Being a Poetess in Russia Is Much Harder Than Being a Poet

Yunna MORITS

Lorka was right when he wrote, “The ancient power of water-drops drilling through a stalactite cavern for eons, the gate to let in some air, light and free echoes is more supernatural than the joint power of giants that would succeed in accomplishing the same task much faster, easier, and triumphantly”.

And now, putting aside any exaggeration, implication or fable-talk, listen to a miraculous miracle I am going to reveal unto you…

No one would dare (for our good luck) to draw comparisons between any of well-known contemporary Russian poets and Block or Pasternak, not to mention Pushkin or Lermontov. Don’t worry, their sanity is beyond doubt: Russian poets of nowadays feel comfortably safe under the defense and in the glamour of great dimensions of our old-time precious poetry, which makes them immune against probably killing parallels. And it is fair.

The channel of Russian poetry would be long since dry and dead, if only giants were allowed to inhabit it, and breath freely, and throw out onto the deadly banks all those who prove feebler, or smaller, or less significant. The poetry would be covered with the disaster. And next it would be extinct, as into nowhere and nothing would evaporate its however overcrowded, but lively, vivid, and the most natural living environment. So let those rare geniuses, wizards, and precious objects of Muses’ choice answer the question: Is that what they would prefer? - The silence and the smile. They keep silence, as they don’t want to injure and cripple those destitute ones, God save, with the complex of lost self-esteem. They smile to these minors who sincerely and slyly confuse in their haste (or on sane deliberation) between what is their own and what is borrowed and sometimes, in their aboriginal naivete, blend their easy jeans with the open-breast blouse of a model genius. Let them be! Let them live and prevent the river-bed of Russian poetry from becoming an abandoned soulless desert, a sorrow garden keeping delightful images of the dead, of irreversibly past.

How wise and good-hearted (“And be respectful to your child, and when you’re dead, he will be there,” – Andrei Platonov) is the great poets’ attitude towards their minor brothers in verse, their sons, and grandsons, and grand-grand-grandsons. Their fortress is democratic, friendly, peace-bringing; they neither judge nor reprove, they rely with confidence upon the just judgment of time, which is painless for all, as the light breath of years will easily take away the mist of whatever pieces of art prove passing, casual, and mortal. Classics are patient and off-handed, they don’t have to hurry up to catch red-handed those who intrude and rummage in others’ treasuries, stores and put-offs in search for whatever they feel appropriate (what a childish carelessness! how can one find a thing that was never lost by anyone at all?). However, and maybe for that sole reason, the treasury of Russian poetry, in a miraculous and predestined manner, never runs short of gems, as thrifty and far from prosperous modern Muse would time to time sparingly give away treasures from her scarce possessions.

But every Russian poetess born forty to fifty years after Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva faces the destiny of a Spartan baby: the strong one survives, the feeble one dies.

It is, among other things, the harsh waywardness of our destiny, which Homer clearly envisioned in the dark of his prophetic blindness – the Scylla and Charybdis of rocks or whatsoever… And he relayed, blindly enlightened, the story of the two merciless ones united, as one would suck you in, and the other (which is even worse!) would spit you out.

You cannot bypass them. The only way is to fly between the two in the air, sticking tightly to the runaway mast of your ship that has been swallowed and indigested. Only with your mast tightly embraced, like that Ulysses, and with the like objectives: finding the Golden Fleece, odysseyship, odysseying, odysseywardness…

The two great Russian poetesses, Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva, or Marina Tsvetayeva and Anna Akhmatova (there is no ranking between them, they are both No.1) possessed, along with divine talents of incredible power (genius, if you like it), a supernatural spiritual strength. Moreover, the live of either was, in fact, a ceaseless heroic trial (which is today far more rare and amazing thing than even the grandeur of their talents). That is why a Russian reader, from the times of Tsvetayeva and Akhmatova/Akhmatova and Tsvetayeva on, would let live only those poetesses that were not swallowed or spat out by Either of them.

Tsvetayeva would swallow our youth, and Akhmatova would spit us our maturity. That's how it usually happens.

The irresistable yoke of ceaseless comparisons, benchmarks, and cross-references to either or both of them - that is how they read and listen and prefer and judge us. As if amidst a colossal plaza filled with ever present critical and scrutinizing crowd, a power meter is positioned to measure Russian poetesses - and the measurement unit is 1 Akhmatsvet or 1 Tsvetakhm, which is essentially the same. To merely survive in Russian poetry a contestant must (!) demonstrate the grandious score of those akhmatsvets. How many? At least, the total score of them two, plus an add-on increasing year by year.

And I feel thankful for such arbitrary destiny! Because, as years pass by in the flow of time, they read through either of them deeper and deeper, and with more and more gratitude. And thus their readers' responsiveness increases, as well as feelings of closeness, blood relatedness to their spiritual power, their civil courage in catastrophic circumstances, the drama of their lives, which were bone to bone tied up with the history of the nation, with hostile and fruitful soil of folk epos and eloquence:

Neither under alien sky, nor under
Sound protection of some alien wings -
I was with my people all around there,
Where my people suffered worst of things.
                     Anna Akhmatova (1961)

... The same poetic lines, verses and entire poems may be easily drawn to support and prove (as well as disprove!) any thinkable ideas that sometimes fall in direct controversy to one another. Quotations, pieces and fragments extorted from the entire context of a person's poetry collection and stripped of underlying biographic facts often become equivocal to the extent where the original idea is omitted in favor of some idea, roughly 'earmarked' or deliberately suggested by a virtuoso in the game of comments. This is the quality pertinent to any quotation. For this reason I avoid citing and do my best to turn to other types of evidence and avoid activities and situations that require “material evidence” in support of ideas of entirely spiritual nature. The end of clarifying comment.

Akhmatova and Tsvetayeva reveal themselves onto us in all the grandeur and awe of their terrific beauty. Neither of them has frozen in their lifetime size, disappeared in the mist, waned, or become covered with salon glitter and chic, polished with time-machine. On the contrary, they have incredibly, supernaturally increased in size, as compared to what they appeared to be in their times. Like two ceaseless bell-towers, they miraculously toll their powerful bells ringing endless confession, profession, convention. That is how the rank, RUSSIAN POETESS, emerged. Rank entices glory, as Dal’s Dictionary goes.

Well, a talent, a genius – they are no wonder! What are those all by themselves? A gifted person may be inspired with truth or inspired with lies, honest or dishonest, brave or chicken, noble or base. Let’s stay away from extremities. Even the most dignified talents too often fall victims to the chance and sincerely great and praise the like of the truth (which is lie, ultimately) above the actual truth (moreover, above the true essence of things); well-found balance above the harmony; function above the beauty. It would be hypocrisy to claim that poetry stays immune of such misperceptions or imbue them to "unavoidable costs". Yes, they are "costs", but they are paid at the expense of poetry. So let's abandon the clean-balance hypocrisy! The poetry will readily accept to its treasure boxes (and for much longer than on a few days terms) - along with authentic and naturally grown pearls - artful imitations of such. Yes, some would say, he's just that sort of a poet with like-looking lies in place of essential things (so like him as he is, and don't require things beyond his capacities), balance in place of harmony, functional in place of beatiful. He is such a person, so what can you expect?

However, chances of “such a poet” to qualify for a calling of Russian poetess are begging. Like-looking instead essential truth? Balance instead harmony? The function instead the beauty? All the three combined, and even any of the three – and the title of Russian poetess? Never! Not for all! Expire! To hell with you! Here is the point where all converge in their absolute non-acceptance and categorical disproval: the reader, the critic tick-tock, and the fellow poet. Most of all, it is big brother poet. He would prefer to have no sisters at all, he does not want to have anything in common with his heaven-sent sister in poetry. The only sister he needs and welcomes is the one of heroic and sanctified nature, almighty and all-enduring, tied to the beauty with all thinkable ties that might have been at disposal of a Greek goddess ruling in heaven and on earth.

This rather understandable expectation was a handy tool to help standardize and replicate banal images and manners – the most unattractive component of contemporary Russian poetry. Banalities, “knit work of banalities” – it is as dead and stinking as ever, and there are no exceptions to that! World standards are banalities as well.

Just like after Edith Piaf’s death, singers with voices “just like great Edith’s voice” appeared, here and there we hear poetic voices “with close resemblance to Akhmatova” and “strikingly reminding of Tsvetayeva” – or, at best, “amazingly different from either Tsvetayeva or Akhmatova”. However, the same benchmark is still in place.

How easy it is to be a male poet in Russia!.. Time to time I found myself obsessed by a tricky, diabolic idea – to write a book of poetry with no grammatical indications of my true sex and sign it with a man’s name, better if it will produce strong foreign or even overseas associations. Something like PIETRO NEUVADANTE. A poet from abroad is something special for us, alien names sound magnetizing. What I want to learn terrifically is what all their talks will be about: will it be Pietro Neuvadante’s “femininity” or “masculinity”? Will they discuss his lyrics in terms of being dry or wet, hot or cool, soft or hard, earthly or airborne, metaphysical or physical? In what light, finally, will I see the nature of my poetics when it is free of prejudices and traditional views upon Russian poetesses, and – most of all – free of that terrible yoke of inevitable comparison to Those Two, the eternal trap, the unavoidable Odyssey’s part to pass, to fly and stay alive between the Scylla and Charybdis?

I am sure that after publication of such a mystification, brother poets and mother-in-law critics would heartily praised a “young, fresh, brilliant and so forth the crap” fellow poet in my overseas reincarnate person. At any rate, they would be much more condescending and friendly when granting me the title of their “brother” instead of “sister”. Because brother poets when weighing each other’s merits never throw on the opposite cup of their scales two deadly weights, the two classics, the two geniuses at once – for they would hardly survive that deadly trick.

Reading folks, writing folks, criticizing folks – they all have created the image of a Russian poetess and insured it against fake, against damage, against dismissal, and most of all – against the risk of inventory in the age of charlatan reviewers; they all keep it like the apple of their eyes. They keep to the best of their aptitude – sometimes clumsily, but always sincerely and vigorously. Those who feel they cannot live – or rather survive – without poetry strongly demand that a Russian poetess (requirements are dozen times as harsh as those imposed on men) is a participant to a chrestomathy of beauty and harmony, braveness and nobility, civil dignity of the Muse and her personal influence on individuals and whatever is deemed human in them. With all mental efforts to make it look ridiculous, Akhmatova and Tsvetayeva (either absolutely apart or jointly) produced the system of moral, artistic, ethic and aesthetic values which applies as the etalon of creative ethics to a Russian poetess.

...A titanic drop of eternity in depths of human life – is it the source that gives birth and rhythm to a thunderous heartbeat of Poetry? (“You’re captured by eternity, imprisoned in your time”).

Highly respectable men, including some “patriarch” of modern lyre, kithara, lute, mandolin, guitar and bass would readily exclaim time to time:

“Oh, you see, he’s a true poet, not some poetess! Manly thinking, strong and holistic character.” (and so forth with banalities of this sort)

 At such points, I feel like laughing to death. All I want is to whisper to the ear of that self-content, skillful, deceitful flatterer, “O lucky you! You don’t have the slightest idea of what luck you enjoy! You’ve survived among “the first ones” and even were “admitted to their scores”. But I’m scared when I imagine you with all your poetry books being a poetess instead. They’d never let you go with all this salon affectation and utilitarian conformism of yours. It’s rather silly to encourage Russian poetesses saying they’re true poets. You don’t praise a bird in the sky for flying like a jet plane, do you?”

And the recent onslaught of that “fourth sort” appraisal is overwhelming, with the dominating note, however, about the complete ignorance and absolute misunderstanding of “Russian poet – Russian poetess” problem.

I reject the honor of being awarded the poet’s title instead of Russian poetess in favor of those short of spirit. In favor of those swallowed and spat out with bad moral concussions.

My mot de parole is verbs in female inclination, and I belong where my life and soul is – between the hammer and the slab, between Scylla and Charybdis, between the harmony of eternal and demonism of passing. “Here’s my hometown, here’s my home, here my sledge runs down the slope,” just like it goes in a poem of my early childhood.

The most fearful quality of fears is to come true when you are afraid. Courage and grace are the only way to escape it, while everything else (including hiding and waiting the fear to go, training and mastering your fear, feeding it from your hand, and waiting for it to encourage you for good behavior and leave) result in increased quantity and quality of actual dangers. Therefore, we have no other choice but courage and grace. Russian poetry offers only two sentences to a Russian poetess to choose between for her personal life and destiny: hard to the strong, and easy to the feeble. And don’t say that I call white black, or prefer black to white, or my vision is darkened, or make things look more complicated than they are, or dramatize commons. (“The greatest drama is  a common day.” – Emily Dickinson)

The whitest thing may look black (a blank paper, for instance), and through the blackest depths of ignorance and unawareness the brightest light of poetic essence will sometimes break through onto us. Where on earth can the light dwell and wander, besides darkness? Is there a fool to light his light when it is clear and visible – clairvoyant – all around?

In 20th century, however, it is much easier to demonstrate brilliant knowledge and experience than to imagine and encircle the huge space of unknown and unidentifiable with the luxuries offered by our knowledge and experience. The brightest dead alley (even in the Garden of Eden) is far more hopeless in our profession, the Art, than the darkest labyrinth full of traps and fabulous dangers.

The light of Poetry – it’s available to those who probe this incessantly burning world with his own eyes –the eyes of a poet are like binoculars that help suggest that the Power of Imagination is different from “horse power” of lie skewing details “in favor of this one or that one”. Instead, it is the driving force that helps approach the dawn, and next the ray of that very essence, which will clarify us – with all our heavy burdens of daily routine, labors, tragedies and inner sufferings.

Now, Mayakovsky’s dream of “many poets, fine and different” have come true, of course. Poets are too many. And it’s wonderful, for many of them I like, and those I don’t like are liked by someone else. But I cannot name a single fellow poet who could and would (of his own food will) acquire and carry on with proper dignity and honor the title of Russian poetess after Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetayeva, in our days, instead of us, somehow managing to fly through between the Scylla and Charybdis and pour out those akhmatsvets and tsvetakhms…

So, how can you be a poetess in Russia and avoid being swallowed and spat out, and stand the temptation of joining the brotherhood of poets?

Postscript

As for “To be or not to be?”

“Have you ever been to Krakow?”
“Yes.”
“And were did you stay?”
“In a huge empty house of Pan G.”
“And how did you get in that house?”
“I took the key out of my pocket and unlocked the door.”
“You joke?”
“Not at all. I always open doors with the key. And if the key in my pocket does not work, then it is the wrong door.”
“And what then?”
“Not to be where you cannot be. And to be where you cannot not to be.”

...At this point I usually sing Skewed Sails on the Bezant.