St Petersburg полностью

Blok’s paradoxical love for Petersburg’s outskirts, like his hatred of the “pompous” center, was ideological in nature and originated in his Slavophile beliefs. But in this particular instance there were also some true and strong emotions involved, the happy result of which was a multitude of strange, moody poems in which Blok, not calling Petersburg by name, nevertheless lets us feel the longing, sadness, and charm of its outskirts.

The shades of “small” Petersburgers flicker in those poems—tramps, prostitutes, card sharks, drunken sailors. Blok’s Petersburg is hostile to all those people. In the traditions of Gogol, Nekrasov, and Dostoyevsky, he depicts the metropolis as a monster. But we also feel an intensely personal note, comparable to Blok’s observation of the city in his diaries, like this almost Dickensian one: “What dreariness—almost tears. Night—on the broad embankment of the Neva, near the university, barely visible among the rocks was a child, a boy. His mother (a peasant) picked him up and he wrapped his little arms around her neck—afraid. Horrible, miserable city, where a child gets lost. It chokes me with tears.”138

It is only natural, therefore, that Blok, who at first greeted the Bolshevik coup enthusiastically, managed to create an astonishing picture of postrevolutionary Petrograd, its hackles raised, in his famous narrative epic The Twelve, written in January 1918. The twelve of the title are a Red Army patrol walking through the dark, ruined city, and at the same time they become in Blok’s imagination the twelve apostles, led by Jesus Christ.

Petrograd in The Twelve appears in a series of impressionistic sketches—snow, ice, shoot-outs, and robberies on the streets, huge political posters flapping in a sharp wind. Despite the mystical image of Christ, the narrative presented some intentionally brutal and horrifying pictures. Therefore Blok’s work pleased both the Bolsheviks and their foes. Still, controversy flared. Religious leaders were shocked that Blok had Christ leading the Red Army through Petrograd. In a letter to a friend, one writer was indignant: “But I and many millions of people are now observing something completely different from what Christ taught. Then why should he be leading that gang? When you see Blok, ask him about that.”139

Blok’s and Akhmatova’s political positions diverged sharply then. At the start of the Bolshevik revolution Akhmatova published in liberal newspapers, which were soon shut down by the authorities. She also read her poetry at rallies with a marked anti-Bolshevik character.

At one of them organized to support political prisoners, victims of the Bolshevik terror, Akhmatova read her old poem “The Prayer,” which took on an even more ominous tone in the new circumstances. She appeared with her closest friends; Olga Sudeikina danced and Arthur Lourié played the piano at the same concert. Blok, who did not attend, was told the audience shouted “Traitor!” at the mention of his name.

Tellingly, Akhmatova refused to participate in another literary evening when she learned that someone would be reading The Twelve. In his notebook a deeply wounded Blok called her decision “astonishing news.”140

Much later, Akhmatova, recalling Petersburg after the Bolshevik revolution, remarked mournfully, “The city did not simply change, it determinedly turned into its opposite.” Apparently, from similar observations of Petrograd in agony, Akhmatova and Blok drew different conclusions.

Such obvious disagreements between Akhmatova and Blok in interpreting the Petersburg mythos were dictated by several reasons. Age made a difference, as well as being from different social strata and feuding literary movements. The acmeists, Akhmatova included, were freer of the clichés employed by the Slavophile “professorial” culture. Therefore their attitude toward Petersburg was less prejudiced and more sympathetic.

In that sense the acmeists had much in common with Benois and his Mir iskusstva. They were also similar in their use of a flexible, confident line and well-drawn, lacelike detail. In the early poems of Akhmatova and Mandelstam, two leading acmeists, there is a definite resemblance to the drawings of the Mir iskusstva group. In their work, Petersburg at last ceases to threaten and takes on the intimate traits of a place that has been lived in. But there were also differences with Mir iskusstva, which became more apparent in time.

The acmeists considered their forefather to be the poet Innokenti Annensky (1855-1909), the author of the posthumously published “Petersburg,” a most concentrated presentation of the symbolists’ imagery of the city on the Neva.

The sorcerer gave us only stones,

And the Neva of brownish yellow,

And the empty, mute squares

Where people were executed before dawn.