SOURCE: “Mystic Transformations,” in Russian Metaphysical Romanticism: The Poetry of Tiutchev and Boratynskii, Stanford University Press, 1984, pp. 174-83.

[In the following excerpt, Pratt presents a detailed analysis of Boratynsky's “The Last Death,” exploring its themes, structure, and philosophical underpinnings.]

… Three types of poetic material contribute to the underlying substance of [“The Last Death”]: a mystical visionary aspect, an archaic or biblical aspect, and a personal conversational aspect. All these are held together by a framework based on the imagery of time and vision. The framework itself breaks down into a series of two-stanza segments. The opening segment introduces the persona, who narrates the poem initially as an abstract third person (on: he; chelovek: man) and then as a first person who addresses the reader himself, and also introduces the key concepts of vision and time. The third and fourth stanzas portray a specific vision about a specific time, the Enlightenment, and the fifth and sixth stanzas focus on the romantic epoch dominated by idealist philosophy. The persona never identifies the historical periods by name, but his descriptions leave little room for misunderstanding. The two final stanzas then describe the horrifying spectacle of the Last Death.

The opening part of the poem is based on a series of images and concepts similar to those in Tiutchev's mystic poems, suggesting a common sphere of poetic experience and expression. The word videnie (vision), naturally, brings Tiutchev's poem “A Vision” to mind, and the use of the verb est' in the opening statement—Est' bytie (There is a certain reality)—even parallels the opening of Tiutchev's poem—Est' nekii chas (There is a certain hour). In addition, both poems pun on the word “vision,” utilizing both its mystical and sensory denotations. Tiutchev puns implicitly by using predominantly visual imagery in a poem describing a mystic vision. Boratynskii puns in a more explicit manner. He uses the word videnie twice (stanza 1, line 8; stanza 2, line 4), both times in the mystic sense of the word. But he accompanies the word with repeated statements of seeing as a sensory function: On vidit svet (He sees a world); Predstavshee ocham moim videnie (the vision presented to my eyes); videl bez pokrova (saw without a covering shroud).

The opening stanza of “The Last Death” also parallels Tiutchev's “As the ocean embraces the earthly sphere” in the appearance of wave imagery and in the suggestion of man's submission to elemental forces: Stikhiia … nudit nas (The Element … compels us) in Tiutchev's poem and Stikhiinomu smiaten'iu otdan on (He is given over to elemental strife) in Boratynskii's. And in both cases, the elemental force appears on all sides (so vsekh storon), leaving man no avenue for escape.

In addition, this section shares certain aspects with Tiutchev's “What are you howling about, night wind?,” “Day and Night,” and “Holy night has risen into the firmament.” Boratynskii's use of the double meaning of the word bezumie (madness, insanity; mindlessness, irrationality) to convey the state of being given over to feelings and other nonrational functions (stanza 1, line 4) parallels Tiutchev's use of the word bezumno in reference to the night wind's howling. The allusion to the ancient fatherland suggests Tiutchev's notion of an “ancient and native chaos.” Similarly, the nighttime setting is typical of most of Tiutchev's mystic poems, and the idea of seeing fate without a covering shroud (bez pokrova) parallels the situations described in both “Day and Night” and “Holy night has risen into the firmament.”

The poets were clearly working with a shared poetic vocabulary of mysticism, but in their own ways. “The Last Death” partakes of the same sort of mystical setting found in a number of Tiutchev's poems, yet it has certain qualities that are typical of Boratynskii's work and diametrically opposed to the main characteristics of Tiutchev's poetry. Tiutchev's persona, for instance, shows little if any consciousness of his own individual identity. He exists as a part of the event he describes. Boratynskii's persona, on the other hand, is continuously aware of his own self-image. In the opening lines of the second stanza, one hears a voice full of introspective self-doubt, much like the voice that narrates Boratynskii's “Rhyme”: Sozdan'e li boleznennoi mechty il' derzkogo uma soobrazhen'e … predstavshee ocham moim viden'e? (Was this vision presented to my eyes … the creation of a sickly dream, or the imagined product of an insolent mind?)

Just as Boratynskii's persona is acutely conscious of himself, he is also acutely aware of the passage of time and of the effect of time on human lives. He thinks both of the passage of time in his own life—iavlialis' ot vremeni do vremeni ocham (from time to time appeared before my eyes)—and of the chronological order of larger events: Sobytiia vstavali … i polnymi epokhami iavlialis' (events arose … appeared as entire epochs). The remaining portions of the poem deal with these epochs in chronological order. Tiutchev's metaphysical poems, conversely, convey no sense of time. They portray events that occur in the timeless realm of the universe at large. In “A Vision,” for instance, the words nekii chas (a certain hour) do not denote a particular segment in a chronologically ordered series of events, but rather denote any segment of time endowed with a particular set of qualities.

In the third and fourth stanzas, the persona of “The Last Death” begins the narration of the events that comprise his vision. The first line of the third stanza contains the signs that mark divisions between major sections of the poem, references to chronological order and vision—snachala (at first) and iavil mne (appeared to me). Then the persona goes on to describe a world founded on faith in human reason and characterized by preoccupation with productive activity, inventiveness, industriousness, and artifice. Unlike the activity of the modern age depicted in “The Last Poet,” the activity of the age of reason here is not directed toward the goal of profit but rather approaches the goal of proving the power of man's reason and physical prowess at the expense of nature's own mode of existence.

The situation is much like the one depicted in the middle section of Tiutchev's “Dream at Sea.” A vision associated with a painful dreaming state—sozdan'e … boleznennoi mechty (the creation of a painful dream) here, [son] boleznenno-iarkii ([a dream] painfully bright) in Tiutchev's poem—causes the persona to become cognizant of a world characterized by human “triumph” over nature. In his vision the persona of “Dream at Sea” sees labyrinth gardens, palaces, columns, and crowds of silent people, and reports that he strode like God along the heights of creation, the creation of his own dream. Boratynskii's persona does not take personal credit for the world he sees, but he still accepts it as the achievement of human reason. And what he sees is much like the scene in “Dream at Sea,” a wondrous garden filled with the products of human art and artifice: palaces, theaters, fountains, and crowds of people who seem to have subjugated nature to their own laws. Just as Tiutchev's persona floats over the depths of the sea in his self-created dream, the people of Boratynskii's Enlightenment have conquered the sea by building artificial islands and ventured into the heavens by means of artificial wings.

Both worlds ultimately prove to be unenduring products of rationalistic dreams and must give way to other forces. In Tiutchev's poem, the sea's chaos of sounds breaks into the world of the dream, and the poem ends. Boratynskii does not portray the demise of the Enlightenment directly, but he ironically suggests its self-destruction. The last line of the stanza contains an explicit note of falseness that forces the reader to reexamine all that has come before, now with a sense of ironic skepticism: Vse na zemle kak budto likovalo (Everything on earth seemed to rejoice). Perhaps all the triumphs of reason described in the preceding lines only seem to be achievements.

The fourth stanza continues this double-edged description of the Enlightenment. The so-called fruitless years (besplodnye goda) had disappeared, the plowman's whim now controlled the weather, and he was paid back a hundredfold for what he had sown. To someone who knows Boratynskii's work, or even to someone who has read through the rest of the poem, the idea of being paid back a hundredfold for forcing nature to accommodate man-made patterns is a threatening one. The disappearance of the beast of prey parallels the earlier “fruitless” years both in its action—disappearing—and in the double meaning implied by this occurrence. On the one hand, man is safer and happier without dangerous beasts of prey and without fruitless years. But on the other hand, the disappearance of such phenomena through man's brutal intervention in natural processes bodes ill, for the disappearance of the beast of prey might also signify the end to one of man's natural supplies of food, and the end of the fruitless years might result in a kind of cancerous fertility that would eventually smother the earth.

The narrator's own closing remarks on this bright world of enlightenment (the notion of light emphasized by the common root -svet-/-sveshch- in svetlyi and prosveshchen'e) carry several sets of connotations. The anaphoric repetition of the word vot (there; there it is), the disruption of the rhythm caused by the realization of stress in vot, and the use of the phrase vot do chego (this is the point [it's come to]) all help create a conversational tone that differs from the slightly higher style dominating most of the poem. The change in tone exposes a certain gullible and simplistic side of the persona's character. He admits that he has been charmed (prel'shchennyi) by the strange and wondrous age, suggesting that perhaps he is not in the full power of his senses and that the age attracted him against his better judgment. The conversational tone also conveys a certain lack of respect for the topic under discussion—the Enlightenment. Thus, when the persona says Vragam ego i v styd i v pouchen'e, / Vot do chego dostiglo prosveshchen'e! (Let its enemies be ashamed and learn their lesson, this is what enlightenment has come to!), the part of him that has been charmed expects the statement to be taken in a literal way, while the wiser, more cynical part of him loads this conclusion with a large dose of irony.

The fifth stanza opens with the signals of time and sensory vision, and indicates that another mystic vision is beginning: Proshli veka. Iasnet' ocham moim / Videnie drugoe nachinalo (Ages passed. Another vision began to develop before my eyes). The persona does not jump immediately into a description of the new vision, however, but focuses first on his own reactions. He continues to use the interrogative pronoun chto (what) in much the same way that he used vot (there) before. In this context both words imply some kind of gesticulation that might be used in an animated conversation—a finger waving emphatically in the air, a fist emphatically (but not angrily) thumping on a table. The inclusion of commonly spoken phrases like Vot do chego (Look what … has come to) and Chto zhe (what then) make the persona's human perspective all the more immediate.

The persona's tendency to use self-irony as a way of expressing an ironic view of the vision he describes also continues. He awaits the revelation of man's new achievements with pride and expectation, but then discovers that his confused mind (smutivshimsia umom) can grasp this epoch only with difficulty. In fact, he presents himself as an essentially unreliable narrator throughout the first three-fourths of the poem. At the outset, he wonders if his vision is merely the product of a sickly dream; describing the Enlightenment, he admits that he is charmed, perhaps enchanted by the age; and here he is confused. Thus the reader must always take the persona's statements of wonder and admiration with a rather large grain of salt.

What the persona sees at this point is the reaction to the excesses of the Enlightenment, an era dominated by idealistic rather than rationalistic thought. Having become accustomed to the abundance of earthly goods provided by their forefathers, the people of this epoch see no value in material things. The biblical sound of the phrase obil'iu dol'nykh blag (abundance of earthly blessings) functions as a response to the biblical notion of being repaid a hundredfold for labors and, indeed, shows exactly how the efforts of the age of reason have been repaid—with total rejection. This era lives on dreams, fantasy, and living thought (zhivaia mysl').

But the new epoch is flawed by excesses of its own. The people are so engrossed in the realm of fantasy that they tread upon the earth with difficulty and their marriages bear no fruit. The “fruitless years” mentioned in the fourth stanza have returned, only in a different guise. The physical nature (telesnaia priroda) associated with the practical orientation of the Enlightenment has given way to intellectual nature (umstvennaia priroda), but for Boratynskii this is still not real nature at all. For while Boratynskii reduces German idealism to the absurd in stanzas 5 and 6, he also offers an implicit argument in support of Schelling's Philosophy of Identity. Just as Schelling posits the physical and spiritual realms as equally important aspects of the whole of nature, Boratynskii here rejects cultures that function solely on a spiritual level as well as cultures based on physical domination of nature. The unstated conclusion is that authentic nature partakes of both elements in equal measure.

The two concluding stanzas of the poem portray the devastating result of man's attempts to bend nature too far in either direction. The section opens with the usual references to the passage of time and vision. But here there are no traces of irony or simple-minded admiration. The persona views death with horror and describes it in language with archaic or biblical overtones expressing both terror and acceptance of the inevitable: khodila … po sushe, po vodam (walked the land and waters); svershilasia … sud'bina (fate … was coming to fulfillment). When the conversational voice breaks in, its presence is again marked by the stressed repetition of a one-syllable word falling on the first syllable of a line and creating a spondee—Gde liudi? Gde? (Where were the people? Where?). But here the personal feelings expressed by the narrator stem from panic and fear rather than from naïve admiration or ironic intent.

In its expression of these negative feelings, the seventh stanza parodies the typical sentimental or romantic literary landscape in a number of ways. It speaks of ruins, flocks bleating in the fields, and a few languishing human figures. But the people are dying of civilization's own erring ways, not of anything as literarily acceptable as consumption or romantic ennui. The ruins have nothing at all to do with the striking image of ancient columns decaying at the border. Their fate, like that of the people they are compared to, stems from the error of modern civilization. And the flocks do not act as the traditional symbol for peaceful, carefree rustic life. They wander mindlessly in overgrown pastures and bleat from hunger, not contentment.

The description of the wandering, bleating, mindless flocks (bluzhdali … bezumnye stada) contains the sense of the whole poem in compressed form. The adjective bezumnye (mindless) echoes the word bezumie, which is used with emphasis on other aspects of its meaning (irrationality; insanity) to describe man's visionary state in the first stanza. Together with the marked archaic form gladnoe (instead of golodnoe: hungry), the adjective bezumnye creates a pathetic picture of flocks crazed by hunger wandering randomly in search of nonexistent food. The verb bluzhdat' then links the mindless flocks with the insanity of human existence, as its double meanings “to wander” and “to err” apply both to the flocks and to civilization's erring ways. The image of flocks without a shepherd and the notion of error (zabluzhdenie) contribute to the biblical dimension mentioned earlier and underscore an element of moral judgment. The hungry bleating of the flocks, the only image of sound in the whole poem, embodies the poem's basic idea. It expresses both urgent need and unwarranted hope for something not to be found: the flocks' hunger and mindless search for nonexistent food, and man's hunger and mindless search for the nourishment that can be found only in a world ruled by equitably measured portions of reason and fantasy, of material and spiritual concern. In the unbalanced world described in the poem, both the sheep and all human civilization must fall prey to the Last Death.

In the final stanza, the sound of the hungry bleating has disappeared. The Last Death has occurred. Silence reigns, and nature reveals itself as the ruling force on earth. This is authentic nature, neither the rational yet ultimately physical nature of the Enlightenment nor the intellectual nature of the epoch of philosophical idealism. The legitimacy and the power of this true nature are shown by a lexicon laden with regal connotations: torzhestvenno (solemnly; ceremonially); votsarilas' (came to rule, ascended the throne); dikuiu porfiru drevnikh let (the barbarous purple of bygone years); derzhavnaia (powerful, mighty); oblachilas' (robed itself); velichistven (majestic, sublime). Death has done away with the human pretenders and nature has reclaimed her rightful throne.

This closing spectacle can hardly be said to abound in positive overtones. Yet “The Last Death,” like “The Last Poet,” closes in a way that leaves room for a certain amount of hope. This hope rests precisely on nature's ability to survive. In “The Last Poet,” the sea evokes a yearning in man's soul, which may eventually lead man away from the force of pragmatism that dominates the “lifeless” modern world. Here, the landscape is barren of human and animal life, but the earth steams with the purifying sacrifice: apocalyptic destruction is, at the same time, purification, and hope remains that something better may come.

Tiutchev, though he generally focuses on some kind of spiritual transport rather than portraying death per se, did write at least one poem that expresses an apocalyptic vision similar to Boratynskii's. This very short poem, entitled “The Last Cataclysm” (Poslednii kataklizm, 1830), is based on the same plot: a larger force of nature destroys the world we know, but this destruction also carries elements of purification and rebirth within it. As usual, however, there is a significant difference in the poetic method used by the two authors, and a corresponding difference in the length of the poems: Boratynskii received a poetic impulse and wrote nearly a hundred lines exploring every aspect in detail; Tiutchev received a similar impulse and transcribed it in four lines, without any further analytic development. In addition, Boratynskii's poem conveys a sense of moral or rational judgment as his persona maintains a feeling of separation from the event he describes and consciously voices his reaction to it. When the reaction is either invalid or ironic within the context of Boratynskii's own world view, the sense of poetic distance is all the greater. In Tiutchev's poem, on the other hand, there can be no sense of separation, no judgment, because the persona is invisible, and the event is presented without comment as an objective existential fact.

“POSLIDNIJ KATAKLIZM”

Kоgda prоbsit pоslidnij cas prirоdy,
Sоstav castij razrusitsy zimnyk:
Vsi zrimоi оpyts pокrоyt vоdy,
I bоzij liк izоbrazitsy v nik!

“THE LAST CATACLYSM”

When the last hour of nature strikes, the composition of earthly elements will be demolished; the waters will again cover all visible things, and God's countenance will be reflected in them.

Both poems bring to mind Schelling's notion of the return, disintegration, and regeneration of all things in the Indifferenz (undifferentiation) of the Absolute. Specifically, there are in Schelling's Untersuchungen über das Wesen der menschlichen Freiheit (Inquiries on the Essence of Human Freedom) certain passages based on imagery much like the imagery in the poems. In a passage suggesting Tiutchev's poem, Schelling writes: “Finally comes the crisis … which will stream over the ground (Grund) [Grund means “soil, ground, or basis” in both literal and figurative, metaphysical senses.] of the old world as water once covered primeval creation again in order to make a second creation possible … [A new creation will follow] in which God the Spirit will manifest himself in reality.”¹ The flood imagery and the association of the apocalypse with the manifestation of God parallel Tiutchev's poem. Both men could have taken their inspiration directly from the Bible, of course, but the general pattern of Schelling's influence in Tiutchev's poetry makes the philosophy at least equally plausible as a source of inspiration.

In a similar passage suggesting the main elements of “The Last Death,” Schelling says:

the essence of existence cannot produce true and full unity, so that there will come a time when all the splendors of our world will be destroyed. The beautiful body of the hitherto existing world will disintegrate as though it had fallen prey to a horrible sickness, and finally chaos will reappear … [But] the same moment when the earth is deserted and empty for the second time will also be the moment of the birth of the higher light of the spirit …²

The world portrayed in Boratynskii's poem lacks “true and full unity” because only one aspect of nature—physical or intellectual—dominates each epoch. Therefore, its “splendors” are ultimately destroyed by the “sickness” of death. But as with Schelling, the moment of destruction is also the moment of purification and hope that a new world, a world fully integrated in the manner expounded in Schelling's Philosophy of Identity, will be made possible. …

Notes

1. … [Schelling, F. W. J., Sämmtliche Werke. 14 vols. Stuttgart: Cotta'scher Verlag, 1856-61], p. 380.

2. Ibid., p. 379. …