Nikolai Klyuev,1884-1937

Nikolai Klyuev is one of the most

interesting, contradictory, and complex figures of

the Modernist period

Left – with his close friend Nikolai

Arkhipov in Vytegra, early 1920s; right,

around 1930

Klyuev was born and grew up near the southern end of Lake Onega in northern Russia, in the area around the small town of Vytegra. The area, relatively remote from major urban centers, is culturally a border area between traditionally Slavic and Finno-Ugric territories. Klyuev lived in villages where both Orthodoxy and the Old Belief were practiced.

He was probably born in the village of Koshtugi, on the rivers Megra and Kimreka, and he was certainly baptized there in 1884.

Koshtugi

Онежское озеро

Koshtugi is only some 60 km from Vytegra, but poor roads can make that a long journey even today

The village is very picturesque, but its population is now small and declining, as is the case in many Russian villages.

In the late nineteenth century, however, it was thriving, with a population of over 1,000.

Details of the village from a local tourist brochure

The church where the future poet was baptized was closed in the Soviet era, and used as a barn. It has now been

reconsecrated, but is in serious disrepair. On the left, the church in 1994, on the right, in 2003.

Koshtugi in July, 2003. The village has a school with about twenty pupils, but most year-round inhabitants are elderly. The population now is smaller than the number of kostuzhane who

died at the front in the Second World War.

Klyuev’s father, a former soldier (pictured with the future poet, left), was a village constable at the time of Nikolai’s birth. Later, the family moved to the village of Zhelvachevo (below, photographed in 1994).

In Zhelvachevo, Klyuev’s father was the landlord of a government wine store.

Zhelvachevo is a derevnya, forming part of the larger selo of Makachevo, north of Vytegra

Покупатели – типичные жители этой, к сожалению умирающей, деревни.

On the site where the family house stood, a memorial plaque has been installed (left); the village is on a bend in the river Andoma (top right); it consists now of only a few houses

(bottom right).

Here are two of the three last full-time residents of Zhelvachevo (the other houses are used as dachi in the

summer).

In this house (left) Klyuev probably began to write. From here, he initiated a correspondence with Aleksandr Blok, the leading Symbolist poet. In the 1960s the house was moved to Makachevo, to serve as a school. For a long time it stood empty; as of 2003 it was serving as the village library. A plaque commemorates its role in the author’s life.

MemorializationEven the language of the two plaques is telling. The plaque on the house, put up in the Soviet period, calls Klyuev a “Russian Soviet poet” – a contentious and ideological qualification, especially ironic, given that he died a victim of Soviet repression. The plaque on the site where the house once stood, installed in the 1990s, merely states “Here in the village of Zhelvachevo stood the house where in the years 1895-1915 lived N. A. Klyuev”.

Until the Soviet period, Makachevo had two churches (a summer and a winter church). Now almost nothing is left of either. A cross marks the approximate spot of burial of Klyuev’s parents in the remnants of the church yard. The two churches were destroyed in the 1960s.

Memorialization

Under the aegis of the Vytegra Museum, the presumed site of burial of Klyuev’s parents is maintained as a memorial. In 2003 the cross was replaced with a shrine resembling the original, discovered on a photograph of the 1910s. Participants of the annual Klyuev symposium in Vytegra always visit the site.

Klyuev moved between the Vytegra area and St Petersburg in the 1910s as his reputation grew. He lived in Vytegra for the early Soviet years

Vytegra

Zhelvachevo

Rubtsovo – last village in the area where the poet lived.

Vytegra in October 1994

Vytegra

Cross at Makachevo

Koshtugi in October 2002

Tudozero

Klyuev country

After the early 1920s Klyuev never returned to his native region, living first in Petrograd/Leningrad, then Moscow. He remained faithful to his early identification with the peasantry and Old Russian culture (see his urban room, top left). He was also deeply attached to the memory of the young Sergei Esenin (bottom left, with Klyuev). But the great love of his later life was the young artist Anatolii Yar-Kravchenko (above), with whom he lived in Leningrad at the end of the 1920s.

Klyuev in LeningradThe apartment so carefully decorated in peasant style was at the back of this grand building at 45 Bol’shaya morskaya street (the house is the former Meshchersky palace, in the very center of the city).

Although Klyuev had greeted the Bolshevik coup with enthusiasm, he soon began to depict it as part of the process which was destroying his mythologized Russian peasant culture, and to define his own role and situation in clear opposition to it (often by the use of a series of historical and cultural allusions, as in this poem of 1921/1922).

От иконы Бориса и Глеба,От стригольничьего ШестокрылаМоя песенная потреба,Стихов валунная сила.

Кости мои от Маргарита,Кровь от костра Аввакума.Узорнее аксамитаМоя золотая дума:

Чтобы Русь как серьга повислаВ моем цареградском ухе...Притекают отары-числаК пастуху — дырявой разрухе.

И разруха пасет отарыТатарским лихим кнутом,Оттого на Руси пожарыИ заплакан родимый дом.....

И желанна великая треба,Чтоб во прахе бериллы и шелкПред иконой Бориса и ГлебаОкаянный поверг Святополк!

From the icon of Boris and GlebFrom the Strigol´nik Six WingsComes my song sacrifice,The boulder power of my verse.

My bones are from Chrysostom’s Pearl,My blood from Avvakum’s fire.More elaborate than ancient velvetIs my golden thought:

May old Russia hang like an ear-ringIn my Constantinopolitan ear…Flocks of days gather round theirShepherd — tattered destruction.

And destruction tends the herdsWith a wild Tatar whip,Hence old Russia burnsAnd the family home is mourned.….

A great rite is needed,That before the icon of Boris and GlebIn ashes, beryls and silkBe laid down by cursed Svyatopolk!

Поле усеянное костями.Черепами с беззубой зевотой,И над ним, гремящий маховиками,Безыменный и безликий кто-то.Кружусь вороном над страшным полем,Узнаю чужих и милых скелеты,И в железных тучах демонов с дрекольем,Провожающих в тартар серные кареты.Вот шестерня битюгов крылатых,Запряженных в кузов, где Есенина поэмы.Господи, ужели и в рязанских хатахПроменяли на манишку ржаные эдемы!И нет Ярославны поплакать зигзицей,Прекрасной Евпраксии низринуться с чадом...Я – ворон, кружусь над великой гробницей,Где челюсть осла с Менделеевым рядом.Мои граи почитают за песни народа, -- Он был в миллионах годин и столетий...На камне могильном старуха свободаИз саванов вяжет кромешные сети.Над мертвою степью безликое что-тоРодило безумие, тьму, пустоту...Глядь, в черепе утлом осиные соты,И кости ветвятся, как верба в цвету.Светила слезятся запястьем перловым,Ручей норовит облозаться с лозой,И Бог зеленеет побегом ветловымПод новою твердью, над красной землей.

A field sown with bones,With skulls in toothless grins,And over it, rattling flywheels,A nameless, faceless someone.I circle like a crow above the fearful field,I recognize the skeletons of strangers and friends,And, in iron clouds, the demons with stakes,Accompanying to Tartarus the sulphur chariots.Here's a team of six winged cart-horses,Harnessed to a cart containing Esenin's epics.Lord, have they, even in the peasant huts of Ryazan',Swapped their rye paradises for city shirt fronts!There's no Yaroslavna to sing like a cuckoo,Nor fair Evpraksiya to fall with her child...A crow, I am circling above the great coffin,Where donkey jaws lie beside Mendeleev.My caws will be taken for songs of the people,Existing for millions of years and of centuries...The old woman freedom, sat on her grave stone,Is knitting from shrouds her dark nets.Above the dead steppe a faceless somethingGave birth to insanity, darkness, a void...Look, wasp honeycombs are in the frail skull,The bones are now sprouting like willows in flower.The stars weep tears of pearl bracelets,The stream is attempting to kiss the vine,And God becomes verdant in rushing of willowsBeneath a new firmament, above a red land.

The last poem from his collection L’vinyi khleb (Lion’s Bread), composed in Vytegra in the immediate post-revolutionary years is

typical in its ambiguities

By the end of the 1920s, Klyuev was very much persona non grata in Soviet literature. Labeled a “kulak poet”, he was repeatedly attacked, and very rarely published. He continued to write very actively however, composing a series of striking long poems, and a considerable body of lyric works. Some of the these texts were published in the west in the 1950s and 1960s, others were published for the first time only in the 1980s and 1990s.

In 1934 he was arrested in Moscow, and exiled to Siberia. He lived in Tomsk until 1937, when he was arrested, convicted of participating in a monarchist plot, and shot. Top left – the part of Tomsk where he lived. Top right, a house where he rented accommodation. Far left, cells in the NKVD building where he was interrogated. Left, presumed site of his execution .

Klyuev’s last known poem, written in Tomsk in 1937Есть две страны; одна -- Больница,Другая -- Кладбище, меж нихПечальных сосен вереница,Угрюмых пихт и верб седых!

Блуждая пасмурной опушкой,Я обронил свою клюкуИ заунывною кукушкойСтучусь в окно к гробовщику:

"Ку-ку! Откройте двери, люди!""Будь проклят, полуночный пес!Кому ты в глиняном сосудеНесешь зарю апрельских роз?!

Весна погибла, в космы сосенВплетает вьюга седину..."Но, слыша скрежет ткацких кросен,Тянусь к зловещему окну.

 И вижу: тетушка МогилаТкет желтый саван, и челнок,Мелькая птицей чернокрылой,Рождает ткань, как мерность строк.

В вершинах пляска ветродуев,Под хрип волчицыной трубы.Читаю нити: "Н. А. Клюев,-Певец олонецкой избы!"

Я умер! Господи, ужели?!Но где же койка, добрый врач?И слышу: «В розовом апрелеОборван твой пердсмертный плач!

Вот почему в кувшине розы,И сам ты – мальчик в синем льне!..Скрипят житейские обозыВ далекой бренной стороне.

К ним нет возвратного проселка,Там мрак, изгнание, Нарым.Не бойся савана и волка, --За ними с лютней серафим!»

«Приди, дитя мое, приди!» --Запела лютня неземная,И сердце птичкой из грудиПерепорхнуло в кущи рая.

И первой песенкой моей,Где брачной чашею лилея,Была «Люблю тебя, Расея,Страна грачиных озимей!»

И ангел вторил: «Буди, буди!Благословен родной овсень!Его, как розаны в сосуде,Блюдет Христос на Оный День!»

There are two countries – one the Hospital,The other – Cemetery, between themRuns a row of sad fir trees,Gloomy pines, and gray willows!

Wandering in the shadowy glade,I dropped my walking stickAnd like a dreary cuckooKnock at the gravedigger’s window:

“Cuckoo! People, open up the door!” “Be damned, midnight cur!To whom are you carrying a clay bowlWith the dawn of April roses?!

Spring has perished, and into the pines’ maneThe snow storm weaves gray hair…”But, hearing the rattle of a weaver’s loom,I lean towards the sinister window.

 And see: old aunt TombWeaving a yellow shroud, and the shuttle,Flashing like a black-winged bird,Gives birth to fabric, like the rhythm of verse.

In the heights above the winds danceTo the wheezing of the she-wolf chimney.I read the words sewn in the shroud: “N. A. Klyuev,The singer of the Olonian peasant house!”

I’ve died? Lord, surely not?!But where’s the sick bed, good doctor?And I hear, “In rosy AprilYour last lamentation was cut off!

That’s why there are roses in the pitcher,And you are a boy in blue flax!…Life’s carts rattle byIn a distant, mortal land.

 No way leads back to them,There all is darkness, exile, Siberia.Don’t’ fear the shroud and the wolf,After them comes a seraph with a lute.”

“Come, my child, come!”Sang the unearthly lute,And my heart sprang like a bird From my chest into the groves of heaven.

And my first song,When the lily was a wedding chalice,Was “I love you, simple Russia,Country of rook-covered winter crops!”

And the angel answered, “Be it so, be it so!Blessed is the native rite of spring!It, like roses in the vessel,Is watched by Christ for Judgment Day!”

The question of memorialization, like the question of memory, is a pressing and complex one for contemporary Russia

Various forms of memorialization in Klyuev’s petit pays, where an annual symposium is devoted to him.

The Vytegra Klyuev museum

Among the poet’s belongings on display is his traveling samovar

Autograph in the Klyuev Museum, Vytegra

Михаилу Ручьеву с пожеланием весны и малиновой юностиН. Клюев 1923

To Mikhail Ruch’ev with best wishes for spring and a raspberry youthN. Klyuev 1923

Note the highly stylised hand, and equally ornamental form of the inscription itself

The local museum organizes the annual Klyuev symposium, attended by scholars from round the country and beyond. At

first, these events were politically difficult. Now they present financial challenges because of lack of funds.

Local publications have also been devoted to the poet. Some are for the visitor, some for the scholarly reader. The brochure prepared in the early 1980s for the very first Klyuev symposium (top right) was never distributed. The Museum Director, Tamara Makarova, was told to pulp it because the biographical note concluded with the line “his life broke off tragically in 1937”.

In Tomsk memorialization is more complex, because this was the site of Klyuev’s exile and execution (and the place of exile and death for many more thousands). Nonetheless, plaques record two of his places of residence.

The geographical and ideological diversity of Klyuev publications are well indicated by the books on this page, all published since 1990

Among the most exciting discoveries of recent years were two fragmentary recordings of the poet reading his verse Many memoirists

speak of the powerful impression created by the poet when he read his poetry.

The last lines of Derevnya (The village, 1926), read by Klyuev in the recording

[…Душа – степной жеребенок]Копытом бьет о грудину, --Дескать, выпусти на долину,К резедовым лугам, водопою…Мы не знаем ныне покою, --Маета-змея одолелаБез сохи, без милого дела,Без сусальной в углу Пирогощей…

Ты, Рассея, -- лихая теща!...Только будут, будут стократыНа Дону вишневые хаты,По Сибири лодки из кедра,Олончане песнями щедры,Только б месяц, рядясь в дымы,На реке бродил по налимы,Да черемуху в белой шалиВечера, как девку, ласкали!

[The soul – a foal from the steppes]Beats its hoof against the chest, --As if to say, let me out to the valley,To the mignonette meadows, to the water…Nowadays we know no peace, --The anxiety-snake has conqueredWithout plough, without favorite task,Without gold-leaf icon in the corner…

You, Russia, are a fierce mother-in-law!...Only there will be, will be a hundredfoldCherry-wood huts on the Don,Boats of cedar in Siberia,Olonian men generous in song,So long as the moon, dressed in smoke,Wanders the river for burbot,And the evenings caress like a girlThe bird cherry in its white shawl!

Klyuev’s “Kto za chto…” (1928), which he reads in the recently discovered recording

Кто за что, а я за двоперстье,За байку над липовой зыбкой…Измерено ли русское безвестьеПушкинской золотою рыбкой?

Изловлены ль все павлины,Финисты, струфокамилыВ кедровых потемках овина,В цветике у маминой могилы?

Погляди на золотые сосны,На холмы – праматерние груди!Хорошо под гомон сенокосныйПобродить по Припяти, по Чуди, --

Окунать усы в квасные жбаныС голубой татарскою поливой,Слушать ласточек и ранним-раноПересуды пчел над старой сливой:

«Мол, кряжисты парни на Волыни,Как березки девушки на Вятке…»На певущем огненном павлинеК нам приедут сказки и загадки.

Сядет Суздаль за лазорь и вапу,Разузорит Вологда коклюшки…Кто за что, а я за цап-царапу,За котягу в дедовской избушке.

Choose what you will, but I am for the Old Believer cross,For a tale told over a lime-wood cradle…Was the Russian mystery measuredBy Pushkin’s Golden Fish?

Have all the peacocks been caught,The falcons and ostriches of talesIn the cedar darkness of the barn,In the flower at mother’s grave?

Look at the golden pines,At the hills – foremothers’ breasts!It’s fine wandering to the soundOf haymaking by Pripyat’ and Lake Chud’, --

Dipping whiskers into kvass jugsWith a blue Tatar glaze,Listening to swallows and first thingThe quarreling of bees above the old plum tree.

“So the lads of Volynia are strong,Like birches are the girls on the Vyatka…”On a singing fiery peacockTales and riddles will ride to us.

Suzdal’ will sit at its blue and its icon paint,Vologda will decorate its lace bobbins…Choose what you like, but I am for a scratching pouncer,For a big fat cat in the old man’s hut.

But the future is far from clear –how will the 21st century read this intriguing and contradictory poet?

School children in the village school at Devyatiny, near Vytegra, read Klyuev’s works during a school jubilee, October, 2002 (left), and at an evening devoted to the poet’s verse during the 2003 Klyuev symposium (right).