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Balmont: A Reappraisal
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
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The revaluation of the literary past was a central preoccupation of the Russian symbolists. Some of these reassessments (Gogol and Dostoevsky in particular come to mind) have remained surprisingly fresh and valid after the passage of more than half a century. It is all the more ironic, then, that for decades the work of the Russian symbolists has been shamefully neglected by the critics. In Russia itself most of these fine poets are hardly mentioned, while a few, such as Blok and Briusov, are presented in such a fashion as to be unrecognizable. Outside Russia there have been valuable contributions to our knowledge of this period (by Mochulsky, Makovsky, Stepun, Tschižewskij, and Setschkarev, as well as Holthusen and other German scholars), but even here there is sometimes undue reliance on doubtful opinions which were formed fifty years ago; Mochulsky, for example, is guilty of this.
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1. Let us add to these the books of selected poems, which are Zven'ia (Moscow, 1913), Svetlyi chas (Paris, 1920), Solnechnaia priazha (Moscow, 1921), and Gamaiun (Stockholm, 1921). The third of these contains almost three dozen poems not printed elsewhere. Another, Izbrannye stikhotvoreniia, published in New York at an unknown date, was probably unauthorized.
2. The anniversary of his birth was celebrated in Russia, although somewhat half-heartedly: there were at least two evenings at which papers and memoirs about Balmont were read and poetry by him was recited, and one essay (and possibly some poetry) was reprinted (see “K molodym poetam,” in Den’ poesii [Moscow, 1965]) even before the anniversary. At both of these evenings a new selected edition of his poetry was promised (but has yet to appear at the time of writing). Preparations for the partial rehabilitation of Balmont got under way several years ago, and are not without their comic aspects; for example, Gorky was dragged in to defend Balmont from the “wicked” symbolists, a plqy which echoes the handling of Mayakovsky and the futurists (see the preface to the publication of some of Balmont's letters in Literatumyi arkhiv, 5 [1960]: 142-43). All these activities were limited to, and aimed at, the Soviet literary elite. In Ehrenburg's words, “Young Soviet readers hardly know that such a poet exists” (Liudi, gody, zhizn' [Moscow, 1961], p. 152).
3. See, for example, Tsetlin, M. O., “K. D. Bal'mont,” Novyi Zhurnal (New York), 5 (1943): 359 Google Scholar, and Sedykh, Andrei, Dalckie, bliskie, 2nd ed. (New York, 1962), p. 69.Google Scholar
4. In addition to memoirists who refer to Balmont's pronunciation of his name (e.g., Marina Tsvetaeva, Proza [New York, 1953], p. 255), there is the evidence of rhyme: Balmont himself (and Igor Severianin) rhymes it with gorizónt, Viacheslav Ivanov with Gellespó, and Mayakovsky with obormot.
5. In his youth Briusov was enthusiastic about Nadson too but later singled him out as a writer of mediocre verse and one insensitive to the formal aspects of poetry—a judgment which has now become a tradition, or rather, a cliché, with a great many Russian critics. Actually, Nadson is not as puerile as he is painted and has his strong points.
6. In Tol'ko liuboi/ (Love Alone, 1903) in another “well-poem” (“Kolodets“), Balmont quoted a stanza from the Sbornik poem, “Striiia.” Still later, he included “Struia“ in his Zv'en'ia (1913) and Solnechnaia priasha (1921).
7. Later, in Tishina (Silence), Balmont was to mix different meters within the same line.
8. Bezbrezhnost* (together with bezbrezhnyi) was Balmont's favorite word. It first made its appearance in Under Northern Skies (p. 7), while the phrase “pod severnym nebom” is to be found in In Boundlessness (p. 107). The word shows up twice in Silence and reappears in subsequent collections. This movement of title words and phrases could well provide a subject for a study. Often a book's title can be found, sometimes as a full line, in a poem in the same book (for example, “Sonety solntsa, meda i luny” is a line in a sonnet on page 23 of the book of that name). Often, however, one comes across titles in other books (and not necessarily books of verse) by Balmont; for example, “goriashchie zdaniia” (Let Us Be Like the Sun, p. 13; The Liturgy of Beauty, p. 130); “ptitsy v vozdukhe” (The Liturgy of Beauty, p. 130); “budem kak solntse” (The Ring, p. 39; Calls of Antiquity, 2nd ed., p. 296); “zlye chary” (White Lightnings, p. 206; Mirage, p. 120); “morskoe svechenie” (Mine—For Her, p. 103; Distances Drawn Apart, p. 153); “belyi zodchii” (Poetry as Magic, 1st ed., p. 34); “marevo” (Where Is My Home?, p. 25). All page numbers in this note and accompanying subsequent quotations in the text of this article are from the first editions, except for Zarevo zor1 (2nd ed.) and the collections from Under Northern Skies through A Round Dance of the Times, which are cited from the “Scorpio” ten-volume Polnoe sobranie stikhov (Moscow, 1907-14). In Boundlessness is ushered in by an epigraph from Dostoevsky, a writer who played a decisive formative role in Balmont's early life (see his autobiography in S. Vengerov, ed., Russkaia literatura XX v., vol. 1 [Moscow, 1914], as well as his novel Pod novym serpom [Under the New Moon, Berlin, 1923]). Balmont's epigraphs would make a fascinating study; except for Sergei Bobrov, no other Russian poet—not even Pushkin or Viazemsky—is as devoted to the epigraph as Balmont; his epigraphs (often quoted in the original language) are taken from Pushkin, Heine, Fet, Goethe, Tiutchev, Poe, Dante, Hindu mystical writings, William Blake, Cervantes, Calderon, Sulpicius Severus, Golubinaia kniga, John Ford, Shelley, Beaumont, Tourneur, Shakespeare, Baudelaire, Tirso de Molina, Villiers de L'Isle-Adam, Luis de Granada, Sluchevsky, St. Ambrose, Anaxagoras, Hamsun, Malebranche, Rider Haggard, Apollonius of Tyana, Nietzsche, Diego de Estella, Pervigilium Veneris, the cosmogonies of the Mayas, the Igor Tale, Krasiński, Mickiewicz, Orpheus, Przybyszewski, the Apocalypse, the Book of the Dead, the Upanishads, the boyarina Morozova, Chaldean writings, Viacheslav Ivanov, ’ The Acts of the Apostles, Vasilii Nemirovich-Danchenko, the Missal, Gogol, Leo Tolstoy, Grebenshchikov, the Kalevala, Spanish, Russian, Lithuanian, and Egyptian folk songs, folk tales, and, of course, Balmont himself. A few more names and titles could be added, among them some I was unable to identify, such as Madeleine Bavent and Aglaia Gamaiun.
9. I know of no study of the way poems are arranged in individual collections, although this is something to which many poets have given much attention.
10. The hostile Populist critic L. Melshin (P. F. Iakubovich), who was annoyed by what he called Balmont's narcissism, lack of simplicity (“a smile of the wave” is an example he quotes), insincerity, and disregard of sense (what price musicality?), also wrote: “Balmont has already published three Books with consistently loud titles: Under Northern Skies, In Boundlessness, Silence” (Ocherki russkoi poesii [St. Petersburg, 1904], p. 327).
11. Even in the area of rhyme, one comes across vósdukhu: ótdykhu, which is untypical of both the preceding and the following Balmont (who, in matters of rhyme, can be roughly described as “progressing” from the nívy: ívy school to that of mechtá: krasotá). It is interesting that nontypical rhymes appear occasionally in Balmont's work precisely in those collections which stand on the borderlines of various stages in his evolution. Compare vestáka ia: zhákaia and trávy: navsegdá vy in The Liturgy of Beauty; grámotu: rádugu and mnogosládostnom: lándyshi in The Glow of Dawns; ókrug: óklik', Egipet: kliknet, iáblok: ziáblik, pokupáiut: spáian, and evén minúvshikh: vishniakh in A Gift to the Earth. Innokeritii Annensky wrote that “Russian poetry has not known richer rhyme for a long time” than Balmont's, and quoted such Examples as bolóio: któ-to, osókd: shiróko, kamyshí: tishí, navsigdá: sledá, izumrúdom: chúdom, govoriát: vzgliád﹜ raspakhnet: gnet (“Bal'mbrit-lirikj” Kiiiga otrashenii [St. Petersburg, 1906], p. 212), which look and sound very ordinary to me, a little more than half a century after Annensky. Nevertheless, Balmont's rhyme did seem unusual to his contemporaries. Not only did Melshin (Ocherki, p. 330) deride Balmont for the extravagance of his rhymes, but even Briusov wrote that “all Balmont's efforts are aimed at stunning the reader with strange rhyme” (Pis'ma V. la. Brhisova k P. P. Pertsovu [Moscow, 1927], p. 25). It seems to me that all this proves an important point: not all innovations are structural in nature (none of Annensky's examples are), and any history of Russian rhyme which concentrates on structural changes only will miss a great deal of the real historical development. Balmont's rhyme is also an excellent and unique example of Moscow pronunciation. To the best of my knowledge, no other poet was so consistently Muscovite in his rhyming: Borísa: striaslísiq (Let Us Be Like the Suit); shirókii: zelenoókoi (THe Firebird); zazhglósf: slez (Mountain Peaks); glás: veseliás’ (Birds in the Air); Iisús: rcshús* (A Green Garden).
12. Briusov, Valerii, Dnevniki, 1891-1910 (Moscow, 1927), p. 55.Google Scholar
13. Volynsky, Akim, Bor'ba za idealism (St. Petersburg, 1900), pp. 383-88, 396.Google Scholar
14. Melshin, Ocherki, p. 331; Andreevsky, S. A., Literatumye ocherki, 4th ed. (St. Petersburg, 1913), p. 402.Google Scholar
15. Ellis, , Russkie simvolisty (Moscow, 1910), pp. 52, 61, 84.Google Scholar
16. Ibid., p. 95.
17. Ibid., p. 96.
18. In addition to his translations of Spanish folk songs and essays on Spanish literature in Mountain Peaks, see his book Ispanskie narodnye pesni.'Liubov’ i nenavist (Moscow, 1912) and the travel notes in Sea Gleams.
19. Polnoe sobranie stikhov, 2: 9.
20. “Gorky and Balmont” would be a good subject for a special study.
21. See Zmeinye tsvety (Moscow, 1910), p. 46.
22. In Balmont one should distinguish between the Hindu concept of Maya (illusion) and the American Indian people of the same name.
23. The moon theme even emerges victorious in a later work, Balmont's drama Tri rastsveta (which first appeared in 1905 in Severnye tsvety assiriskie and was issued as a separate book in 1907).
24. Though the theme first appeared as early as Silence in the “keynote” poem about the petrified forest in Arizona.
25. And even the first edition had to appear in a “second version” with several poems omitted. The “first version” is now a bibliographical rarity.
26. Many more lines could be cited from other collections echoing Nekrasov, Derzhavin, Zhukovsky, and Lermontov. Entire poems are reminiscent of Fet, Iazykov, Lermontov, or anticipate Blok, Khlebnikov, poets of the “Smithy,” Pasternak, and Zabolotsky.
27. See Tsetlin, “K. D. Bal'mont,” p. 258.
28. Pisfma V. la. Brivsova, p. 35.
29. Balmont's first exile was brought about by his public reading of a poem satirizing the tsar in 1901, after which he was forbidden to live in the capital or university cities for two years. He spent much of this exile abroad.
30. Stikhotvoreniia (St. Petersburg, 1906), published by “Znanie” and unfavorably reviewed by Briusov in Vesy, consisted of only fifteen pages. I was unable to obtain the book. Balmont himself never included it later in his list of publications.
31. E. Anichkov, “Bal'mont,” in Vengerov, Russkaia literatura XX v., 1: 32. In a shortened form this essay later appeared as a chapter in Anichkov's Novaia russkaia poeziia (Berlin, 1923).
32. This book also contains essays on Walt Whitman and Maurice Maeterlinck, both important influences on Balmont. The Liturgy of Beauty has a counterpart here in the essay “Poeziia stikhii.”
33. See Morskoe svechenie ﹛Sea Gleams) (St. Petersburg and Moscow: M. O. Volf, 1910), p. 202: “That summer I was caught up in rhythm each day and each night, and I wrote The Firebird.”
34. For Balmont, “Veda, Popol Vuh, Zend-Avesta, Edda, and Kalevala, as well as Russian folklore, posit and solve problems which concern all polarities in nature and in the human soul” (Sea Gleams^ p: 60).
35. Ibid., pp. 7, 61.
36. Evgeniev-Maksimov, V. E., Ocherk istorii noveishei russkoi literatury (Moscow and Leningrad, 1925)Google Scholar, p. Leningrad. Among the interesting poems are “Budto by Romanovym,” “K ostyvshchim,” and “Slavianskii iazyk.”
37. Ellis, Russkie simvolisty, p. 121.
38. This search for new sounds by the introduction of foreign names in profusion was noticeable before, but evidently not to Balmont's contemporaries, who, for instance, in Let Us Be Like the Sun singled out for praise the commonplace “Pridorozhnye travy“ (Mirsky, Chukovsky) and bypassed such a masterpiece as “Skorb’ Aguramazdy,” based on the Zend-Avesta. More examples of especially interesting usage of non-Russian names are found in Zovy drevnosti (Berlin: “Slovo,” 1923), pp. 80, 126, 177; and in Northern Lights, pp. 31, 56.
39. In Vesy, no. 9, 1908.
40. Melshin alone was adamant and in 1904 continued to insist that “there is not the smallest grain of poetry in Burning Buildings.”
41. It is interesting to note that, for all his respect for Burning Buildings, Briusov continued (perhaps nostalgically) to have a far greater affection for Balmont's earlier books, as did Ellis. Briusov was of the’ opinion that “Balmont's glorification of life is strained and artificial, whereas his melancholy is natural” (see Vesy, no. 4, 1905).
42. Briusov, Valerii, Dalekie i blizkie (Moscow: “Skorpion,” 1912).Google Scholar
43. Review in Vesy, no. 9, 1908.
44. All quotations from Blok are from Sobranie sochinenii v vosf'mi tomakh (Moscow and Leningrad, 1960-63), and references are given in the text in parentheses.
45. See Vesy, no. 10, 1907.
46. Ellis, Russkie simvolisty, pp. 54, 79.
47. Gorky, Maxim, Sobranie sochinenii, 30 vols. (Moscow, 1949-55), 30: 87 Google Scholar; Chukovsky, K., Ot Chekhova do nashikh dnei (St. Petersburg, 1908), p. 28 Google Scholar; Kogan, P., Ocherki Po istorii noveishei russkoi literatury, vol. 3, pt. 2, 2nd ed. (Moscow, 1912), p. 91 Google Scholar; Diks, B., in Kniga o russkikh poetakh poslednego desiatiletiia, ed. Gofman, M. (St. Petersburg and Moscow, 1907), p. 42 Google Scholar; Gumilev, N., Pis'ma o russkoi poezii (Petrograd, 1923), p. 136 Google Scholar; Fanferliush, Abbat (Shershenevich, V.), “Poshlosf na p'edestale” in the miscellany Krematorii sdravomysliia (Moscow, 1913)Google Scholar, no pagination.
48. Which was praised by Alexander Blok too (5: 138).
49. Sovremenniki (Moscow, 1908).
50. Anichkov, “Bal'mont,” pp. 65, 68, 78,
51. Literaturnaia entsiklopediia, vol. 1 (Moscow, 1929), col. 327.
52. Mirsky, D. S., A History of Russian Literature (New York, 1955), p. 433.Google Scholar Simmons, Ernest J., An Outline of Modern Russian Literature (Ithaca, 1943), p. 28.Google Scholar Harkins, William E., Dictionary of Russian Literature (Paterson, 1959), p. 14.Google Scholar Poggioli, Renato, Poets of Russia, 1890-1930 (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), p. 90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Hofmann, M., Histoire de la littérature russe (Paris, 1946), p. 250–51.Google Scholar Lettenbauer, Wilhelm, Russische Literaturgeschichte (Frankfurt am Main and Vienna, 1955), p. 227.Google Scholar Gatto, Ettore Lo, Storia della letteratura russa, 2nd ed. (Florence, 1943), p. 440.Google Scholar Stender-Petersen, Adolf, Geschichtc der russischen Literatur, 2 vols. (Munich, 1957), 2: 521.Google Scholar
53. The papers read at the Neophilological Society in St. Petersburg were later printed in no. 7 of Zapiski Neofilologicheskogo obshchestva pri Peterburgskom universitete (1914). In Paris there was a surprise party at a café in Balmont's honor; among those present were Paul Fort, René Ghil, Gustave Kahn, and Bolestaw Lesmian.
54. Balmont is a classic case of a poet too early acclaimed and too soon cast aside. The public, as usual, lagged behind at both times. A similar case was Balmont's “enemyfriend“ Briusov, who was hailed by the literary elite for the immature Urbi et orbi (1903), which thus remained his high point in the text book discussions; the first book of his that the public rushed to buy, however, was Stephanos (1906), which Blok considered a decline. Briusov's best collection, Zerkalo tenei (The Mirror of Shadows), which came out in 1912, was ignored by everyone because it had been decided that the poet was “repeating himself.”
55. This cycle consists mainly of travel impressions and reflects Balmont's disappointment with the “real-life” Egypt. He was enthusiastic about the ancient Egyptians, however, believing that they were descended from the Atlanteans and that they had later been annihilated by the Arabs, whom Balmont despised. The “clue book” to Balmont's Egyptian poems here and later is Krai Ozirisa ﹛The Land of Osiris, Moscow, 1914), a work of popularization into which went an enormous amount of material digested by Balmont from various learned studies, with his own, sometimes amusing, opinions on matters Egyptological, descriptions of tombs, discussions of various aspects of Egyptian religion, and translations of Egyptian poetry. It is interesting to compare Balmont's admiration for the “magnificent Egyptian statues” with the reaction of Batiushkov, who saw them a hundred years earlier in the Louvre and pronounced them “amorphous.” Balmont later published a book of translations under the title Egipetskie skazki (Moscow, 1917).
56. Of course, Balmont does not always succeed in hitting the bull's-eye. He may be reproached for indulging in a pseudo-Russian style, dwelling too much on his embarrassing “alcoves” and allowing himself, in all seriousness, such lines as “Boiifln ace CMejio B lepTor sjiaTofi” (p. 226) as if he had never read Evgenii Onegin (n, 12). Lines in the vein of “TpyflKH HeJKHOii IlanyacKH / Hop, pyitofi iioefi jmoacajra” (p 135) WJU n o t be to everyone's taste either.
57. Georgii Ivanov reviewed The Ash in Apollon (no. 6-7, 1916, pp. 73-74) in the usual way: “Another book by Balmont! The twentieth or the fortieth?” He accused Balmont of repeating his “much better” earlier books, and concluded: “Nothing remains of Balmont but his name.”
58. Sea Gleams, p. 20
59. Here are some examples from books written both before and after Sonnets of Sun, Honey, and Moon: Let Us Be Like the Sun: 3#ecB. H 8#ecB. TaK. H sflecB. The Glow of Dawns: HcrjiejiH 8opn aeTa. *Iac $miHHa. raaH. TopaT flBa 8iiije OKa. TopaT. He noflxoflH. The White Architect: Xoiy. Topio. MOJUOCB. JIK)6JIH) ee. Mirage: Xoiy. Jio6iiro. Iae cosHne? HOIB yac Tyr. -H 6HJI. JIIO6HJI. H JKHJI. Koraa-io. SI He yitep. HeT. fl JKHB. TocKyro. Mine—For Her: H. yarapaji. He pas. ftaBHO. Kora-To. He 8Haio. H jiio6yK)CB. H TOCKyio. HepeaBOH. HepecKOK. HepeciynB. Distances Drawn Apart: niHpe. , fl(ajiBiiie. Tjiy6»e. Bume. IIOH. He flystaS HH O ieir. fl MBICJIB. H CTpaCTB. fl SCH3HB. H B3JieT. CBHpejIB. Northern Lights: BeacHM. JleTHM. yfieM. Tyaa. 3a flara. (Cf. Selvinsky: Taicaa. aojiacHa. CaaeTB. B soonapKe.)
60. Actually, more than three, but I was unable to get hold of Sem’ poem (Moscow, 1920) and Revoliutsioner ia Hi net? (Moscow, 1918), which contains some verse. In the selected edition Solnechnaia priasha (Moscow, 1921) there are a good number (thirty-two) of poems from Tropinkoi ognia, which might be the title of the book Balmont was preparing to publish, although he never succeeded in doing so. The poems printed are of consistently high quality and show some nonconformist traits: hints that Russia was under the threat of death and praise of Christ could hardly have been popular in the Russia of 1921. One wonders how the book came to be printed; perhaps no censor cared to read it, especially since it was presented as a selected edition.
61. But not all. “Primirenie,” for example, seems to have been written abroad. Balmont mentions in it some unspecified “offense” given to him by his fatherland.
62. In a letter to the editor, Kniga i revoliutsiia, no. 3-4 (1920), p. 101.
63. Gorky, Sobranie sochinenii, 30: 83, 87.
64. See G. Ryklin, “Konstantin Stoikii,” in Isvestiia, Sept. 30, 1928. O. Mar in a letter to the editor of Novoe Russkoe Slovo (New York), Mar. 17, 1968, mentions that the poem about the letter k was first printed in Warsaw in the newspaper Za Svobodu, then published by D. Filosofov. It is a curious coincidence that Velimir Khlebnikov in his linguistic theories also associated the letter k with the anti-Soviet cause. See his poema “Sinie okovy,” where he demonstrates this with such names as Kolchak, Kornilov, and Kaledin.
65. “Bal'mont,” Poslednie novosti (no. 710), Aug. 11, 1922.
66. The antiwar theme in Balmont dates from The Liturgy of Beauty.
67. In earlier books, if one puts aside most of Balmont's favorite formations using -osf, neologisms are infrequent: MHTeacHTBca (Silence), ckeaeTCTBOBaTb (Let Us Be Like the Sun), CTajiBHeTL (Evil Spells), BparHHH (Birds in the Air, A Round Dance of the Times, The Glow of Dawns), TpHanaTOCTB (A Round Dance of the Times). Later they increased in number: The Glow of Dawns: Kpyroo6pHCBi-n, B6TH, TCHecBeT, CBa8a, paBHOBCTpeiHOCTB. The White Architect: K0JiBi6eanTBCH. The Ash: 8apeBecTHHn, a, aaicpHB (noun), CKPOB. Sonnets: aeBBHHTBCfl, XOTB (noun), onieBSHeceHBe, BcneBHOCTB, JiyHH03B0HH, 3Be3fl03JiaTHTBCH. Mirage: Sec^acBe. Mine—For Her: BMeenepeBaaB, Myjroo- JKOmca, 8HMo6JiemynjHii, orHecBeTHTBCa, TyieBeronnifi, BecHya, etc. Distances Drawn Apart: CBeTJiOBOJiBHBiii, nepBOBecTB, 3JiaTo6HTB (noun), xo6saiBHHn, a, Cpe6po6HTB, ryflHBlfi, MHOrOJIBftaHOCTB, MBICJieBHyTpeHHHfi, IITHn, e6BICTpafl, Cpe6pOCHHB, 3*aT0HcnempeHBe, MaMeKpyr, 3JiaT0Mepn, aHBe, cep^e^yrn, 3aK0iiBi6ejieHHHH, coaHn, erpo8RBa, rpy- CTflHKa, saaTOsepHB, BOflOKpyTB, n, BeTOKpBMBH, npHBHfleHHO. (Some of these may not be neologisms but “borrowed” words, as may be seen in the poem “Son prelestnyi,” the epigraph of which—taken from the Missal—contains the word bezvremennomechtanen, which later occurs again in the poem itself.) Northern Lights: orHerpoM, oraecBeT, naaMeoMyr, 3JiaTO3B0HKHfi, cpe6pOKpBiaBifi, 8JiaT0B08syx, oceHioeT, OCCHHIIBI, CHerofieaBifi, saaTOaioJiBKa, MHoronTH^nfi, sxaTOcxesu, CBeroMraa, orHepfleronuifi, TaSHOBeionjHfi, MHorosepHB. The Blue Horseshoe: cpeGpocuoK, CB6T08B0H, KpyiOBCTBH, BJiaTOOrOHB, COaHneBaXBaieHHHH.
68. Among the poems of this book “Morskoi skaz” deserves attention. It is Balmont's etymological genealogy in verse; not only does he trace permutations of his family name through history, but he also deduces from his ancestry the very themes of his poetry. Surprisingly, it is in this poem that the notoriously egocentric Balmont mentions his name in verse for the first time, thus joining the company of Russian poets who have made their names a poetic fact (among others, Mayakovsky, Severianin, Gumilev, Georgii Ivanov, and all the main Imagists).
69. Zolotoi snop bolgarskoi poesii (Sofia, 1930). See also Souchastie dush: Ocherki, Kapbreton 1928-1930 (Sofia, 1930).
70. In our own time, when literary and cultural ties have once more become a subject for intensive study, consideration of Balmont from this viewpoint is overdue, especially when narrower topics such as “Severianin and Estonia” and “Briusov and Armenia” have already been taken care of
71. All the poems in this book are dated, and some of these dates reveal that poems which found a place in the collections of Balmont's exile (even as late as Distances Drawn Apart) were written before the Revolution.
72. Poggioli, Poets of Russia, p. 90; Adamovich, Georgii, Odinochestvo i svoboda (New York, 1955), p. 111.Google Scholar
73. Blok, 5 -203-4; Tsetlin, “K. D. Bal'mont,” p. 361: Tkhorzhevsky, Ivan, Russkaia literatura, 2 vols. (Paris, 1946): 2: 465 Google Scholar; Diks, in Kniga, pp. 43-44.
74. Prokofiev is mentioned in Balmont's short story “Lunnaia gost'ia” (Vozdushnyi put', p. 164) as “the composer of the Scythian Suite” who once played for Balmont “an organ fugue by the forgotten old master Buxtehude” (spelled in Russian ByrcT9ryfl9).
75. In exile Balmont published two books of translations from Slavic poets: selected verse by the Czech poet Jaroslav Vrchlický and Jan Kasprowicz's Ksiega ubogich.
76. Balmont himself knew his own forte. In Solnechnaia priasha, for which he selected 250 of his poems written between 1890 and 1918, his choice was: 46 from Sonnets, 25 from The Ash, 22 from The White Architect, 17 from Love Alone, 16 from Let Us Be Like the Sun, 15 from Burning Buildings.
77. Lelevich, col. 327 (see note 51).
78. Anichkov, “Bal'mont,” p. 72.
79. Kniga o russkikh poctakh poslednego desiatiletiia, p. 35. The modifying “on the whole” implies such poets as Pushkin, who could on occasion be sonorous in a Balmontian way—for example, in “Obval,” a poem greatly admired by Balmont.
80. This impact took the form of initial shock followed by second thoughts. See Gippius (quoted by Briusov, Dnevniki, p. 64): Stranno, vo vtoroi ras oni mne men'she nraviatsia.
81. “Bal'mont,” Mir iskusstva, 1903, no. 7-8, p. 35.
82. Dalekie i blizkie, p. 106.
83. “O lirike Bal'monta” in Apollon, 1912, no. 3-4, p. 38.
84. We will not discuss the numerous reproaches made to Balmont for “bad taste,” “forcing of the voice,” “lack of simplicity,” et al., of which Aikhenvald in particular was a past master.
85. Tsvetaeva, Proza, p. 260; Blok, 5: 552.
86. Anichkov, “Bal'mont,” p. 94.
87. Cited in Ashukin, N., Briusov v avtobiograficheskikh sapisiakh, pis'makh, vospominaniiakh i otzyvakh kritiki (Moscow, 1929), p. 312–13.Google Scholar
88. Aikhenvald, Iulii, Siluety russkikh pisatelei, 3rd ed. (Berlin, 1923), 3: 107 Google Scholar; Struve, Gleb, Russkaia literatura v izgnanii (New York, 1956), p. 1956 Google Scholar; Ehrenburg, Liudi, gody, zhizn', p. 154.
89. Pertsov, P., Literaturnye vospominaniia, 1890-1902 gg. (Moscow and Leningrad, 1933), p. Leningrad.Google Scholar Let us add here too that, contrary to the often expressed opinion (Mirsky, Struve), Balmont's prose is not poor. Even if his collection of short stories, Vozdushnyi put’ (Berlin, 1923), is hardly more than an entertaining synopsis of Russian decadence, his novel Pod novym serpom (Berlin, 1923), which alternates lyrical, symbolist interludes with realistic descriptions of life on a country estate, is a significant work in many respects and a “must” for any student of Balmont's poetry. As to his handling of the prose medium—one can point to excellent pages in his theoretical Poeziia kak volshebstvo (Moscow, 1915).
90. Kniga o russkikh poetakh poslednego desiatiletiia, p. 36.
91. Vygodsky, D, “0 tvorchestve Bal'monta,” Letopis', 1917, no. 5-6, p. 251; Pertsov, p. 258.Google Scholar
92. Compare this with Annensky (“Bal'mont-lirik,” p. 203), according to whom Balmont is refined without being mannered, escapes banality, and is more alien to artificiality than most poets.
93. Bely, Andrei, Nachalo veka (Moscow and Leningrad, 1933), p. Leningrad.Google Scholar
94. Dalekie i bliskie, p. 76; Annensky, “Bal'mont-lirik,” p. 192.
95. Ehrenburg, Ilia, Portrety sovremennykh poetov (Moscow, 1923), p. 28 Google Scholar; Gorky, Sobranie sochinenii, 28: 371.
96. Ellis, Russkie simvolisty, pp. 118-19.
97. Anichkov, “Bal'mont,” p. 99.