Article

Name: On the Russian bezmernost’ of Tsvetaeva and Transmarine bezbrezhnost’ of Balmont

Authors: R. S. Voitekhovich

University of Tartu

Abstract: Bezmernost’ (literally ‘mesurelessness’) is one of Marina Tsvetaeva’s most favorite words, which turned into her steady characteristic, despite the fact that it appears only once in her original poetry (cf. the cycle «Poets», 1923). It is important to point out the correlation of this term with the concept of bezbrezhnost’ (‘coastlessness’) emblematic for Konstantin Balmont (see collection «V bezbrezhnosti», 1895). Balmont uses the words bezbrezhnost’ abundantly, and for Tsvetaeva, her bezmernost’ was a kind of Balmontism. Undoubtedly, Tsvetaeva and Balmont had much in common, including the imagery of the «sea» and «elements». Tsvetaeva learned from Balmont to write poetry and compose books. She carefully worked through three-volume collection of Balmont (1908–1909), acquired in the period of compiling the book «Vecherniy albom» (1910). The compositional «rhythm» of the book is identical to the rhythm of Balmont’s book «Under the Northern Sky» and corresponds to the principle of «trefoils» by Innokenty Annensky (this form was taken from Balmont’s cycle «Trefoil», as Roman Timenchik noted). However, approximately since 1913 Balmont lost leading positions in Russian poetry, and Tsvetaeva gradually reoriented to other samples, although later, for example, in the famous «Who is made of stone, who is made of clay...» (1920), she revealed her kinship with her former idol, but did not want it to be obvious. In the translation of Baudelaire’s «Le Voyage», the word bezmernost’ was included in the phrase bezmernost’ morei («immensity of the seas»). For Tsvetaeva, Balmont is related to the «sea» (he is an «overseas visitor»), and the sea was the semantic component of her own name Marina. But Balmont is «global», no «Russian» author, as Tsvetaeva defines herself (cf. «The Hero of Labor», 1925). However, Tsvetaeva contradicts herself here. Young Tsvetaeva was a gallomaniac. In the poem «Motherland» (1932) she calls her homeland «Faraway» (concept semantically close to the concept of bezmernost’). Both for Balmont and for Tsvetaeva, the ideas of «width» and «infinity» as «Russian» properties are relevant (cf. A. D. Shmelev’s article «The breadth of the Russian soul»). More generally, the orientation towards immensity / boundlessness is associated with general and international attitudes of a romantic type of culture and aesthetics (or the Baroque type according to Heinrich Wölfflin, see his Renaissance und Barock and Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe). However, Balmont prefers bezbrezhnost’ – the idea of infinity in the horizontal plane (while in reality he uses this word everywhere, and everything gives a shade of «horizontality »). For Tsvetaeva, the vertical organization of space is more typical, and its «immensity» often implies excessive density or height.

Keywords: modernism, poetry, poetics, Tsvetaeva, Balmont

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