O joy, that here they have unloosed the girdle,
Once the proud bulwark of her maidenhood!
See all around the room carelessly scattered
The gorgeous clothing of disdainful beauty,
The floating vestments of light, snowy gauze,
The shapely shoes, the flowers freshly picked.
All these, the ruins of her rich apparel,
Proclaim her love, Nikagor’s happiness.
IV
THE SYCAMORE TO THE PASSERBY
See how the vine entwines me in its tendrils!
See how it loves my half-decaying trunk!
Once I cast over it a grateful shadow;
Now I have withered…but the vine stays true.
So pray to Zeus,
If you are made for friendship, passerby,
That your friend too will one day be like mine
And love your dust while he remains alive.
V
Where is the fame, the beauty that undid you?
The busy streets, the happy citizens?
Where are the sumptuous halls, the noble temples,
The gold, the tessera that shone in them?
Alas, great many-pillared Corinth, gone forever,
Your very ash is scattered through the fields,
All is a void, we only cry to heaven,
The halcyon alone grieves in the mist!
VI
“Where are you going, my beauty?—Business, none of yours.
—And can I hope?—For what?—You know quite well.
—I haven’t time!—But look here, count this gold.
—And is that all? You’re joking! So, farewell.”
VII
Let’s hide forever from men’s envious eyes
The ardent raptures and the swoon of passion.
How sweet a kiss in the unspeaking night,
How sweet love’s hidden pleasures!
VIII
I love the smile playing on Laisa’s lips,
Her talk that captivates the heart, but dearer
Than everything to me are her shy looks
And in her eyes the tears of sudden sorrow.
Last night at twilight, overcome by passion,
I knelt again before her, spoke of love:
My kisses led her on to pleasure
On the soft couch laid out for us…
I burned with love, she stood unmoving…
But suddenly grew pale, despondent
And tears came flooding from her eyes!
Taken aback, I pressed her to my bosom:
“What’s troubling you, my dear, what’s troubling you?”
“Don’t worry, it is nothing, God’s my witness;
Just one thought troubles me,” she said:
“You men are faithless, and…I feel afraid.”
IX
Is it for you to mourn your young days gone?
You are as beautiful as ever
And with the passing years
Ever more captivating to your lover.
I do not prize an inexperienced beauty,
Unskilled in all the mysteries of love;
Her bashful gaze is lifeless and unspeaking,
Her timid kisses by no feeling moved.
But you, love’s empress, could awaken
An answering passion in a stone
And in your autumn days the flame still burns
That through your bloodstream flows.
X
Alas! these eyes bedimmed by weeping,
The hours of suffering in these hollow cheeks,
They don’t awaken your compassion—
A cruel smile plays on your lips…
These are the bitter fruits of passion,
Sad fruits of passion that no joy relieves,
The fruits of love, worthy of favor
And not the fate that so benumbs the heart…
Alas! like sudden lightning up in heaven,
Passions eat up our early years,
Perfidiously, they leave us cheerless,
Afflicted by never-ending tears.
But you, my beauty, you whose love is dearer
To me than all my youth and happiness,
Take pity on me…and I will recover,
Younger and brighter than I was.
XI
An eloquent look, a passionate smile,
Which, like a mirror show the soul
Of my beloved…She
By a harsh Argus is kept away from me!
But passion’s eyes can see through walls:
You jealous man, beware the love in eyes!
Love showed me the mysteries of happiness,
Love will show me the way to my beloved,
Love did not teach you how to read our hearts.
XII
Life is exhausted in my frozen heart:
An end to struggle and to everything!
Eros and Aphrodite, you tormentors,
Hear my last words, my melancholy!
I fade away, yet undergo new tortures,
Half dead, but not consumed,
I fade away, my love is still as ardent,
And without hope I die!
So on the altar, round the sacrifice,
The fire grows pale and dwindles,
Then, flaring up before it dies,
Is quenched amid the ashes.
XIII
With courage in my looks, fire burning in my blood,
I sailed, but suddenly cruel death stormed the horizon.
Young sailor, don’t forget how beautiful your life is!
Trust to your boat! Sail on the flood!
(Essays, 344–48)
Together with their even more striking sequel, Imitations of the Ancients, these poems are a high point in Batyushkov’s writing and quickly came to be seen as a major contribution to Russian poetry, establishing a new genre, the “anthological poem.”4 Batyushkov was only identified by his Arzamas initial (A for Achilles) in the first publication, but his young contemporary Wilhelm Küchelbecker wrote that from the delight felt in reading them, from their beautiful melody, the skill of the translation and the perfection of the prosody, they could only be the work of Batyushkov or Aleksandr Pushkin—but more probably the former (WP, 258).
In the late summer of 1818, having learned of his appointment to Naples, Batyushkov returned to St. Petersburg. Soon after his arrival he sent to the wife of the historian Karamzin a little poem in praise of her husband’s work. The eighth volume of his History of the Russian State had appeared earlier that year, and Batyushkov, who had always admired and loved Karamzin, was distressed that it was receiving too little attention; to make up for this, in a typically self-deprecating way, he composed these “poor lines.” “They just poured out from my soul,” he wrote to Aleksandr Turgenev:
TO THE AUTHOR OF THE HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN STATE
When once at the Olympic Games,
In hopes of sweet applause, the father
Of history pronounced the names
Of Greeks who crushed the kings of Asia
And shattered all their proud batallions,
The people, all athirst for glory,
Forgot their games and entertainments
And stood enraptured by his story.
But in the midst of the great crowd
The noble young Thucidydes,
Beloved of the muses, stood
And drank the old historian’s words.
How thirstily he then would listen
To the old tales of mighty warriors,
And how he wept, what joyful tears
Came running down his burning cheeks!
So I too wept in exultation
On reading your immortal words
And blessed your genius, sweetly stirred
With irresistible emotion.
What if I have no gift, no talent!—
The muses spoke to me of art,
Beauty could move me, I was able
(CP, 233–34)
Meanwhile he was preparing himself for his posting to Naples. It was what he had long wanted, yet he was far from overjoyed at the prospect of leaving Russia and his friends. In September he wrote an occasional poem of thanks to Prince Shalikov (a poet whose work he had previously scorned in private letters), speaking of the new life that awaited him and of his intention of giving up the literary life:
I shall leave my fathers’ place for a new world,
A new sky and new faces far from home,
Vesuvius on fire, Etna’s eternal pall,
Castrati, opera, clowns, the Pope in Rome,
The sacred dust of the world’s capital.
But everywhere (or so I say on my good days)
My soul will be the same, I shall stay true,
I shall remember when I die
Moscow, the fatherland, my friends, and you!
(CP, 235)
A similar attachment to his Russian friends is expressed in a gloomy and prophetic letter sent on September 10 to Turgenev, who had worked hard to get him this posting:
I know Italy without having been there. I shan’t find happiness there: it doesn’t exist anywhere. I’m even certain that I shall feel homesick for the snows of home and the people who are so dear to me. Neither the magnificent spectacle of nature, nor the wonders of art, nor the grandiose memories will make up for you and the friends whom I have got used to loving. Got used! Do you understand me? But the first thing is to live, and it’s cold here, and I am dying daily. That’s why I desired and still desire Italy.
In spite of misgivings, he set out. On November 19, he was given a champagne send-off from Tsarskoe Selo by a great company of writers, including Gnedich, Zhukovsky, and the young Pushkin. He traveled first to Vienna, from where he sent a miserable letter to his aunt Muravyova: “I dare not say what I was thinking on the second and third day after my departure, but these days were the saddest of my life and I shall remember them a long, long time” (CP, 11). But by January 1819 he was in Rome, and apparently more cheerful, writing to Olenin: “One stroll in Rome, one glance at the Forum (with which I am totally in love), are more than enough to repay me for all the discomforts of my journey” (SP, 425).
He was to stay in Rome for a few weeks, devouring the sights, and seeing a good deal of the young Russian artists who had received grants from the Russian Academy of Arts to study there. Since Batyushkov’s protector Olenin was responsible for this scheme, he had given the poet the task of checking on the grant-holders and reporting on their work. He went beyond this commission to argue for improving their conditions (which were much inferior to those of their French equivalents). He also struck up a particular friendship with the landscape painter Silvestr Shchedrin, who had been in Italy for some months and who later came to stay with him in Naples.
The Naples stay lasted nearly two years, from March 1819 to the end of 1820. These were crucial years in Batyushkov’s life, coming after the success of the Essays and preceding his collapse into madness, but we have very little information about them—only a few letters, three short poems, and occasional mentions in other people’s letters and memoirs. No doubt there were many more letters, since correspondence with friends at home was a lifeline; in August 1819 he wrote to Zhukovsky: “I begin this letter as usual with reproaches that you have completely forgotten me, dear friend. I am constantly writing to Turgenev, writing to everyone, occasionally (very rarely) I get a reply, but to my annoyance not a line from you…The day when I receive a letter from Russia is the best of all days for me” (SP, 436). In the same letter he notes: “I am quite unable to write verse,” but adds that he is writing assiduously in prose, “notes on the antiquities around Naples.” All this prose has disappeared, perhaps burned by Batyushkov together with poems and other material in 1822.
A major disappointment in Italy was his failure to recover his health. He complains:
Unfortunately, and I can’t speak of this without a feeling of indignation, my health is constantly declining: neither the sun, nor the mineral waters, nor the strictest diet have been able to put it right; it seems to have been irretrievably destroyed. My chest too, which until now only rarely troubled me, has completely failed. Italy is no help to me; I’m freezing here, what would I be like in the north? I daren’t think about going home.
(SP, 438)
Nevertheless, he was well enough at times to respond enthusiastically to the life and natural scenes surrounding him. The letter from which I have just quoted was written from the island of Ischia in August 1819 and contains an eloquent description of “the most magnificent sight in the world”—the whole stretch of the Bay of Naples from Sorrento to the hills near Rome—and of the amazing brightness of the starry sky and the Milky Way. The previous March, not long after his arrival, he painted for Turgenev a dramatic picture of the contrasts of life in Naples:
Every day the people flood into the immense theatre to go into raptures over the music of Rossini and the mellifluous singing of their sirens, while at the same time our neighbor Vesuvius is preparing to erupt; they say that in Portici [near Herculaneum] and places nearby the wells are beginning to go dry—a sign, according to the observers, that the volcano is about to go into action. What an amazing country! Here there are earthquakes, floods, eruptions with burning lava and ash, there are also fires, epidemics and fevers. Whole mountains disappear and mountains emerge from the sea; others suddenly begin to breathe fire. Here the marshes or the exhalations from the earth infect the volcanic air and give birth to contagions: people die like flies. But on the other hand, here there is eternal, blazing sunshine, quiet and gentle moonlight, and the very air which contains death is sweet and perfumed! Everything has its good side. Pliny died in the ashfall, his nephew describes his death. On the ash grow sweet grapes and luscious vegetables.
(SP, 430–31)
In many respects, Batyushkov warmed to his new surroundings, but the beauty and interest of Naples could not overcome his sadness and longing for home: “By day it is fun to wander along the seafront in the shade of flowering pomegranates, but in the evening it’s not a bad thing to sit with friends round a good fire and have a good talk” (SP, 432). He felt lost without the company of such bosom companions as Gnedich and Zhukovsky. He had no great success in his contact with local people, and the Russian company was limited. What made matters worse was his situation in the Russian mission, where he found himself at odds with his superior, Count Gustav Ernst Stackelberg, an experienced diplomat who liked to throw his weight around. According to one of Batyushkov’s close friends, when he disagreed with a paper he had been given to copy, Stackelberg cut him off, saying: “You’re not here to discuss things” (WP, 279). Such treatment pushed him inward, into greater isolation, hypochondria, and actual illness. Nor was he roused from his lethargy by the revolution of the carbonari in the summer of 1820—in its way a prefiguration of the Decembrist uprising in which several of Batyushkov’s young friends would be involved. His only reaction, as far as we know, was a note to his aunt saying: “I’m really fed up with this stupid revolution. It’s time to be sensible, in other words, be quiet” (WP, 282).
Nevertheless, even if he felt incapable of writing poetry, the Naples period did produce at least three remarkable short pieces (more may well be lost). The first was triggered by a visit to Baia (in antiquity, Baiae), a fashionable seaside resort for the rich in Roman times, whose ruins were largely submerged by volcanic activity. Batyushkov responded with intense nostalgia for a lost world. His beautifully shaped piece is one of his most perfect creations; it was not published until 1857, two years after his death:
You wake, o Baiae, from the tomb
With the first coming of Aurora’s rays,
But rosy dawn will not return to you
The radiance of vanished days.
She will not bring again the cool retreats
Where swarms of beauties played,
; And never will your porphyry colonnades
Rise from the depth of the blue waves.
(Essays, 348)
The second poem, written a month or two later, is, like many of Batyushkov’s poems, a free translation. He knew little English, but on Ischia in August 1819 he came across an Italian translation of the fourth canto of Byron’s Childe Harold, which was first published in English the previous year. This was the period when Byron’s fame was sweeping through Europe; as Aleksandr Turgenev noted, Zhukovsky was dreaming of him in St. Petersburg and Vyazemsky was enthusiastic about him in Prague while the Italians were translating him. But the first Russian verse translation of Byron appears to be that of Batyushkov, whose version echoes in some respects his poems from the Greek Anthology. He started from the following lines (Canto IV, stanzas 178–79):
There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep Sea, and music in its roar:
I love not Man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe and feel
What I can ne’er express, yet cannot all conceal.
Roll on, thou deep and dark blue ocean—roll!
Ten thousand fleets sweep over thee in vain;
Man marks the earth with ruin—his control
Stops with the shore…
What in Byron is a personal digression at the end of a long narrative becomes a freestanding lyric poem in which the romantic appeal of nature to the disillusioned man is heightened. The translation is quite close, closer than in many of Batyushkov’s earlier versions of Parny, Tibullus, and others, but Byron’s stanzaic form is replaced by the elegiac couplets that Batyushkov often favored. It seems strange to “retranslate” Byron back into English from a Russian text, itself based on an Italian translation of the English, but this will give an idea of Batyushkov’s poem:
Writings from the Golden Age of Russian Poetry Page 18
