SOURCE: Lehrman, Alexander. “The Poetics of Karolina Pavlova.” In Essays on Karolina Pavlova, edited by Susanne Fusso and Alexander Lehrman, pp. 3-20. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2001.

[In the following essay, Lehrman explores the verbal quality in representative examples of Pavlova's verse to show what constitutes her excellence as a poet.]

In Russia, her homeland, Karolina Karlovna Pavlova (or Caroline von Pawloff, as she signed her printed works and letters during the German period of her life) is remembered only by a few specialists, which is to say hardly at all. The hundredth anniversary of her death (1993) passed virtually unnoticed there. Yet, beginning in the early 1970s, something like a quiet Pavlova revival has been under way in the West, primarily in the United States and in Germany. This revival is unfortunately due less to Pavlova's literary work per se than to two sociocultural factors: first and foremost, her gender and, less important, her ethnos (Karolina Pavlova, née Jänisch, or Jaenisch, was of German descent). If one adds to her gender and ethnos such public-opinion negatives as the privileges of wealth, a brilliant education, and intelligence, as well as the lack of the obligatory prettiness, a certain “cold” formality of manner, and finally her disastrous marriage to the profligate but “politically correct” Nikolaj Filippovich Pavlov, it becomes clear why the Russian debut of Pavlova's earthly life failed to endear her to the vlastiteli dum (molders of public opinion, literally “thought masters”) of her time. Since, however, Karolina Pavlova's personal problems in Russia did have more to do with her gender and ethnos than anything else, and especially since both her gender and her ethnos received verbal form in her oeuvre, there is some poetic justice in this sociopolitically motivated revival.

In this essay I shall concentrate exclusively on one aspect of Pavlova's work that has been largely neglected or underappreciated, namely her verbal art. She stands out among Russian writers for the extraordinary multi-facetedness of her work. Pavlova wrote not only masterful lyric poetry but also exquisite narrative prose of great psychological sophistication. She is a consummate master of the narrative, both in verse (such as her narrative poem The Quadrille) and in prose (the “sketch” A Twofold Life, the novella At Tea Table). Pavlova is a witty essayist and polemical writer (see her Letter to I. I. Panaev, the editor of the journal Sovremennik). Within the Russian classical tradition the same may be said perhaps only of Pushkin. In this regard Pavlova is far ahead of her time and finds direct followers only in Andrej Bêlyj, Marina Cvêtaeva, and perhaps Mikhail Kuzmin.

In what follows I shall focus on Pavlova's poetry. I will attempt to show, on the basis of textual examples, what constitutes Pavlova's excellence (άρετή) as a poet. Pioneering efforts properly to evaluate Pavlova's “poetic craft” (apropos this coinage see below) were made early in this century by Andrej Bêlyj and by the literary critic of Russkaia mysl', Boris Grifcov (see an English translation of his 1915 Pavlova essay in this volume), yet these have been forgotten like Karolina Pavlova herself. Those who recall Pavlova for the sake of encyclopedic dictionaries or anthologies literally repeat some old clichés. The well-known Handbook of Russian Literature¹ gives more space to Pavlova's husband Nikolaj Filippovich, who, except for three novellas penned early in his career, did not write anything worthy of note; the entry on Karolina Pavlova does little but quote Bêlinskïj's well-known opinion of her. Evelyn Bristol, in her recent book A History of Russian Poetry (1991),² treats Pavlova under the eloquent rubric “Lesser Idealists” and summarily dismisses her work by repeating the hostile assessments of it by the partisan critics of her day: “Pavlova's poetry was described by her contemporaries as cold and rational, even [sic] virtuoso. She was relatively unable to create the illusion of experience, and her defence of the emotional life is abstract. Her poems are also marred by her high opinion of her own sensitivity and courage” (151-52). Obviously, Pavlova's true place in the Russian literary tradition remains undefined.

The properly literary or verbal qualities of Pavlova's oeuvre remain quite understandably outside the field of vision of those whom Pavlova interests only as a class-cum-gender or gender-cum-class phenomenon. Yet Pavlova had a formative influence on some outstanding Russian writers, including her contemporary, Count Aleksêj Tolstoj, the Symbolists Valerïj Briusov and Andrej Bêlyj in the next generation, and then, in the younger generation, Anna Akhmatova, Marina Cvêtaeva, and Mikhail Bulgakov (see the essays by Amert and Venclova and my “Karolina Pavlova's Influence on Mikhail Bulgakov” in this volume). This formative influence, or Karolina Pavlova's posthumous life in the work of outstanding masters of the Russian word, takes place precisely within the medium of words, those very sovereign words (derzhavnyia slova) about which Pavlova wrote so memorably and comfortingly in her response to Pushkin's “Dar naprasnyj, dar sluchajnyj, / Zhizn', zachêm ty mnê dana” (O useless gift, O fortuitous gift, / Life, why hast thou been given me?): life is neither useless nor fortuitous because sovereign words reign over it. Ironically, even the ferocious polemic of the so-called progressive school of criticism, initiated by Bêlinskïj and continued by Panaev and Saltykov-Shchedrin, against the aesthetics of “pure art” is condensed in the popular label of the “papillon poetry” (motyl'kovaia poèziïa) taken from a poem by Pavlova “Motylëk” (“The Moth”). This label, coined by Shchedrin in his review of the only collection of Pavlova's Russian verse published during her lifetime, was inherited by Soviet critics, who used it with glee (even in school textbooks) but did not know, and did not care to know, from what winged word it had been fashioned.

Pavlova's achievements in the technique of Russian verse were first noted by Andrej Bêlyj, who regarded her, long before Briusov's two-volume collection of Pavlova's works was published, as one of “the best [Russian] poets”—on a par with Derzhavin, Zhukovskïj, Pushkin, Baratynskïj, Lermontov, Tiutchev, and Fet.³ In developing the tradition of Krylov (fables) and Pushkin (for example, Eugene Onegin), in which the metrical schema of primarily iambic verse was subordinated to the rhythms of conversational speech, Pavlova brilliantly played on the listener's/reader's iambic expectations by using consecutive accentless feet to achieve a sense of conversational lightness; by employing an additional accented syllable for a sudden syncopated emphasis; and by using an unusual placement of word boundaries within the line as well as enjambment. The following example, singled out by Bêlyj,⁴ is from one of Pavlova's verse epistles to N. M. Iazykov:

Pокinuvh sкrоmnuy stоliцu
Dly pоlutоrоdsкikh pоlij,
Sly izh Sокоlsniкоvh y vh Niццu
Dans blagоdarnоsti mоij

(88)

Having abandoned the modest capital city
For the sake of semi-urban fields,
I send you from Sokol'niki to Nice
A tribute of my gratitude—

Following the first line, in which the ictus of the third foot is, quite classically, not accented (“scudded,” as Nabokov would have put it), the rhythmical movement of the second line (❙ o o ❙ o o ❙ o — ❙ o — ❙) is duly noted by Bêlyj as unique because of its conversationally musical acceleration (Bêlyj's felicitous term). The acceleration is, remarkably, created by the highly unusual epithet (polugorodskoj). Pavlova's epithets are treated at some length below, but let me note here parenthetically that Pavlova used neologisms with polu-, doubtless for their rare rhythmic effect, in her first published Russian poem, “Sfinks” (“The Sphinx,” 1831), which is written in iambic pentameter:

Sфinкsh bytiy, sh оdnimh vоprоsоmh grоznymh,
Pоluкrasaviцa i pоluzvyrs.
o o ❙ o — ❙ o o ❙ o o ❙ o — ❙
The sphinx of Being, with her one terrible question,
Semi-beauty and semi-beast.

The second line contains only two accents in five feet, as if iconically accenting the double nature of the Sphinx; the word boundary after the third foot is quite unusual for an iambic pentameter. But the most brilliant thing here is the semantic justification for the acceleration:

Pокinuvh sкrоmnuy stоliцu
Dly pоlugоrоdsкikh pоlij

(88)

Having abandoned the modest capital city
For the sake of semi-urban fields—

The rhythmical acceleration here is iconically isomorphous to the acceleration of the horse after leaving behind the “modest capital” for the “semi-urban fields.”

The rhythmical schema of the third and fourth lines of the example is also interesting:

❙ — o ❙ o — ❙ o o ❙ — — ❙ o
❙ —o ❙ o — ❙ o o ❙ o — ❙

With their counterschematic accented beats, the first syllables of these two lines combine with the secondary stress on the first syllable of the third line's last foot to form the phrase shliu … ia … dan' (I send the tribute), which expresses the main idea of the epistle. This poem, written in 1840, exemplifies Pavlova's genius at combining the metrical and rhythmic capabilities of classical syllabotonic verse with the syntactic and rhythmic characteristics of conversational speech in order to orchestrate meaning. Often it is difficult to define or describe Pavlova's mastery because her mastery is complex: it consists in a simultaneous deployment of means belonging to different levels in order to achieve a unified poetic goal.

Here is one more equally effective example of the same rhythmical acceleration that also is motivated semantically. The poem in question is “Sputnica Feia” (“A Fairy Companion,” 1858) which is written in amphibrachic tetrameter:

I, vtоry liкuysij pysnоj visny
Ryzvilish micty mоi, tysiliss smylо,
I plaкalо sladко, i radоstnо pylо
Sistnadцatilytnii sirdцi vо mny.

(198)

And, echoing the rejoicing flamboyant spring
My daydreams were frolicking, enjoying themselves boldly,
And sweetly wept and joyfully sang
The sixteen-year-old heart in me.

The last line begins with four unaccented syllables in a row, which is extremely rare for the amphibrach (o o o ❙ o — o ❙ o — o ❙ o —). The phrase shestnadcatilêtnee serdce skips an ictus, literally, iconically depicting the young heart skipping a beat, which is the topic of this strophe.

Among other examples of this type of acceleration, the first strophe of “Venecïia” (“Venice”) is worth remarking on. This poem is part of the voyage cycle called Fantasmagorïi:

Parоvh iscizlо pокryvalо,—
Plyvimh.—Esi li ni vidna?
Nadh rоvnоy cirtоy vala
Tamh slоvnо ctо-tо zasiylо,
Nyrnuvh izh mоry.—Vоth оna!

(213)

The veil of steam has vanished—
We're sailing.—Can you see it yet?
Above the even line of the wave
Something started shining, as it were, over there,
Diving out of the sea.—There it is!

The impatient Eshchë li ne vidna? with the semi-enclitic eshchë⁵ and with the ictus omitted on ne, is marked by the lowering of the pitch in the pause after Plyvëm! and by the raising of the pitch on the ictus of the last foot: ne vidná? The strong phrasal stress on the ictus of the third foot in the last line of this strophe, where the answer is given (Vót onà!), is remarkable by its contrast with the omission of the corresponding ictus in the second line, where the question is asked: the rhythmic contrast neatly reflects the contrast of question and answer.

Pavlova's rhythmic mastery within the framework of classical syllabotonic meters reaches its apogee in her narrative poem Kadril' (The Quadrille, 1859). Long before this Pavlova had used metrical diversity in her narrative verse to characterize different dramatic voices. For example, her 1842 poem “Razskaz” (“A Story”) uses a standard iambic tetrameter for the authorial voice, while the mysterious voice that converses with the hero(ine) of the poem is written in the iambic tetrameter with a dactylic clausula in the odd lines:

Rоdnоi, brоsivh zizns tylisnuy,
Ots nash umcitsy navsigda ls
Vh niizmyrimоsts niizvystnuy,
Vh niprоniцaimuy dals? …

(108)

Will the dear thing, having abandoned the bodily life,
Rush away from us forever
Into an unknown immeasurability,
Into an impenetrable distance? …

This meter is quite rare in Russian poetry of the first half of the nineteenth century. The earliest example of it known to me⁶ is Evgenïj Baratynskïj's “Dvê doli,” 1823:

Dalо dvy dоli Prоvidynii
                    Na vybоrh mudrоsti lydsкоj:
Ili nadizdu i vоlninii,
                    Ils biznadiznоsts i pокоj.(7)

(100)

Providence made two lots available
                    To human wisdom's choice:
Either hope and anxiety
                    Or hopelessness and tranquility.

Sometimes Pavlova's choice of meters is motivated by the introduction of a literary echo. Such is the case in the 1844 poem “Moskva” (“Moscow”), in which iambic pentameter is superseded by iambic tetrameter:⁸

Mоcкva! Mоcкva! ctо vh zvuкrs etоmh,
Kaкоj оtzyvh cipdicnyj vh nimh!

(122)

Moscow! Moscow! What is it in this sound,
What a heart-felt echo sounds in it!

These lines—the meter and the sense (otzýv serdechnyj [a heart-felt echo])—are motivated by the presence of Pushkin's voice in the echo of these famous lines:

Mоcкva … кaкh mnоgо vh etоmh zvuкl
Dly cirdцa Russкagо slilоss!
Kaкh mnоgо vh nimh оtоzvalоcs!(9)
Moscow … in this sound, how much
Is blended for the Russian heart!
How much is echoed in it!

In the 1845 poem “Tri dushi” (“Three Souls”) Pavlova uses four different meters to characterize the authorial voice and the voices of the three women-poets who are the poem's subject. In the poem “Uzhin Pollïona” (“Pollio's Supper”), which was written in Constantinople in 1857, the framing iambic tetrameter of the preamble and the conclusion contrasts with the main narrative's amphibrachic tetrameter, while the refrain is in the rare amphibrachic pentameter. In the verse novella Kadril', Pavlova's polymetrical skill reaches its peak. Five-line strophes of trochaic tetrameter are used in the Dedication to Baratynskïj, which echoes Pavlova's 1839 poem “Est' liubimcy vdokhnovenïj” (“Inspiration has its favorites”). Iambic tetrameter, in accord with the tradition of Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Baratynskïj's Bal (The Ball), is used for the authorial voice, for general conversation, and for the story of the countess, the main protagonist of Kadril'. More spacious and prosaically hefty meters are employed for the narratives of the other characters: iambic pentameter for Nadine's story, trochaic pentameter for Liza's, and iambic hexameter for Olga's. Kadril' ends, as it began, in the iambic tetrameter of the countess's story and the authorial voice. From the point of view of Pavlova's syntactico-rhythmic prowess, Kadril' is a veritable tour de force and deserves special investigation.

Professor Fusso's essay (see this volume) treats Kadril''s contents while quoting it at length, and I will not give any quotes here, with one exception. The countess's story, which is written like the rest non-strophically, contains a nearly complete Onêgin strophe that is flagged quotationally rather than typographically:

Mоj dydy, staryj кnyzs аrsinij,
Vh tо vrimy lytоmh i zimоj
Zilh, pridavaysh silhsкоj lyni,
Vh svоij dirivny pоdh Mоsкvоj;
Tamh vzdumalh, dоciri vh ugоdu,
Dats prazdniкh кh nоvоmu оnh gоdu,
I оbsay byla tuda
Vh sanykh ucrizdina yzda.
Silо оth gоrоda lizalо
Vh sistnadцati virstakh, i namh
Nоcligh gоstipriimnо tamh
Bylh prigоtоvlinh pоsly bala;

(353-54)

My uncle, the old prince Arsenïj,
At that time, in summer and in winter
Lived, surrendering to rustic sloth,
In his village near Moscow;
There he decided, to please his daughter,
To give a party on New Year's Eve,
And the general sled procession thither was thus sanctioned.
The settlement was located sixteen miles away from the city, and for us
An overnight stay had been hospitably prepared there after the ball;

Only the last two lines of this segment deviate from the Onêgin rhyme schema, which could have been fulfilled without difficulty: it seems that the required masculine-rhyme lines were moved further down by the author to prevent the allusive joke from becoming tiresome by being pursued too earnestly for too long.

Let me now turn to Pavlova's achievement in the domain of forms new or particularly unusual for Russian verse. The poem “Plovec” (“The Sailor,” 1855) is a masterpiece of the Sapphic strophe in its rhymed variety (the abab schema). I shall quote, for the sake of its magnificent instrumentation, the second strophe of the poem:

Kоts by buri zlоsts prоnislass nadh bizdnоj,
Kоts by grynulh grоmh i vоlna zavyla,—
Prоcinh cilnh igо, vyrinh ruls zilyznyj,
                    Krypко vytrilо.

(187)

Let the tempest's anger rush over the abyss,
Let the thunder roar and the waves howl—
His barque is sound, the iron helm is true,
The sail is strong.

The 1851 poem “Serenada” (“A Serenade”), which consists of seven strophes of iambic trimeter, has as its constant refrain the line “Spi bezmiatezhnym snom” (May thy sleep be serene). The refrain's first foot is trochaic, singling out the first word of the line. The penultimate line of every strophe in the poem becomes the first line of the next strophe, where that line acquires a new sense in its new context. Here, for example, are the second and third strophes:

Ty mny lybоvs i sila
I svyth vh puti mоimh,
Vsi, ctо mny zizns sulila,—
Spi bizmytiznymh snоmh.
Vsi, ctо mny zizns sulila
Naprasnо sh кazdymh dnimh;
Viss bridh mladоgо pyla,—
Spi bizmytiznymh snоmh.
Thou art my love and strength
And the light in my journey,
Thou art everything that life promised me—
May thy sleep be serene.
Thou art everything that life promised me
Falsely with every day,
Thou art all the delirium of my youthful ardor—
May thy sleep be serene.

Alexander Blok took note of this unique strophic structure and copied into his diary the first, second, third, and final strophes of the poem.¹⁰

Karolina Pavlova experimented widely with rhymes, for which she was roundly criticized by the tin-eared critics of the day. The progressive Ivan Panaev, for instance, scolded Pavlova for the “richness and novelty” (bogatstvo i novost') of her rhymes (see Pavlova's “Pis'mo v redakcïiu Sovremennika” [“Letter to the Editors of Sovremennik”]¹¹). Pavlova's 1854 Slavophile poem “Razgovor v Kremlê” (“A Conversation in the Kremlin”), which drew a multitude of taunts from the left-wing press, was particularly criticized for its “rich and novel” rhymes. But Pavlova's experiments with rhymes, so highly valued by the Symbolists and later innovators in Russian verse, began much earlier. It is impossible to separate this experimentation from other innovative characteristics of the sound instrumentation of Pavlova's verse. Recherché rhymes recalling Byron's, especially in Don Juan, are combined with alliteration in the following lines from the poem “Duma” (“A Meditation”) (1844):

I pоmny y, divyss, кaкh vh zizni vcl my,
Prо rannyy, оbilsnuy visnu,
I dins za dnimh na dytsкii edimy
Tumannuy spusкaith pilinu.

(119)

And I recall, marveling as all of us do in our lives,
My abundant early spring,
And each day, one after another, lowers on childhood's
                    Edens a nebulous shroud.

(Note also the alliteration de/dê in the third line.) The same rhyme resounds in the famous poem Pavlova wrote in memory of Baratynskïj in July 1846:

Zоvith nash zizns: idimh, muzayss, vsy my;
Nо vh кratкij cash, gdy stiknith grоmh nivzgоdh,
I strasti spyth, i spоry sirdцa nymy,—
Dоknith dusa sridi mirsкikh zabоth,
I vdrugh milhкnuth daliкii edimy,
I dumy vlasth оpyts svоi birith.

(128)

Life calls us: we all go, gathering our courage;
But at the brief moment when trouble's thunder is stilled,
                    and passions sleep, and the heart's debates are mute—
The soul catches its breath amidst worldly cares,
And suddenly distant Edens are sighted,
And thought's power again takes hold.

A few words about the instrumentation of this strophe. The word boundaries and caesurae in the second and third lines (No v kratkïj chas … / I strasti spiat … ; the participating vowels a—i—a) are orchestrated with the alliterative consonant sequences vkrtk—gd—st—gr—vzgd / str—sp—spr—srd. The alliterative phrase dokhnët dusha (do—du), with its unforgettable concrete image, begins an interlinear vocalic alliteration in u: the unaccented u of dusha is taken up by the accentuated u of vdrug, where the consonant sequence vdrg recalls the second and third lines with their alliterations in v plus voiced consonants and r while also echoing (-dru-) the du of dusha; the word dumy in the last line is connected alliteratively with the phrase dokhnët dusha and with the word vdrug. In addition, the rhyme clausula Èdemy is echoed in a highly original fashion by the beginning of the next and ultimate line: I dumy. This masterful use of alliteratively underscored semantic connections in verse instrumentation is rare in Russian poetry and has yet to be explored adequately.

The same rhyme (vsê my—Èdemy) appears in the important metapoetic poem of 1850, “Laterna Magica,” which similarly is written in six-line strophes of iambic pentameter:

Prоsli vyкa, i pоumnyli vsy my,
Sirsiznyi glydimh na bytii;
Prо grusts dusi, prо svytlyi edimy
Tvirdyts tajкоmh liss dyti da babsi.
Vsi vydоmо, vsy оpоslyli timy,
Ctо ni pisi—vsi snimокh i starsi.
Vоts i tipirh sоmnynii оdnо mny
Prislо na umh: bоyss, vh strоФy mоij
Najduth кaкs razh vкush “dоmiкa vh Kоlоmny”
Citatili, ils “Sкazкi dly dytij”;
Nо v glubs dusi vidynsi zaliglо mny
I mnоgо vdrugs prоsnulоsy zatij.

(147-48)

Centuries have passed, and we have all gotten smarter,
We look at existence more seriously;
About the soul's sadness, about bright Edens
Only children and womenfolk drone on furtively.
Everything is well-known, all themes have become banal,
Whatever you write is a copy and old hat.
And now a doubt has come to my mind: I'm afraid that in my stanza
A taste of precisely [Pushkin's] House in Kolomna
Will be found, or of [his] “Tale for Young Children”;
But a vision has penetrated the depth of my soul,
And many conceits have suddenly woken.

These strophes are rich not only in their rhymes (in the first strophe, the already noted vsê my—èdemy, which may be regarded as Pavlova's unique poetic signature, is joined by the rhyme temy; the stylistically oxymoronic alliterative rhyme bytïë—bab'ë is also striking) but likewise in their bitterly ironic portrayal of that age's scorn for the Pushkinian poetic tradition. The playfully prosaic spirit of the piece is epitomized in the mention of Pushkin's “Domik v Kolomnê,” which Pavlova richly rhymes (v Kolomnê) with odno mnê and zaleglo mnê. Nine years later, in her poem “Èksprompt” (“Impromptu”), Pavlova makes a metapoetic joke about Russian rhyme, recalling Pushkin's discussion of the same in Evgenïj Onêgin:

I dyti vsy macctany i mudry,
I damamh оbоjtithsy bizh cirnilh
Trudnyj, cymh ikh prababusкamh bizh pudry:
Stоlytii viliciy i sils!
zals, tritsij russкоj riфmy nyth na udpy;
Nо ctо pоzta оstanоvith pylh?

(208)

And all the children are well-read and wise,
And it is harder for the ladies to do without ink
Than it was for their great-grandmothers to do without powder:
A century of greatness and of powers!
It's too bad there is in Russian no third rhyme in udry;
But what can stop a poet's ardor?

Wittily Pavlova finds the nonexistent third rhyme by bemoaning its absence in the Russian language.

The 1845 poem “Vezdê i vsegda” (“Everywhere and Always”) is another striking and relatively early example of Pavlova's innovations in the realms of sound instrumentation and rhyme:

Vizdy vlacilh y, cuzdh zabavamh,
                    Kaкh цyps, svоy mictu:
I vh аlsbiоny vilicavоmh,
                    I vh diкоmh Timbuкtu,
I tamh, gdy snitsy о gyury
                    Razbоjniкu vh calmy,
I tamh, gly plysith v Singapury
                    Indyjsкay alsmz,
I tamh, gdy gоrоda pоd lavоj
                    Bizmоlstvuyth dоma,
I tamh, gdy цarstvuith sо slavоj
                    Tamia-mia-ma,
Kоgda y vh valssy mcalsy s damоj,
                    Odytоy vh atlash,
Kоgda pridh grоznsmh dalaj-lamоj
                    Stоylh y priкlоnyss

(127)

Everywhere, alien to amusements, I dragged my dream
          like a chain with me:
In the majestic Albion,
And in the savage Timbuktu,
And where a turbaned bandit dreams about a ghiaour,
And where the Indian belly dancer dances in Singapore,
And where the houses of a city under the lava
Are silent,
And where the king Kamehameha reigns in glory,
When I flew in a waltz with a lady
Dressed in satin,
When I stood kneeling
Before the dread Dalai Lama

These exotic (and clearly humorous) sound effects, so quixotically out of place in the gray pharisaical sobriety of the 1840s, resurface in Russian poetry only after the turn of the century in Briusov, Viacheslav Ivanov, Blok, and Gumilëv; they become commonplace in Sêverianin's fatuous fireworks and in Vertinsky's banal ballads.

One of Pavlova's recherché rhymes is connected with the introduction of a new word into the Russian literary language. The Russian Academy Dictionary, broken off by Stalin on the letter O, cites as the first occurrence of the Church Slavonic word igemon in contemporary literary Russian precisely the following lines from Pavlova's famous poem “Razgovor v Trïanonê” (“A Conversation in the Trianon”):

Stоylh vilicistvinh i nymh Onh,
Kоgda blydnyysij igimоnh
Sprоsilh u cirni, оrоbyvh

(142)

He stood there, majestic and dumb,
When the hegemon, growing pale,
Having become timid, asked the mob

The rhyme i nêm on—igemon is extraordinary in three respects: first, the phrase i nêm on rhymes almost syllable for syllable with the noun igemon; second, the o in on is unaccented but unreduced, which is a normal occurrence in conversational speech but a rarity in nineteenth-century poetry and yet another example of Pavlova's use of conversational diction; and third, the use of the high-style word igemon, obviously retaining the unreduced o from its Church Slavonic pronunciation, is unprecedented. On the reception of Pavlova's use of this word, see my essay “Karolina Pavlova's Influence on Mikhail Bulgakov” in this volume.

The final strophe of the 1845 poem “K ∗∗∗” is another prime example of Pavlova's sound instrumentation:

Ni vyrs sladкоrycivоj фiy,
Cti nipоnytnyj prоizvоlh!
Ktо tsitnо isith, ni bidnyi
Tоgо, byts mоzith, кtо nasilh.

(124)

Do not believe the melliloquent fairy,
Respect the incomprehensible arbitrariness!
He who seeks in vain is not poorer
Than he who has found, perhaps.

The epithet tshchetno, which is alliteratively echoed in the verb ishchet, also contains the adversative conjunction no, which does not appear as a separate word. The meaning of tshchetno connotes negation, which is subsequently doubled—and reversed—when the word ne surfaces later in the line. The phrase ne bednêe echoes the word neponiatnyj in the preceding line: the voiceless p—t in neponiatnyj are amplified in their voiced counterparts in ne bednêe. The role of the letter ê (y) in Pavlova's sound instrumentation and rhyme as an amplified and phonetically unchanging variant of e also merits special investigation. So, by the way, does the role of this letter in the sound instrumentation of Russian poetry in general—a role noted, inter alios, by Alexander Blok in connection with the Bolshevik spelling reform of 1918, when he defended the iat' and the other jettisoned letters as irreplaceable bearers of certain expressive qualities.

Yet another of Pavlova's inventions in the technique of perfecting the nexus of sound and sense appears in the 1857 poem “Rim” (“Rome”):

… Vidnyitsy gоrоdh bоlssоj.
I, budtо bh igо nazyvay,
Crizh mirtvоj pustyni pridylh
Oth niba stimnyvsagо кray
Otryvistyj grоmh prоgrimylh.

(212)

… A large city is visible.
And, as if naming it,
An abrupt crash of thunder resounded
Across the boundary of the dead desert
From the edge of the darkened sky.

The form of the word grom, which evokes its meaning through its sound, paronomastically contains (budto b ego nazyvaia [as if naming it]) the name of the city that is the subject of the poem: ROMa. Both the thunder (grom) and the name of the city (Roma and German Rom) resound in the last word of the strophe: pROGReMêl.

In many instances, the instrumentation of Pavlova's verse reflects the discourse of another poet (chuzhoe slovo). Thus, for instance, Pavlova's poem “Neapol'” (“Naples,” 24 August-5 September 1856) from the Fantasmagorïi cycle contains echoes of “Piroskaf” (“The Steamship”), one of Baratynskïj's last poems, which describes the approach of the poet's ship to Naples. Pavlova writes:

Vh pazdоlsnоj, sumlivоj mоpcкоj sipinl
Smirylisy bpyzgi zadоpnyy vala.

(210)

In the spacious, clamorous sea breadth
The wave's fervent spray was calmed.

Compare Baratynskïj's “Piroskaf”:

Krоtко sadith miny nimоcs mоpcкay,
Plnоy zdpaviy bpyzzith mnl valh!

(201)

Seasickness spares me meekly,
The wave sprays me with the foam of health!

The words morskaia, bryzzhet, and val are materially present in Pavlova's morskoj, bryzgi, and vala; Baratynskïj's phrase pênoiu zdravïia is echoed through the alliterative repetition of the consonants z, d, r, and n (compare Baratynskïj's pênoiu and mnê) in Pavlova's zadornyia (compare Baratynskïj's zdravïia bryzzhet … val with Pavlova's bryzgi zadornyia vala). The sense of Baratynskïj's phrase krotko shchadit is reflected in Pavlova's verb smirialisia.

Pavlova's innovations in the nexus of sound and sense, or sense-laden musicality, merit further investigation. Russian poetry, as Andrej Bêlyj knew well, for all its richness boasts just a few poets whose every poem begs to be recited out loud for the pleasures it brings—both for the acoustic pleasure and for the pleasure of articulation, as well as for the pleasure of the sense. Karolina Pavlova was one of those poets.

I will now turn to Pavlova's phraseological innovations, some of which have become “winged words” (Homer's ἔπεα πτεροέντα) thanks to their repetition by other poets. I have already mentioned the phrase derzhavnyia slova from the 1839 poem “Shepot grustnyj, govor tajnyj,” which represents an answer to Pushkin's famous poem “Dar naprasnyj, dar sluchajnyj,” written by Pushkin on his birthday in 1828. Here is the context of Pavlova's phrase:

Ests zi svytlyi prоrокi,
Vdоknоvinsy tоrzistva,
Iysinh zvucnyi pоtокi
I dirzavnyy slоva! …

(77)

Luminous prophets do exist,
And so do triumphs of inspiration,
Sonorous streams of songs
And sovereign words! …

Pavlova's derzhavnyia slova (sovereign words) are discernible like a palimpsest through Akhmatova's carstvennoe slovo (the regal word) in her well-known quatrain “Rzhaveet zoloto. …” Another of Pavlova's memorable epithets for the word occurs in the collocation nenaslushnyia slova (from the ballad “Starukha” [“The Old Woman,” 1840]):

Gоvоrith prо dyvu-cudо
Taкh, ctо vyritsy idva,
I birith, Bоgh vysts оtкuda,
Ninaslusnyy slоva

(87)

Talks of the wonder-maid
So that one can barely believe,
And takes—God only knows where from,
Words one cannot hear enough of

The neologism nenaslushnyj (such that one cannot hear enough of it) was created by analogy with the well-known nenagliadnyj; it engages the noun it modifies, slova, in an etymologico-alliterative play (-slu- and -slov- are two different forms of the same root).

The phrase zvon perelivno-dal'nyj (iridescently [modulatingly] distant) from the 1844 poem “Moskva” anticipates the experiments of the symbolists in creating composite “synaesthetic” epithets made up of words from different sense domains:

Dins tikikh grizh, dinh syryj i picalsnsj;
Na niby tuch ninastlivay mgla,
I vh vоzduky zvоnh pirilivnо-dalsnyj,
Mоsкоvsкij zvоnh vо vsy коlокоla.

(122)

A day of quiet daydreams, a gray and sad day;
In the sky, a blustery mist of rain clouds,
And in the air, an iridescently distant ringing,
The Muscovite ringing of all the bells.

The sound instrumentation and rhythm of the last two lines of this strophe deserve some comment. In the penultimate line, the third iambic foot is replaced with a trochaic foot (the nonsystemic ictus falls on the word zvon while the systemic accent on the preceding syllable is omitted); in the next line, the word zvon recurs, one syllable earlier than in the preceding line, but here it of course carries the systemic accent (I v vozdukhê zvon … / Moskovskïj zvon …). This entire nexus of rhythm, sound, and sense, together with the innovative compound epithet perelivno-dal'nyj (iridescently distant) creates an acoustic, articulatory, and mental image of the ringing of bells. I return to this important poem in my essay on Pavlova's influence on Mikhail Bulgakov. Another of Pavlova's epithetic innovations that anticipate the synaesthetic interests of the symbolists is her striking use of color adverbs to modify verbs. The following examples all come from the cycle Fantasmagorïi:

Byzalh коrabls, prоryzvay bylо
Svоy brazdu. …

(1857)

The ship flew, whitely cutting
Its furrow. …
Dins visinnij vskоdits alо

(“Ozero Valen,” October 1861)

The spring day rises crimsonly
Niapоls blisnulh i rasкinulsy bylо
Mizh ykоntоma niba i ykоntоmh vоdh

(“Neapol',” 1856)

Naples gleamed and spread out whitely
Between the sapphire of the sky and the sapphire of the waters

Finally, Pavlova's innovative collocations in which the epithet and the noun come from different stylistic domains are especially memorable. Consider, for instance, how Pavlova describes her young contemporaries in her 1846 verse epistle to Ivan Aksakov:

I tripitnо mоly y Bоga
Za ztikh plaminnykh nivyzdh

(131)

And I implore God palpitatingly
On behalf of these flaming ignoramuses

In contrast to the conventions of American prose, which permit not only flaming passions but also flaming liberals, among others, the conventional language of Russian poetry allows only for plamennaia strast' (flaming passion) and plamennoe serdce (flaming heart). In journalism, the cliché plamennyj orator is widely used. But Pavlova's paradoxical plamennye nevêzhdy (flaming ignoramuses) is a clear trace of her everyday conversational wit, preserved in the stylized genre of the verse epistle.

The most influential example of Pavlova's stylistically paradoxical collocations is her well-known phrase sviatoe remeslo (holy [or sacred] craft), which resounds in the poetry of both Cvêtaeva and Akhmatova. The 1854 poem from which it comes—“Ty, ucêlêvshij v serdcê nishchem”—is an epigraph from Alfred de Musset's polymetrical poem “La nuit d'août,” which belongs to his metapoetic cycle of “nuits” (“La nuit de mai,” “La nuit de décembre,” “La nuit d'août,” and “La nuit d'octobre”): “Salut, salut, consolatrice! / Ouvre tes bras, je viens chanter.” Pavlova's poem is written in the same iambic tetrameter as the apostrophe of Musset's poet to his Muse, and clearly echoes Musset's poem:

Ty, uцylyvsij vh sirdцy nisimh,
Privyth tiby, mоj grustnyj stikh!
Mоj svytlyj luch nadh pipilisimh
Blazinstvh i radоstij mоikh!
Odnо, cigо i svytоtatstvо
Kоsnutssy vh kramy ni mоglо;
Mоy napasts! mоi bоgatstvо!
Mоi svytоi rimislо!

(154)

Thou who hast survived in my destitute heart,
Greetings to thee, my sad verse!
My bright beam over the burnt-out ruins
Of my bliss and joys!
The only thing which even blasphemy
Could not touch in the temple:
My bane! my wealth!
My holy craft!

The phrase sviatoe remeslo, like most of Pavlova's phraseological innovations, owes its effectiveness to the fact that it couples the noun with an epithet never before applied to it. Sviatoe remeslo plays on the Romantic cliché sviatoe iskusstvo (sacred [or holy] art). The high-style noun iskusstvo is replaced with the middle- to low-style noun remeslo, and the result is virtually oxymoronic. This phrase is emblematic of Pavlova's oeuvre as a whole because it expresses a new aesthetics, the aesthetics of the true overcoming of everyday life by poetry. The power of Pavlova's aesthetics lies in the fact that it is not declarative, like stereotypical Romanticism (compare sviatoe iskusstvo), but actually transfigurative, as in this phrase: remeslo (craft) is transfigured by sviatost' (holiness). The quotidian lowliness of remeslo is sublated by the lofty epithet sviatoe. That which is lowly and earthly is raised up, transfigured by the sublime. Surely it is this aesthetics, embodied in her impeccable and boldly innovative art, that accounts for Pavlova's enduring appeal to poets and other fine readers.

Notes

1. Victor Terras, ed., Handbook of Russian Literature (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985).

2. Evelyn Bristol, A History of Russian Poetry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991).

3. Andrej Bêlyj, “Sravnitel'naia morfologïia ritma,” Simvolizm, Kniga statej (Moscow: Musaget, 1910), 386.

4. Bêlyj, “Opyt kharakteristiki russkago chetyrekhstopnago iamba,” Simvolizm, 294.

5. Compare Da podozhdite zhe! Ikh eshchë nêt. (Do wait a moment! They aren't here yet.) ❙ o o ❙ o — ❙ o o ❙❙ o o ❙ o — ❙, in the poem “Scena” (“A Scene”) in Karolina Pavlova, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenij, ed. N. M. Gajdenkov, Biblioteka poèta, Bol'shaia seriia, 2nd ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskij pisatel’, 1964), 179, where eshchë is unstressed; compare the same usage passim in Pavlova. Karolina Pavlova, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenij, ed. N. M. Gajdenkov, Biblioteka poeta, Bol'shaia seriia, 2nd ed. (Moscow-Leningrad: Sovetskij pisatel’, 1964).

6. Earlier examples of the use of the dactylic clausula in other meters are found in Karamzin (“Il'ia Muromec”), Batiushkov (“K Filisê” [“To Phyllis”], 1804-5), and Zhukovskïj (“Pêsnia” [“A Song”], 1820). Its use in iambic tetrameter remained a rarity (compare Zhukovskïj's “Motylëk i tsvêty” [“A Moth and the Flowers”], 1824).

7. See E. A. Baratynskij, Polnoe sobranie sochinenij, Biblioteka poèta, Bol'shaia seriia, ed. and with an introduction by E. N. Kupreianova (Leningrad: Sovetskij pisatel', 1957). Parenthetical page numbers refer to this edition.

8. The cognate expressions in both texts are italicized.

9. A. Pushkin, Evgenïj Onêgin, roman v stikhakh, Izdanïe tretïe (Sanktpeterburg: Èkspedicïia zagotovlenïia Gosudarstvennykh bumag, 1837), 228.

10. Entry of 31 December 1912; Sobranie sochinenij v vos'mi tomakh, ed. Orlov et al. (Moscow-Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1963), 7:199.

11. Karolina Pavlova, Sobranïe sochinenïj, 2 vols., ed. and with an introduction by Valerïj Briusov (Moscow: K. F. Nekrasov, 1915), 2:326-27.