerland). The "tasteless and absurd"
idea to build "the temple of universal wisdom" in such
an inappropriate place is criticized by Mandelshtam in his
devastating review of Bely's autobiographical Zapiski chudaka (An
Eccentric's Notes, 1922):
В книге можно вылущить фабулу, разгребая
кучу словесного мусора: русский турист, застигнутый войной в Швейцарии, строит
Иоаннов храм теософской мудрости, швейцарцы, обратив внимание на подозрительного
иностранца, высылают его, и, преследуемый шпиономанией, он вполне благополучно
возвращается через Англию и Норвегию в Россию... Что за безвкусная нелепая идея
строить «храм всемирной мудрости» на таком неподходящем месте?
Mandelshtam begins his article with
the comparison of Russian symbolism to wreathing Python (a serpent
slain by Apollo):
Русский символизм жив. Русский символизм не
умер. Пифон клубится. Андрей Белый продолжает славные традиции литературной
эпохи, когда половой, отраженный двойными зеркалами ресторана «Прага»,
воспринимался как мистическое явление, двойник, и порядочный литератор стеснялся
лечь спать, не накопив за день пяти или шести «ужасиков».
The allusion is to Pushkin's epigram "Luk zvenit,
strela trepeshchet..." ("The Bowstring sounds, the arrow quivers..." 1827)
in which Python dies, wreathing:
Лук звенит, стрела трепещет,
И, клубясь,
издох Пифон;
И твой лик победой блещет,
Бельведерский Аполлон!
Кто ж
вступился за Пифона,
Кто разбил твой истукан?
Ты, соперник
Аполлона,
Бельведерский Митрофан.
The target of this epigram is the minor poet Andrey Murav'yov
(1806-74) who in Princess Volkonski's salon broke the arm
of Apollo Belvedere (a copy of the Vatican statue) and wrote lame
verses on the statue's pedestal. Bel'vederskiy Mitrofan in
the epigram's punch line hints at the hero of Fonfizin's comedy
Nedorosl' ("The Minor", 1782). In Fonvizin's comedy Mitrofan is
the son of Mrs Prostakov, born Skotinin. In LATH Vadim mentions a
critic who was nicknamed by his rival "Prostakov-Skotinin":
I smoked my pipe and observed the feeding
habits of two major novelists, three minor ones, one major poet, five minor ones
of both sexes, one major critic (Demian Basilevski), and nine minor ones,
including the inimitable "Prostakov-Skotinin," a Russian comedy name (meaning
"simpleton and brute") applied to him by his archrival Hristofor Boyarski.
(1.11)
In Pushkin's poem Poet i tolpa ("The Poet and the
Crowd", 1828) the Poet mentions kumir Bel'vederskiy (the Belvedere
idol):
Тебе бы пользы всё —
на вес
Кумир ты ценишь
Бельведерский.
Ты пользы, пользы в нём не
зришь.
"You need only benefit, by weight
you value the Belvedere idol.
You don't see any practical use in it."
When the Crowd asks the Poet to
give it bold lessons, "while we shall listen to you" (a my
poslushaem tebya), the Poet (who doesn't want to be a
moralist) angrily replies:
Подите прочь —
какое дело
Поэту мирному до
вас!
В разврате каменейте
смело,
Не оживит вас лиры
глас!
Душе противны вы, как
гробы.
Go away!...
You are repulsive to my soul, like coffins.
According to Pushkin's Poet,
Не для
житейского волненья,
Не для корысти, не для
битв,
Мы рождены для
вдохновенья,
Для звуков сладких и
молитв.
Not for the wordy agitation,
Not for the gold or bloody
ways,
We have been born for inspiration,
For charming sounds and for
prayers.
(transl. E. Bonver)
Belvedere has Bel (Vadim's name for his daughter Isabel)
in it. In fact, Belvedere + motto =
Bel + Everett + mood/doom
(Everett - Charlie Everett,
alias Karl Vetrov, Bel's husband with whom she elopes to the
USSR)
While Everett reminds one of Mount Everest, Charlie
Everett's new name Vetrov comes from veter
(wind). In Poet i tolpa the Crowd compares the Poet's song to
veter:
"Как ветер,
песнь его свободна,
Зато как ветер и
бесплодна:
Какая польза нам от
ней?"
"His song is free, like the
wind,
but, like the wind, it is
futile:
what good will it do for
us?"
Bel'vederskiy rhymes with
Ezerski, the eponymous hero of an unfinished poem (written in the Onegin stanza)
by Pushkin. Here is stanza XIII of Ezerski (1832) in the original
followed by VN's translation:
Зачем крутится ветр в
овраге,
Подъемлет лист и пыль несёт,
Когда корабль в недвижной
влаге
Его дыханья жадно ждёт?
Зачем от гор и мимо башен
Летит орёл,
тяжёл и страшен,
На чёрный пень? Спроси его.
Зачем Арапа своего
Младая
любит Дездемона,
Как месяц любит ночи мглу?
Затем, что ветру и орлу
И
сердцу девы нет закона.
Гордись: таков и ты поэт,
И для тебя условий
нет.
Why does the wind revolve in the
ravine,
sweep up the leaves and bear the
dust,
when avidly on stirless
water
wait for his breath the galleon
must?
From mountains and past towers,
why
does the dread heavy eagle
fly
to a seas stump? Inquire of
him.
Why does young Desdemona
love
her blackamoor as the moon
loves
the gloom of night?
Because
for wind and eagle
and maiden's heart no law is
laid.
Poet, be proud: thus you are
too:
neither is there a law for
you.
Orlov (Oleg Orlov, a worthless poet and
Soviet spy who stealthily accompanies Vadim Vadimovich in his
trip to Leningrad) comes from oryol (eagle), a
bird mentioned, along with veter (wind) and gory
(mountains), in this stanza of Ezerski. Ezerski comes from
ezero (obs., lake). Bel's mother Annette Blagovo (Vadim's second wife)
and her friend Ninel (Lenin backwards) drown in the lake near which their
pretty cottage (swept away by a tornado) stood
(4.2).
When Vadim tells his first
wife, Iris Black, in dramatic detail of his escape from his country,
mentioning great exiles of old (Ovid, Dante, Pushkin, one
presumes), she listens to him "like Desdemona" (1.5). Iris Black
is shot dead by a White Russian, Wladimir Blagidze, alias Starov
(1.13). In the first week of January, 1822, Pushkin had a pistol duel near
Kishinev with Colonel Starov.
Speaking of Goethe, some think that
harlequin and Erlkoenig (Wer reitet so spaet durch Nacht
und Wind?) are related words. Others believe that
harlequin has something to do with Alichino mentioned by
Dante in La Divina Commedia:
"Tra’ti avante, Alichino, e Calcabrina",
cominciò elli a dire, "e tu, Cagnazzo;
e Barbariccia
guidi la decina" (Inferno, Canto XXI)
In his review of Zapiski chudaka Mandelshtam
(the author of Razgovor o Dante, "The Talk about Dante", written
in 1933, first publ. in 1967) contrasts Bely (who, having no sense of
measure and tact, also lacks taste, and the absence of taste is the first
sign of falsehood) to Dante (for whom suffice was to have one
significant event in his inner life):
Отсутствие меры и такта, отсутствие
вкуса — есть ложь, первый признак лжи. У Данта одного душевного события хватило
на всю жизнь.
To a Russian ear,
d'Anthes (an harlequin in his own right) sounds rather like dantist
(dentist), but Dante (or, say, Danzas) is also close
enough.
Alexey Sklyarenko