And did not envy even the gods their fate!…
Now, separated from her,
I count the weary days, dragging my bitter chain,
And only memories give me the power
To fly to her again
And dimly in the night I feel
Through dreaming’s deep enchantment
A gentle breeze that bears the fragrance
Of flowers, and I breathe
Emilia’s sweet breath.
(Essays, 535–36)
It is hard to know how much reality there is in the various love poems that Batyushkov left. Sometimes it is clear that he is imitating the erotic or sentimental writings of a Tibullus or a Parny, as in his youthful verses addressed to “Malvina,” “Chloe,” and others. He describes himself in an epistle to Petin as “equally unhappy in love and war”—and certainly he seems far removed from such enterprising ladies’ men as Byron or Pushkin. He may have had passing affairs, but the only woman for whom his love was clearly expressed was Anna Furman, and as we shall see, this love was to remain unrequited. Nevertheless, the tender sentiments expressed in various poems of 1809–1810, even when the poems are in part translations from the French or the Italian, suggest a strong attachment to the memory of the Riga merchant’s daughter. Not that it matters greatly to the twenty-first-century reader, any more than it matters whether Ronsard’s sonnet on the death of “Marie” is inspired by a real loss or by a patron’s commission. In Batyushkov’s case, his Riga love, whether real or imaginary, gave us the most moving (and the most shapely) of his early poems:
CONVALESCENCE
As the white lily feels the mower’s murderous scythe
And bows its head, slowly dissolving,
So in my illness I could sense untimely death
And thought the hand of fate was on me.
The black of Erebus already veiled my sight,
My heart was beating time more slowly,
I was dissolving, vanishing, still young, the sun
Of my existence setting.
But you came close to where I lay, life of my soul,
Your rose-red lips, so sweetly breathing,
The tears that sparkled in the brightness of your eyes
And the succession of your kisses,
Your burning sighs, the power of your beloved words,
All called upon me to abandon
The dark domains of grief, the fields of death, the shores
Of Lethe, for the world of passion.
You gave me back my life; this was your blessed gift.
From now on I shall breathe you only,
Even the hour of torment will seem sweet to me,
And love will be my dissolution.
(Essays, 214)
In the autumn of 1807, when the militia was disbanded, Batyushkov joined the Guards, but he very soon fell ill and spent the winter in St. Petersburg on sick leave, being looked after by the Olenin family. Over the next year, moving to and fro between the capital and his northern homeland, he was preoccupied with family affairs and relations with his father and sisters. His decision to join the army had upset his father, who then exacerbated relations by remarrying. Konstantin’s unmarried sisters Aleksandra and Varvara took their brother’s side in the quarrel, and they eventually went with him to live on his mother’s estate at Khantonovo, but only when he was able to inherit it at the age of twenty-one. Meanwhile, he seems to have written very little, though he was continuing to work on the translation of Tasso. He did, however, write one more verse epistle to Gnedich, enclosed with a letter of July 1, 1808, sounding the note of country boredom, isolation, and depression, which will so often be heard in his letters:
Now I can break the chain of silence
And greet my bosom friend again.
It’s a long time since last I sent you
The scratchings of my idle pen.
And how can my flute make tuneful music
Beneath this empty, savage sky?
Is this a place for the young muses
To come and make sweet poetry?
How can I sing oppressed by fate,
Held fast by a cruel destiny,
With neither friends nor family?
Amid a sea of desolation
Only cold hearts can take their ease
And cast their eyes without emotion
On tombs of loved ones and of friends,
On death and malicious calumny
That like a serpent, basely writhing,
Inflicts a cruel wound in hiding
On spotless innocence itself;
But with a soul that feels so deeply
Can I remain a placid victim
In this harsh world of calumny?
On this earth we all will find
An open grave for humankind,
Where, mown down by the fatal scythe,
They all must fall, the sceptered tsar,
The shepherd, monk and warrior!
Can I alone deserve to live
In happiness, eternally?
Alas, we all bow down beneath
The fetters and the yoke of grief,
Which all our lives we’re doomed to bear
With arms too weak to cast them off.
But how, dear friend, can we endure them
And never weep or feel despair?
It’s simpler far to cross the ocean
When Boreas spreads his wings in anger
Unharmed in a frail cockleshell
Bereft of rudder, shroud and sail
And never lift your eyes to heaven.
Now in your company I weep
While, lightning-like, time flashes by.
The bright moon shining over me
Stares peacefully into the lake;
All is asleep in night’s May shadow,
The waterfall is barely heard,
The groves in the quiet valley slumber,
And through their branches overhead
The subtle moonbeams float to earth,
And I, in Morpheus’ mighty hand,
Break off my flute’s sorrowful tune—
Perhaps before this short night ends
In the land of dreams I’ll find you
And once again embrace you, friend.
(CP, 81–82)
Then, in the autumn of 1808, his regiment was sent off on a new campaign. As an indirect result of the treaties signed at Tilsit, Russia went to war with Sweden over the possession of Finland, which was achieved in September 1809. For him the campaign lasted about eight months, during which he spent a hard winter in the northern part of Finland. The wildness of the country had a romantic appeal, and after his return to Russia he exploited this in his first serious prose writing, an “Extract from the Letters of a Russian Officer in Finland,” first published in the journal The European Herald (Vestnik Evropy) in 1810. It opens with the words:
I have seen a country close to the Pole, bordering on the Hyperborean sea, where nature is poor and cheerless, where the sun gives continual warmth for two months only, but where, as in countries more blessed by nature, people can find happiness.
(Essays, 95)
Then come poetic descriptions of northern scenery, the vast and impenetrable forests, the silence and darkness, the granite cliffs and roaring torrents, the interminable snowbound winters, the howling wolves and wheeling birds of prey. And this wild “Hyperborean” land once had wild inhabitants, warriors who drank blood out of the skulls of their enemies. Mingling images from Norse mythology with the poems of Ossian and even Arthurian legend, Batyushkov writes of the dreams of the poet in such a landscape:
Perhaps on this pine-covered cliff, at whose foot a gentle breeze stirs the deep waters of the gulf, perhaps on this cliff stood a temple to Odin. Here the poet loves to dream of bygone days and to plunge in thought into those ages of barbarism, magnanimity and fame. Here he looks with pleasure on the ocean waves once covered with the ships of Odin, Arthur and Harald, on the dark horizon where th
e shades of vanished warriors passed, on the stones, relics of gray antiquity, on which can be seen mysterious signs, drawn by some unknown hand.
(Essays, 98)
This is followed by a long quotation from Batyushkov’s youthful poem “Dreaming,” and finally by a picturesque evocation of the Russian army encamped in this wilderness.
Such is the romantic aspect of the northern campaign, later echoed in rather derivative poems such as “The Scald” and “Warriors’ Dream.” Batyushkov’s correspondence conveys a less heroic image. The campaign alternated between periods of movement and action (some of it shared with his friend Petin, who was soon wounded in the leg and separated from him), and long weeks spent in camps in the freezing wastes of northern Finland. Plagued by illness and longing to get back to St. Petersburg, Batyushkov wrote to Olenin:
It’s so cold here that time’s wings have frozen. Dreadful monotony. Boredom stretches out on the snow, or to put it more simply, it is so depressing in this savage, barren wilderness without books or society, and often without wine, that we can’t tell a Wednesday from a Sunday. So most humbly I beg you to order for me a Tasso (whom I have had the misfortune to lose) and a Petrarch…
(WP, 77)
The letter speaks again of skuka, a very Russian term, translated here as “boredom,” but really a more all-embracing world weariness; this was a constantly lurking presence in Batyushkov’s life. Against skuka, one remedy was Italian poetry. During the Finnish campaign he was continuing work on his translation of Tasso. In letters to Gnedich, he more than once asks himself why he should devote so much time to a task that would bring few rewards. However, in 1808 he published in a journal some of Canto 1 of Jerusalem Delivered (La Gerusalemme liberata), together with a rather formal epistle “To Tasso.” This piece was inspired by the “Épître au Tasse” of the French poet La Harpe, who also translated Tasso and whose admiration and sympathy for the suffering poet found a ready echo in Batyushkov. His own epistle may be derivative both in form (rhyming alexandrine couplets) and in sentiment, but it announces some of the characteristic directions his later poetry will take. The extracts given below concern Tasso’s many-sided poetic gift, his sufferings at the hand of ill-wishers, and his continuing fame:
…Torquato, he who knows the bitter taste
Of love and sorrow and in his young days,
Following the muse, enters the hall of fame,
He suffers and is great before his time!
You sang, and all Parnassus woke in rapture,
Young Phoebus with the muses in Ferrara
Placed in your hands the lyre of Ovid’s songs,
Sheltering your genius with immortal wings.
You sang the noise of war—the pallid furies
Spread out for you its darkness and its horrors:
Men race over the field, trampling on banners,
Their fury burning with the torch of hatred,
Hair flying in the wind and bloodied tunics,
And I see deaths…with brazen Mars beside me…
But war and horror, the clash of swords and spears,
The voice of Mars, have vanished into air;
I hear far off the oaten pipes of shepherds,
And I can give myself to other passions:
No hatred now, but the young god of love
Sleeps softly in a flowery myrtle grove.
And then he rises—once again swords glitter!
What Proteus so changes you, Torquato,
What wondrous god has filled these holy dreams
With both a grim and tender beauty’s beams?
…….….….….….….….….
And what reward, Torquato, were you given
For your harmonious songs? The critics’ venom,
The courtiers’ flattery and false words of praise,
Enough to poison any poet’s days.
And cruel love, the source of all your troubles,
Appeared before you in those golden chambers,
And from her hands you took the poisoned cup
Entwined with flowers and roses still in bud,
You drank it all, and in a dream of love
Enslaved yourself, enslaved your lyre to beauty.
But joys are false and happiness is fleeting—
The veil is torn. You are a slave, Torquato!
Thrown into darkness, like a criminal,
Deprived of freedom and of Phoebus’ light.
The poet’s soul is broken by deep sadness,
His talent, his creative power have vanished,
His reason’s gone!…O you whose treachery
Plunged Tasso in a hell of cruelty,
Come, feast your eyes on this fine entertainment,
And revel in the ruin of his talent!
Come! He who was above all human praise,
Who gave his heroes eloquence, whose eyes
Pierced through the clouds into the heavenly mansions—
Here groans in chains…. O you great Gods, have mercy!
How long yet must he, guiltless, bear the weight
Of shameful envy and infernal spite?
…….….….….….….…..
Godlike poet, we call to you in vain,
But the whole world still rings with Tasso’s fame!
All that is left of Troy is dust and ashes,
We cannot tell where her great men are buried,
Divine Skamander eddies endlessly,
But in the minds of men, Homer still lives,
And humankind still glory in their singer:
His shrine—the world. And yours too will survive us.
(CP, 83–85)
Eventually Batyushkov’s requests for leave were successful and he was allowed to return to Russia. Much of the second half of 1809 was spent in the country, in the still-neglected estate at Khantonovo, in the company of his two unmarried sisters. Although this was the place of his household gods, he was not happy there, constantly short of money, and often ill and depressed. As he put it in a letter to Gnedich (in words that seem ominous in hindsight), “the charming, beautiful Madame de Sévigné says that if she could only live two hundred years, she would become a perfect woman. If I live another ten years, I shall go mad. Really, life is tedious and there’s no consolation” (SP, 286). But in fact he did find consolation in reading and writing. This period of enforced solitude gave Batyushkov the leisure to extend his already impressive literary culture and to work out his own poetic values and strategies.
His reading was extensive and covered several different literatures: the poets of Rome and of the Italian Renaissance, the writings of Voltaire and Rousseau, some English writers, as well as contemporary Russian writing. As we saw in chapter 1, he was strongly influenced by French love poetry of the late eighteenth century, notably that of Évariste de Parny. Admiration led to translation, which led to original writing. Translation is particularly important for literary cultures that are just finding their own voice, as Russian culture was in the early nineteenth century. The great translators of the time were Gnedich and in particular Vasily Zhukovsky, whom Batyushkov was soon to meet in Moscow, but translation and imitation occupy a central position in Batyushkov’s oeuvre too. Before long, he would be seen as the Russian Parny, and already in Khantonovo he was beginning his free translation of Parny’s Madagascar Songs (Chansons madécasses).
Parny, born on the Île Bourbon (present-day Réunion), was vastly popular in his day—Chateaubriand described him as “the only elegiac poet France has produced.”3 He became famous with his Erotic Poems (Poésies érotiques, 1778), followed a few years later by the Madagascar Songs, prose poems supposedly based on the folk songs of Madagascar (comparable in a way to Macpherson’s recent versions of Gaelic poetry in Biblical English). Since Parny probably never set foot in Madagascar, there is some doubt about the status of his versions, but this didn’t prevent them from attracting, like Ossian, foreign readers and translators. Only one of Batyushkov’s Madagascan songs sur
vives, in which he recasts Parny’s poetic prose into rhyming quatrains. Parny’s poem (Chanson VIII) begins:
Il est doux de se coucher durant la chaleur sous un arbre touffu, et d’attendre que le vent du soir amène la fraîcheur.
(It is sweet to lie during the heat under the dense foliage of a tree and to wait for the evening breeze to bring coolness.)
In Batyushkov’s poem this gives a quatrain that can be translated:
How sweet to sleep in the cool shade
While the great heat consumes the valley
And the wind in this forest glade
Stirs the leaves with its soft breathing.
(CP, 117)
Batyushkov was to translate quite a few more Parny poems in the following year or two; I shall return to these and other translations in the next chapter.
He composed a number of other poems in these Khantonovo months, most of them concerned with the campaign of 1807. These include two we have already looked at, “Memories of 1807” and “Convalescence,” as well as a nostalgic epistle to Count Wielgorski, a Polish composer he had met in Riga. Here too we can probably place an “Answer to Gnedich,” a short verse epistle in his familiar manner replying to a friendly letter, painting a formalized self-portrait of the poet as modest country-dweller, and reflecting on the rival pull of friendship and love.
ANSWER TO GNEDICH
Now and in time to come, dear Gnedich,
Your friend gives you his hand and heart;
He has served his time with the blind goddess,
Mother of cares that bear no fruit.
Alas! my friend, in my young season
I too fell foul of Circe’s charms,
But looking in my empty pockets,
I have forsaken love and arms.
Let those afflicted with ambition
Hurl fire and thunderbolts with Mars
While I, not seeking recognition,
Live happy in my little house.
There let us place our clay Penates
Together in a friendly shade
And then sit down to simple suppers—
Our dreams will give us golden days.
Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry Page 5
