Nikolai Klyuev, 1894-1937

The Past, the Present, and the Future – recovered, mythologized, remade…

Nikolai Klyuev, 1884-1937

Nikolai Klyuev is one of the most

interesting, contradictory, and complex figures of the

Modernist periodLeft – with his close friend

Nikolai Arkhipov in Vytegra, early

1920s; right, around 1930

He was born and brought up in the area around the little town of Vytegra, not far from the southern end of Lake Onega, in northern Russia

He was probably born and certainly baptized in the village of Koshtugi, on the Rivers Kimreka and Megra,

in 1884

Koshtugi, 60 km from Vytegra

The village is now in terminal decline. In Klyuev’s day, it had about 1,000 residents; now that number is around 200

Koshtugi at the end of the C20th

The church where the poet was probably baptized

Before the Communist period there were two active churches in the village; one was demolished in the C20th, the other used as a club, then a barn; reconsecrated in the late Soviet period, it is rarely used (there is no priest in the village), and near to collapse

Koshtugi, summer 2003

The village today has no running water, and no sewage system. There is electricity. The school closed several years ago.

There is no record of the location of Klyuev’s house

The future poet and his father

In the 1880s the Klyuev family moved from Koshtugi to the village of Zhelvachevo, where his father, a former soldier and police constable, worked in a government liquor store

Zhelvachevo is part of the larger village (selo) of Makachevo, north of Vytegra

Zhelvachevo, 2003

Two of the last three permanent residents of Zhelvachevo (note, on the right, the traditional stove and ukhvat – long fork for moving pots in the stove)

The Klyuev family house was moved in the Soviet period to the center of Makachevo, where it served as a school building. It then stood empty for some years, but is now home to the village library. Late in the Soviet period, a memorial plaque was installed on the building

Memorialization

Two plaques – one from the Soviet period (left), the other, post-Soviet, installed on the site where the family house once stood

Almost nothing is left of Makachevo’s churches or its churchyard, but a cross has been installed on the approximate burial site of the poet’s parents.

The poet lived in Vytegra at times during the 1910s and the early 1920s

Vytegra

Klyuev country

Memorialization

Participants in the annual Klyuev symposium held in Vytegra always visit the graveyard where the poet’s parents were buried (note the new cross, 2003). As with many aspects of literary memorialization, note the strong cultic elements here.

History and lossAlmost everything in the story of

Klyuev seems about lossThe rural life that the poet

mythologized as it was disappearing seems now in complete ruins

The poet himself was “lost” in the purges

Much of his work was inaccessible for most of the C20th…

“Authentic” or “Invented”?Authenticity – the “real Russia” is

a key issueKlyuev “dressed up” as a

peasant, but was he “dressing up as himself”

And what about that “authentic self” – archaist and homosexual, anti-urbanist and fully-fledged modernist…?

Klyuev in his Leningrad apartment (note the folk objects surrouning him, note his dress); Klyuev and the young artist Anatolii Yar-Kravchenko (the love of his life); Klyuev and another famous poet – Sergei Esenin

The house where the poet lived in Leningrad (a grand house, formerly home to a princely family, in the centre of town). The poet’s small apartment, furnished in peasant style, was at the back.

Klyuev – Paradoxical PoetPoet of archaic culture and rural

lifeAfter 1923, big-city dwellerFully-fledged Russian ModernistHomosexualGreeted the Bolshevik revolution

enthusiastically, soon inveighed against it…

The poet’s reaction to historical events. Initially positive about the Bol’shevik coup, he soon became disenchanted, as this poem suggests

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!

Klyuev locates himself in the Soviet epoch, 1921/2

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 concluding poem of one of his best collections, 1920

Apocalypse or renewal?

By the end of the 1920s, Klyuev was persona non grata in public life – labelled a “kulak poet” for his mythologization of archaic Russian culture and peasant life, he was attacked in the press and his work was not published. However, he continued to write and to give readings of his verse

In 1934 he was arrested and convicted on two charges (anti-Soviet activities and homosexuality – newly outlawed). He was exiled to Siberia, first to the settlement of Kolpahsevo, Narym, and then to the city of Tomsk. In the 1937 he was arrested in Tomsk, interrogated, convicted, and shot. He was buried in a mass grave, with many other victims of Stalinist repression.

Klyuev’s last poem, written in 1937, foretelling his death and reasserting his cultural position.

Есть 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!”

In the 1980s a Klyuev Museum was created in Vytegra, where an annual symposium on the poet also takes place

The museum displays objects that once belonged to the poet, as well as modern items about him

His samovar, seen in the photograph from the 1920s

Inscriptions in books

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 very ornamental hand, a stylization in the manner of a pre-modern mss

The Annual Klyuev Symposium

Local Publications about the Poet – who forms a link between the small provincial town and “big culture”

In Tomsk Klyuev is also memorialized now. Above is the plaque on the house which he occupied for about a year. To the left, the house where he was arrested. It too had a plaque. Sadly this house was demolished for a real estate development in 2007.

1990s publications of Klyuev, when he “returned home” in full. Note the martyrological and/or iconographic presentation of the poet in many publications.

Klyuev was and remains a much-disputed figure: for some, the authentic voice of popular spirituality, for others, someone who “made himself up” to suit the

cultural climate

Attributed to the Symbolist poet Aleksandr Blok:

“Christ among us”

From the memoirs of another Symbolist poet, Georgii Ivanov

But Gorodetsky missed the only real poet of this genre [the “new-peasant poets”]. He read his manuscripts and did not pay any attention to them. It was the “soul-less” Bryusov who discovered Klyuev.

Yet, on his arrival in Petersburg, Klyuev fell immediately under Gorodestsky’s influence and firmly acquired the manner of a pet travesty of the peasantry [muzhichok-travesti].

“Well, Nikolai Vasil´evich [sic], how have you settled in Petersburg?”

“Thank the Lord, the Virgin continues to intercede for us sinners. I have found myself a little cell of a room, that is all we need. Come to see me, my son, favor me with your presence. I live on Morskaya, round the corner...”

Once I did go to visit Klyuev. The cell turned out to be a room in the Hôtel de France, fully carpeted with a wide ottoman couch. Klyuev was sitting on the couch, dressed up in a collar and tie, and reading Heine in the original.

“I can manage a bit of their infidel tongue [marakayu malost´ po-basurmanskomu]”, — he said in response to my astonished glance. “A little bit. But there’s no soul in it. Our nightingales have better voices, oh, much better...”

“But what am I thinking of”, he said anxiously, “what sort of reception is this for an honored guest. Sit down, my son, sit down, my dear. What may I offer you? I do not drink tea, nor smoke tobacco, and have no gingerbread. But”, he winked, “if you are not in a hurry, perhaps we should take luncheon together. There is a little tavern here. The owner is a good man, even if he is French. Just round the corner. He is called Albert.”

I was not in a hurry.

“Well, that is fine, that is wonderful, — I will get dressed”.

“Why get changed?”

“Come now, come now — surely I could not go out like this? The dogs would make me a laughing stock. Wait just a minute, I’ll be back straightaway.”

He emerged from behind a screen in a peasant coat, waxed boots, and a scarlet peasant shirt: “Well now, that’s better”.

“But you’ll not get into a restaurant dressed like that.”

“We won’t be asking for the main dining room anyway. We peasants know our place is not among the gentlemen. Everyone should know their place [znai, sverchok, svoi shestok]. We won’t be in the dining room, we’re going to a little cell, that is, to a private room. They will allow that...”

What he said about himself

“Bearing the people’s consecration” (first line of a poem)

“A poet of the people, gifted with foresight, who has astonished his great contemporaries… A son of the Olonian forests, striking Russian literature with verbal thunder.” (a characterization of Klyuev published anonymously, but apparently written by … Klyuev)

“My legs were worn down by the 1,000 devotions rule of the Solovetsky Monastery and by the heavy weights I carried to mortify the flesh: I carried ten-pound weights on my shoulders until the Red Year. I wore them in St Petersburg, drinking tea with all manner of spirit-struggling writers and scholars” (From an autobiographical text)

Who was Klyuev…?The authentic voice of peasant Russia,

expressing the special, secret religious spirit of the people?

A figure who invented himself to suit the interests of an urban intelligentsia, who believed in that kind of Russia?

Both possibilities were argued then, and are argued again today, while the secondary reconstruction of Klyuev’s own reconstructed, mythologized world renders the issues ever more complex

Klyuev and the 21st Century

School children read his work in his home region – how will he fit into the new century…?

Only time will tell…