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Acmeism, Post-symbolism, and Henri Bergson

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Elaine Rusinko
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Ezra Pound once remarked that “the history of English poetic glory is a history of successful steals from the French.“ To a certain degree, the same can be said of Russian poetry, particularly at the turn of the twentieth century, when the process of literary development paid little attention to national boundaries. The Acmeists, for example, owe many of their aesthetic and stylistic principles to French poets of at least three chronological periods: the medieval troubadours, the Parnassians, and, most obviously, the Symbolists. French influence did not cease with Baudelaire and Verlaine, however. The impact of the next generation of French poets was also felt in Russia, and the parallels between French Post-symbolism and Russian Acmeism are significant. Whereas Symbolism has long been acknowledged as a world-wide artistic phenomenon, the international scope of the movement which succeeded it has received little attention. In fact, Post-symbolism was also a movement of international proportions. In the first decades of the twentieth century, British and Russian poets looked to their contemporary French counterparts as a source of innovation and manifested their influence in two parallel independent movements — Anglo-American Imagism and Russian Acmeism. In exploring the transmission of French influence to Russia in the early twentieth century and the French sources of Acmeism, I hope to establish a basis for a comprehensive study of Post-symbolist poetry and for a more complete understanding of Acmeism.

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Articles
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Slavic Review , Volume 41 , Issue 3 , Fall 1982 , pp. 494 - 510
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Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1982

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References

1. “Remy de Gourmont,” The New Age, 13, no. 20 (September 11, 1913): 577. Pound's series of articles on French poets, published in The New Age under the title “The Approach to Paris,” is included in Cyrena N. Pondrom, The Road from Paris: French Influence on English Poetry 1900-1920 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974).

2. See Rusinko, Elaine, “Russian Acmeism and Anglo-American Imagism,” Ulbandus Review, 1, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 37–49Google Scholar. For the influence of French poetry on British and American literature, see Pondrom, Road from Paris and Taupin, René, L'Influence du symbolisme francais sur la poe'sie americaine (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honort Champion, 1929).Google Scholar

3. See Sam Driver, “Acmeism,” Slavic and East European Journal, 12, no. 2 (Summer 1968): 141-56.

4. N. S. Gumilev, “Nasledie simvolizma i akmeizm,” Sobranie sochinenii, 4 vols, (hereafter cited as 55), ed. G. P. Struve and B. A. Filippov (Washington, D.C.: Victor Kamkin, 1962-68), 4:171-76. The marked preference for the Romanic or French tradition in Gumilev's verse was often noted by the critics, frequently with reproaches for his “foreignness.” As early as 1908, Innokentii Annenskii noted that Gumilev's second collection “Romanticheskie tsvety,” which was published in Paris, was “suffused with Paris” (Annenskii, “O romanticheskikh tsvetakh,” reprinted in Novyi zhurnal, 78 [March 1965]: 285). Andrei Levinson, in a review of the same book, called Gumilev “a French poet in the Russian language” (Levinson, “Nikolai Gumilev. ‘Romanticheskie tsvety,'” Sovremennyi mir, 7 [July 1909]: 189 [second pagination]). Perhaps the most strident condemnation of this feature of Acmeism came from Aleksandr Blok in his 1918 article “Bez bozhestva, bez vdokhnoveniia,” which revived the Acmeist-Symbolist controversy. He reproached Gumilev for equating Russian Symbolism with French and consequently for overemphasizing formal considerations in his approach to poetry (Blok, Sobranie sochinenii, 8 vols., ed. V. N. Orlov [Moscow-Leningrad, 1960-63], 6:181). In the same volume the editors note a comment reportedly made by Blok in an argument with Gumilev: “What you say, for me, is not Russian. It can be said very well in French. You are too much the litterateur, and what's more, a French one” (quoted from K. Chukovskii, A. Blok kak chelovek ipoet [Petrograd, 1924], p. 45). These reproofs were exaggerated and unreasonable, of course, but there is no doubt that Gumilev's poetic orientation was noticeably influenced by French literature.

5. Elaine Rusinko, “Gumilev in London: An Unknown Interview,” Russian Literature Triquarterly, 16 (1979): 73-85.

6. For an extensive discussion of the French impact on Vesy and Russian Symbolism, see Donchin, Georgette, The Influence of French Symbolism on Russian Poetry (The Hague: Mouton, 1958)Google Scholar. Detailed information from Briusov's correspondence concerning the establishment of the journal can be found in K. M. Azadovskii and D. E. Maksimov, “Briusov i Vesy: K istorii izdaniia,” in Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 85: Valerii Briusov, ed. V. R. Shcherbina (Moscow, 1976): 257-324. Briusov's role in importing French literature into Russia cannot be underestimated. Gumilev compared him to Peter the Great for his “Westernization” and modernization of Russian poetry (Gumilev, 55, 4:235). Of course, Gumilev began his poetic career as a “student” of Briusov's, and Briusov's influence on Acmeism has been widely noted. See Driver, “Acmeism,” and other studies of Gumilev cited herein.

7. Andre Gide, preface to the 1927 edition of Les Nourritures terrestres (Paris: Gallimard, 1947), pp. 11-12. In a lecture from 1911, Gide quoted C. L. Philippe's trenchant formula, “The time of sweetness and dilettantism is over. What we need now are barbarians” (cited in Marcel Raymond, From Baudelaire to Surrealism [London: Methuen and Co., Ltd., 1970], p. 173). Note the similarity of Gumilev's statement from the Acmeist manifesto, “As Adamists, we are somewhat like forest animals and in any case will not surrender what is animal in us in exchange for neurasthenia” (Gumilev, SS, 4:174).

8. L. Annibal, “V raiu otchaianiia,” Vesy, 1, no. 10 (October 1904): 16-38.

9. For more detailed information concerning Gumilev's activities in Paris, see Struve's biographical essay in the first volume of Gumilev's collected works (55, l:vii-xliv) and Sampson, Earl, Nikolay Gumilev (Boston: Twayne, 1979)Google Scholar. Of special interest is Struve's collection of previously unpublished letters written by Gumilev, which contains letters to Briusov from Paris ( Gumilev, N. S., Neizdannye stikhi i pis'ma, ed. G. P. Struve [Paris: YMCA Press, 1980]Google Scholar). Mandel'shtam also studied medieval French literature in Paris and in Heidelberg in 1909 and 1910 (see Brown, Clarence, Mandelstam [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973], pp. 32-36Google Scholar).

10. The interested reader can find an amusing account of the unfavorable impression Gumilev made on his new acquaintances in Struve's commentary to Neizdannye stikhi i pis'ma, pp. 155-62. Gumilev's reaction to the meeting is presented in his letter to Briusov from January 8, 1907 (ibid., p. 7).

11. See Anna Akhmatova's memoirs of Mandel'shtam, where she cites the following couplet written by Mandel'shtam relating to his acquaintance with Gumilev: “No v Peterburge akmeist mne blizhe/Chem romanticheskii P'ero v Parizhe” (Akhmatova, Sochineniia, 2 vols., ed. G. P. Struve and B. A. Filippov [Munich: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1968], 2:170).

12. Gumilev also visited Paris on his honeymoon in 1910, in the spring of 1911, and with the Imperial Army in the years 1917-18. Little is known about his contacts and activities during these trips. Undoubtedly, the visits in 1910 and 1911 were significant for the development of Acmeism, which was announced in 1912.

13. Letter of January 8, 1907 (Neizdannye stikhi i pis'ma, p. 7).

14. Letter of October 9, 1907, ibid., p. 25.

15. Ghil, René, Traite du verbe: Etats successifs (1885-1886-1887-1888-1891-1904), ed. Tiziana Goruppi (Paris: Editions A.-G. Nizet, 1978)Google Scholar. Briusov introduced Ghil and his ideas to the Russian reading public through extensive review articles: “René Ghil. Oeuvre,” Vesy, 1, no. 12 (December 1904): 12-31; “Literaturnaia zhizn’ Frantsii: Nauchnaia poeziia,” Russkaia mysl', 30, no. 6 (June 1909): 155-67 (second pagination). The latter article is reprinted in Briusov, Valerii, Sobranie sochinenii, 7 vols., ed. P. G. Antokol'skii (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1973), 6:160–75.Google Scholar

16. René Ghil, Les Dates et les oeuvres: Symbolisme et poesie scientifique (Paris, 1923), p. 117.

17. Quoted by Briusov in his Russkaia mysl’ article, reproduced in Briusov, Sobranie sochinenii, 6:167.

18. Ghil, Les Dates et les oeuvres, pp. 110, 117.

19. See Robert Montal, René Ghil: Du Symbolisme a la poesie cosmique (N.p.: Editions Labor, 1962), pp. 202-207. Besides Ghil, other formative influences on these poets were Paul Fort, Francis Jammes’ naturisme, Verhaeren, Nietzsche, and Walt Whitman (see Marie-Louise Bidal, Les Ecrivains de VAbbaye [Paris, 1938]).

20. Ghil, Les Dates et les oeuvres, p. 207.

21. See the foreword to Mandel'shtam's translation of Jules Romains's poetic drama Cromedeyre-le-vieil (Kromedair-staryi), which appeared in 1927 (Osip Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii, 2 vols., ed. G. P. Struve and B. A. Filippov [New York: Inter-Language Literary Associates, 1966], 2:397).

22. Ibid.

23. See Denis Boak, Jules Romains (New York: Twayne, 1974), pp. 24, 39.

24. Preface to the 1925 edition of La Vie unanime (Paris: Gallimard, 1926), pp. 19-20.

25. Kevin Cornell, The Post-Symbolist Period: French Poetic Currents, 1900-1920 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958), pp. 124-34.

26. In a letter from February 7, 1908, Gumilev writes to Briusov, “You will not be ashamed to call me your pupil. The more so as, having seen a great deal of Gustave Moreau's paintings and having read a lot of the Parnassians and occultists (who were, alas, very weak), I composed for myself an amusing theory of poetry, something like Mallarme, only not idealistic, but romantic, and I hope that it will keep me from stopping in my development. You and your work play a large role in this theory” (Gumilev, Neizdannye stikhi ipis'ma, p. 37). Precisely what this theory consisted of and whether it eventually developed into Acmeism is a matter of speculation. This letter dates from the period of Gumilev's acquaintance with Ghil, and some influence here is not unthinkable. In a review of Briusov from 1909, Gumilev mentions Ghil and Mallarme together with Briusov as sharing the desire to “return to the word its metaphysical value” (Gumilev, 55, 4:200). In another review from 1909 of Briusov's translations of French poetry, Gumilev points to Ghil's “scientific poetry” as one of the three basic currents of contemporary French poetry (Gumilev, 55, 4:385), though later, in 1912, he recognized the bankruptcy of Ghil's “scientism” (SS, 4:312).

27. Gumilev, 55, 4:173-74. In a letter from May 1910, Gumilev informs Briusov that he feels he has completed one cycle of experience and is striving for something new in his poetry; “I believe that it is still possible to do a great deal, not by abandoning the lyric-epic (liro-epicheskii) method, but only crossing over from personal themes to general themes, common to all mankind, even if elemental (stikhiinye), but under the condition of always feeling the firm ground under one's feet” (Neizdannye stikhi ipis'ma, p. 66). The parallel to Unanimism's “down-to-earth spiritual collectivism” is apparent here, in the period when Gumilev was developing the theory of Acmeism. It is also interesting to note the similarity between Gumilev's emphasis on the “specific weight” of phenomena and Ezra Pound's metaphor describing the attitude of Imagism: “Poetry is in some odd way concerned with the specific gravity of things” (Poetry Review, 1, no. 3 [March 1912]: 134).

28. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:364, 367.

29. Brown, Mandel'shtam, p. 148.

30. Nadezhda Mandelstam, Hope against Hope: A Memoir, trans. Max Hayward (New York: Atheneum, 1970), p. 255.

31. Gumilev, 55, 4:188.

32. See Christian Senechal, L'Abbaye de Creteil (Paris, 1930). The founding members were Charles Vildrac and his wife Rose, René Arcos, Georges Duhamel, Henri Martin-Barzun, Albert Gleizes, and Alexandre Mercereau. It is likely that Gumilev made the acquaintance of the Vildracs, at the very least. In a notebook he kept during his 1918 visit to Paris and London, Gumilev listed the Paris address of the Vildracs’ art gallery (55, 4:542).

33. Literaturnoe nasledstvo, vol. 85: Valerii Briusov, p. 402.

34. In his diary Briusov noted: “Paris… . seeking acquaintances. Impression of Ren6 Ghil. Mme. René Ghil. Visit of Arcos and Mercereau. The entire circle ‘Abbaye.’ At Max Voloshin's. At Krulikova's. Russians and French…. Two meetings at our place: R. Ghil, Mme. René Ghil, Arcos, Duhamel, Mercereau, Castiaux, J. Romain [sic], Ch. Vildrac” (Briusov, Dnevniki 1891- 1910 [Moscow, 1927], pp. 140-41).

35. See his reviews in Vesy: “'René Ghil.’ Marcel Lenoir,” Vesy, 3, no. 5 (May 1906): 76-77; ‘“Les Largesses de Marianne. Histoire d'un prix de Rome litteraire’ G. Guyarded.,” Vesy, 4, no. 1 (January 1909): 95-96. Mercereau's story “Elfride,” from his collection Conies des tenebres (Paris, 1911) is dedicated “Au noble poete Valere Brussov.“

36. In a letter to Briusov from December 16, 1907, Gumilev writes, “Now I am about to go to René Ghil's again, his Fridays have already begun. I will probably go with Nicolas Denicer [sic], a young French poet, my friend. You probably already read about him in René Ghil's article for Vesy” (Gumilev, Neizdannye stikhi i pis'ma, p. 28). Deniker was the youngest son of Joseph Deniker (1852-1918) and Liubov’ Annenskaia, the sister of the Russian poet Innokentii Annenskii. Descended from an officer of Napoleon's army who was captured during the Russian campaign, Joseph Deniker returned to France around 1880 and became widely respected as a scholar of anthropology. The Deniker family lived on the premises of the Jardin des Plantes and received many young people and students, as well as numerous Russians who visited Paris before the war. Unfortunately, Nicolas Deniker died young and left but a small mark on French poetry. Guillaume Apollinaire, a friend and colleague of Dt»i'ift!ij«ih on a 1903 journal entitled Le Festin d'Esope, referred to Deniker in 1911 as “a poet of great inspiration who, for quite a long while, has been in retirement” (Mercure de France, November 16, 1911, reprinted in G. Apollinaire, Anecdotiques [Paris: Gallimard, 1955], p. 50). (For information concerning the Deniker family, I am indebted to Doctor Pierre Deniker, nephew of the poet.)

37. Poems by Deniker appeared in Vers et prose, no. 1 (1905), and no. 31 (1912). The appearance of a collection of Deniker's poems published by L'Abbaye is mentioned in Vers et prose, no. 12 (1907-1908). Ghil noted the appearance of Vers et prose in “Pis'ma o frantsuzskoi poezii,” Vesy, 2, no. 7 (July 1905): 27, and again in “Vers et prose. (Tome VI, juin-aout 1906),” Vesy, 3, no. 8 (August 1906): 76. In a review of young French poets, Ghil mentions Deniker with an allusion to his Russian heritage (“Novye sborniki stikhov. Pis'mo iz Parizha,” Vesy, 5, no. 3 [March 1908]: 116-17). In the same review he also refers to Vildrac and l'Abbaye.

38. Akhmatova, Sochineniia, 2:172-73.

39. Quoted in Glenn S. Burne, Remy de Gourmont: His Ideas and Influence in England and America (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963), p. v.

40. Gumilev, “V'ele-Grifen,” (1914), 55, 4:396.

41. Quoted in Burne, Remy de Gourmont, p. 3.

42. “The Problem of Style,” in Remy de Gourmont: Selections from All his Works, trans. Richard Aldington (New York: Covici-Freide, 1929), p. 425.

43. These ideas of Mandel'shtam's, which are close to those of Tynianov and Bakhtin, represent another significant aspect of Acmeism, dealt with in detail in Elaine Rusinko, “Intertextuality: The Soviet Approach to Subtext,” Dispositio, 4, no. 11-12 (Summer-Autumn 1979): 213-35.

44. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:296.

45. The New Age, 13, no. 23 (October 2, 1913), reprinted in Pondrom, Road from Paris, p. 189.

46. “Anri de Ren'e,” Apollon, 1, no. 4 (January 1910): 25, reprinted in M. A. Voloshin, Liki tvorchestva (St. Petersburg, 1914).

47. In her reminiscences of Modigliani, Akhmatova notes that on having Henri de Regnier pointed out to her in the Luxemburg Gardens in 1911, she did not recognize the name (Sochineniia, 2:160). Gumilev referred to Regnier a few times in his essays, only briefly but always positively (55, 4:329, 385, 413). A study of R6gnier's influence on Gumilev's poetic style may prove fruitful.

48. F. S. Flint, “Contemporary French Poetry,” in Pondrom, Road from Paris, p. 116.

49. Gide, Andre, Journal 1899-1939 (Dijon: Bibliotheque de la Pleiade, 1955), p. 783 Google Scholar. In his incisive study of French poetry, From Baudelaire to Surrealism, Marcel Raymond takes the same view of Bergson's impact on the modern era. “As for Bergson, a study of his influence, in the proper sense of this term, would be extremely difficult in the field of modern poetry. For the philosophy of VEvolution criatrice also drew its dynamism from the deep vitalist current that it later helped to enrich and direct: by and large, the analogies between the works of Bergson and those of the poets testify to a kinship between speculative thought and literature, but do not warrant the conclusion that they are related as cause and effect… . Bergsonism … seems to have developed along a curve parallel to that followed by the general development of literature in the same period” (Raymond, From Baudelaire to Symbolism, pp. 52-53).

50. “Vtoroi mezhdunarodnyi filosofskii kongress,” Vesy, 1, no. 10 (October 1904): 59-62; Gourmont, Jean de, “Iziashchnaia slovesnost’ Frantsii,” Apollon, 2, no. 7 (1911): 70-71Google Scholar; Kostylev, N., “Le-Dantek i Bergson,” Vestnik Evropy, 1910, no. 261, p. 89Google Scholar; Grossman, I., “Bakunin i Bergson,” Zavety, 5 (1914): 47–62Google Scholar; Lazarev, A., “Filosofiia Bergsona,” Mysl’ i slovo, 1 (1917): 177-214Google Scholar; Iushkevich, P. S., “Bergson i ego filosofiia intuitsii,” Russkoe bogatstvo, 11, no. 2 (1914): 33–59 and no. 3 (1914): 47-67Google Scholar; Plekhanov, G., “Anri Bergson,” Sovremennyi mir, 3, no. 2 (1909): 118–22Google Scholar; Losski, N., “Nedostatki gnossologii Bergsona i vliianie na ego metafiziki,” Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii, 24, no. 118 (1913): 224–35Google Scholar; Babynin, B. N., “Filosofiia Bergsona,” Voprosy filosofii ipsikhologii, 22, no. 3 (1911): 251-90 and no. 4(1911): 472-516Google Scholar; Khlopov, I., “K voprosu o prirode intuitsii,” Voprosy filosofii i psikhologii, 23, no. 5 (1912): 667–703Google Scholar; Miloradovich, K. M., “Dva uchenii o vremeni Kanta i Bergsona,” Ministerstvo narodnogo prosveshcheniia, Zhurnal, 18 (1913): 323–29.Google Scholar

51. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:283 and Rusinko, “Gumilev in London,” p. 83. In a soon to be published essay, Jane Gary Harris argues that Mandel'shtam misreads Bergson and uses him for his own purposes (see Jane Gary Harris, “Mandel'shtamian ‘Zlost“: Bergson and a New Acmeist Aesthetic,” Ulbandus Review, forthcoming. My thanks to Jane Gary Harris and the editors of Ulbandus Review for making a prepublication copy of the manuscript available to me). In general, Bergson's philosophy, so in vogue at the time, underwent a good bit of distortion at the hands of individual writers and literary movements, who appropriated ideas they found appealing and accommodated them in a nonsystematic manner. Although certain Bergsonian principles may have been fundamental for Acmeism, it would certainly be incorrect to say that the movement fully and systematically represents Bergson's philosophy.

52. In “Bergson and Russian Formalism,” Comparative Literature, 28, no. 2 (Spring 1976): 109-21, James M. Curtis examines the impact of Bergson's ideas on the literary theory of Viktor Shklovskii and Iurii Tynianov. Curtis demonstrates that the Formalist concepts of estrangement and automatization, among others, derive from Bergson and were subsequently applied in the literature of the Serapion Brothers in the twenties. Of course, the Acmeists felt the impact of Bergson's philosophy as much as a decade earlier and in a much less systematic fashion. Jane Gary Harris comments on Mandel'shtam's use of Bergsonian concepts in her commentary to Mandelstam: The Complete Critical Prose and Letters (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1979), pp. 615-16, n. 4 and suggests that Mandel'shtam's essay “O prirode slova” may be read as a defense of Bergson. Harris concludes, and I second her opinion, that a monograph on Bergson's impact on Mandel'shtam (and on Russian poetry and culture of the first two decades of the twentieth century) is sorely wanting.

53. Henri Bergson, Creative Evolution, trans. Arthur Mitchell (New York: Random House, 1944), pp. 44, 53.

54. Henri Bergson, Laughter: An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic, trans. Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (New York: Macmillan, 1911), p. 154.

55. Ibid., pp. 151-53.

56. Bergson, Evolution, p. 215.

57. T. E. Hulme, “Bergson's Theory of Art,” in Speculations: Essays on Humanism and the Philosophy of Art, ed. Herbert Read (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, Inc., 1936), p. 159.

58. Bergson, Laughter, pp. 154-55.

59. Ibid., pp. 157, 150.

60. Bergson, Evolution, pp. 181-82.

61. Ibid., p. 194.

62. Ibid., pp. 319-20.

63. Bergson, Evolution, pp. 272-73. Cf. Ghil's “intuitive synthesis.” To my knowledge Ghil does not refer to Bergson, but the ideas he expresses, and often his terminology as well, reveal an acquaintance with Bergsonian philosophy.

64. Bergson, Evolution, p. 295.

65. This statement comes from Bergson's commentary on Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), an early work which contains some germinal ideas that he was to develop subsequently in his major works. See The Philosophy of Poetry: The Genius of Lucretius, ed. and trans. Wade Baskin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1959), p. 81.

66. Gumilev, “Nasledie simvolizma i akmeizm,” SS, 4:173.

67. Another possible source of inspiration for these ideas comes from Father P. A. Florenskii (1882-1940?), a leading figure in the development of twentieth-century Russian religious philosophy. His ideas bear some resemblance to the philosophy of Bergson, though they are couched in religious terms. Florenskii maintained that truth is a living whole which transcends the logical laws of thought, but can be perceived through direct religious experience. Building on Solov'ev's concept of “pan-unity” (vseedinstvo), according to which all created beings are consubstantial with one another, Florenskii believed that the perception of an object involves the direct unification of perceiver and object in a metaphysical unity intrinsically connected with love, at the end of which “two become one.” Florenskii gained fame in 1914 with his monumental work Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny, and he was highly admired by both Gumilev and Mandel'shtam. Nadezhda Mandel'shtam cites Florenskii's importance to Mandel'shtam (Hope against Hope, p. 230), and Gumilev read Stolp i utverzhdenie istiny in 1916 at the front (Neizdannye stikhi i pis'ma, p. 133). Florenskii's work can only be mentioned briefly in this study, but the possible relationship between Florenskii's philosophy and Acmeism deserves further study. I owe this idea to Roman Timenchik.

68. Gumilev, “Ballada,” SS, 1:177.

69. This assertion of Mandel'shtam's takes on added meaning if we refer to Bergson: If I ask myself why bodies or minds exist rather than nothing, I find no answer: but that a logical principle, such as A = A should have the power of creating itself, triumphing over the nought throughout eternity, seems to me natural… . Suppose, then, that the principle on which all things rest, and which all things manifest possesses an existence of the same nature as … that of the axiom A = A: the mystery of existence vanishes, for the being that is at the base of everything posits itself then in eternity, as logic itself does (Bergson, Evolution, p. 301). Compare Gumilev's statement quoted above, “The weight of the most insignificant phenomenon is still immeasurably greater than the absence of weight, non-existence, and therefore, in the face of non-existence, all phenomena are brothers” (Gumilev, SS, 4:173).

70. Mandel'shtam “Utro akmeizma,” Sobranie sochinenii, 2:366.

71. Ezra Pound concludes his list of rules for the aspiring poet with a quotation from Vildrac and Duhamel's Notes sur la technique poetique: “Mais d'abord il faut etre un poete” (“A Few Don'ts by an Imagist,” Poetry, 1, no. 6 [March 1913]: 200-206). Similar statements can be found in Gumilev's theoretical writings, but it is in his poetry that Gumilev most emphatically asserts the privileged nature of the poet and the power of poetic talent. Note the following example: “A te komu dovereny sud'by I Vselenskogo dvizheniia i v komlVsekh ritmov byvshikh i nebyvshikh dom, I Slagaiut okrylennye stikhi, I Raskovyvaia kosnyi son stikhii” (“Those who are entrusted with the fate/Of universal motion, and in whom/Reside all rhythms, past and to come,/Compose winged verses,/Unchaining the inert sleep of the elements“) “Vecher” (“Evening“), 1915, SS, 1:249.

72. Bergson, Laughter, p. 157.

73. “V kazhdoi luzhe zapakh okeanaJV kazhdom kamne veian'e pustyn'.” “Otkrytie Ameriki,” 55, 1:199.

74. “Est’ Moisei posredi dubov, I Marii mezhdu pal'm … “ “Derev'ia,” 55, 2:3.

75. 55, 2:198.

76. “Zalog bessmertiia dlia smertnykh, Pervonachal'nye slova,” ibid. Cf. Bergson's comment, “He who installs himself in becoming sees in duration the very life of things, the fundamental reality” (Evolution, p. 344).

77. “Stan’ nyne veshch'iu, bogom byvshiJI slovo veshchi vozglasi, IChtob shar zemnoi, tebia rodivshii, IVdrug drognul na svoei osi,” “Estestvo,” 55, 2:199.

78. Mandel'shtam, Sobranie sochinenii, 2:298.

79. See “Toward a Definition of Acmeism,” a special supplement to Russian Language Journal, ed. Denis Mickiewicz (Spring 1975). This article was prepared under support of the National Endowment for the Humanities with partial matching funds from the Ford Foundation and the Ukrainian Studies Fund, all of whose generosity I most gratefully acknowledge. Some of the information was collected during research visits to the Soviet Union in 1976 and 1978 under the auspices of the International Research and Exchanges Board (IREX), in cooperation with the Academy of Sciences of the USSR and the academies of several union republics and with the Main Archival Administration of the USSR. I regret that since the cancellation of my visa in March 1980 I have been unable to verify the final text of this article in the USSR. I am grateful for the assistance of Daniel C. Waugh, James Cracraft, Walter Pintner, M. M. Maksimenko, and especially J. S. G. Simmons.