Nikolai Klyuev: Time and Text, Place and Poet

Preface

ix I first became interested in Nikolai Klyuev while working on Marina Tsvetaeva . Searching for points of contrast and comparison for her folkloric poemy, I read Bazanov’s article on Klyuev’s narrative poem Pogorel’shchina, and then that work itself (both are discussed in the following pages). I was fascinated, at times mesmerized, by Klyuev’s language and by the story told in Pogorel’shchina. I was also intrigued to see that Bazanov had published in the Soviet Union a scholarly article on a poem which itself had not, at that time (1979), been published there. Reading through Sochineniya (the twovolume edition of Klyuev published in Munich in 1969, which was for many years the most complete and reliable edition of his poetry and prose) and then looking at the glasnost-era publications of the poet, I was even more fascinated by his poetry, by his story, and by the story of his texts (the three things which form the core of this book). I began to work on him, first casually , and then more seriously. Reading Klyuev, even as provisionally and hesitantly as I have often read him, is a serious challenge, perhaps a task for a lifetime (especially, it must be confessed, for a non-native speaker). My desk and the floor of my study have often been covered in piles of books more varied in character than is usually the case, even with the most demanding of Russian authors. Many dictionaries and atlases, books on and from the old Belief, guides to the folk arts of the Russian north, collections of medieval literature, architectural and artistic compendia, and encyclopedias of popular beliefs have demanded space in my study alongside philological volumes and collected works. This book is the result of that reading, of my fascination and my struggles with Nikolai Klyuev. It aims to look at Klyuev as both a “philological ” and a “culturological” (to use the Russian terms) phenomenon, and aspires to be of interest not only to readers of literature, but also to anyone engaged in the study of modern Russian culture. I hope that it will help to introduce Klyuev and his work to the English-speaking reader, while also using the example of the poet to discuss some of the most intriguing cultural problems and paradoxes of Russian culture, as they appeared in the later dePreface Preface x cades of Russian modernism, in the early decades of Soviet power, and again in the late and post-Soviet years. In other words, I have tried to write a book which describes and analyzes Klyuev’s poetry and the cultural phenomenon of the poet himself, while also pursuing a number of general thematic lines. My own research, Russian scholarship on Klyuev, and, in recent years, the Russian Internet have taken me repeatedly, if “virtually,” to distant corners of Russian culture, and to distant corners of Russia itself. And Klyuev has also taken me physically to many parts of Russia. My Klyuev travels began in 1994, when I spent six weeks in Russia, and had the great good fortune to meet several of the leading Klyuev scholars, all of whom were gracious with their time and advice—Sergei Subbotin from the Institute of World Literature, Lyudmila Kiseleva from Kiev University, Konstantin Azadovsky and the late Aleksandr Mikhailov from Pushkin House, Elena Markova from the Petrozavodsk Russian Academy of Sciences Center—and also to meet the equally welcoming and generous Vitalii Shentalinsky, who had discovered and published (from the archives of the KGB) Klyuev’s Pesn’ o Velikoi Materi, long thought irretrievably lost. Moreover, I had the great good fortune to be invited to the annual Klyuevskie chteniya (Klyuev readings ) in Vytegra, the town in the center of Klyuev’s home region. That and my subsequent visits to Vytegra shaped greatly my thoughts on the poet and his place in Russian culture. As well as regular travels to Moscow and St. Petersburg, my visits to Kargopol’ (Archangel oblast), Kirov-Vyatka, Sovetsk (formerly Kukarka, Kirov oblast), and Tomsk have been especially enlightening , although many other Klyuev topoi remain on my wish list. This book could not possibly have been written without the help of the scholars I mention above—each of them has been very helpful and supportive —but I should particularly like to thank Sergei Subbotin, who has generously given of his time and patiently listened to my ignorant questions on many occasions. others who have helped me a great deal include Lyudmila Yatskevich and her...