Article

Name: «Word Unusual – an Old Woman...»: About One Mythologeme in M. Tsvetaeva’s Lyrics

Authors: N. V. Barkovskaya

Urals State Pedagogical University

Abstract: The article is devoted to the reflexion of the problem of presence or absence of the dynamics in Tsvetaeva’s personal myth, in accordance with the typology of poets, denoted by author herself: «the poets with a history» and «the poets without history». Tsvetaeva’s predilection for several crosscutting mythologemes and plots is well known. One of these mythologemes is the «earseashell ». The logic of the development of her personal myth it is possible to clarify, having followed to the manifestations of this mythologeme in different periods of Tsvetaeva’s creatity. For starting point of research the early poem «An old woman» (Starukha) is taken. This poem stands out from the general atmosphere of juvenescence, pervading in «Evening Album» (Vechernii Al'bom). Listening to the words «old woman», Tsvetaeva reveals its poetic «inner form»: an ear is a shell. Tsvetaeva does not represent the image of an old woman (obviously opposed to «young grandmothers»); she listens to the glum sound of the word itself. The image of the seashell correlates with the labyrinth-snail of the ear. The modernists interpreted the ear as a «supercommunication» channel. In Tsvetaeva’s poem, the old woman's ear hears not an underground roar, but the sound of the ocean, so the auricle associates with the seashell. The self-mythology of the Tsvetaeva’s «marine » name echoes with Vrubel’s picture «Pearl» (1904), where the shapes of the seashell and the ear are similar. Later, Tsvetaeva’s heroine will begin to associate herself with the shell – an aquatic femininity symbol. The image of the shell becomes a resource of self-identification of Tsvetaeva’s heroine (the cycle «Insomnia» (Bessonitsa), poems «Slope» (Naklon) and «Seashell» (Rakovina)). However, in later verses («Bush» (Kust), «Garden» (Sad)) she expressed a desire to give up both words and ear-shell. In the cycle «Bush» (1934) again there is a theme of the ear as «supercommunication» organ, a thirst for that «noise of the ear», in which «everything is connected». This noise becomes evident in moments between silence and speech; and called as the birthplace of «the fog of our poems». The shell sounds only when it is empty, i.e. is dead. In the «Poem of the Air» in the Chapter VII, the final «loss of the body through the ear» takes place. The poetic essence disembarks, releasing the spirit-sound from the body-letters. At the same time, the archetypal scheme of rebirth through death has a very specific relationship with the real historical era which breaks down the lives of poets. Turning to the cycle «Tombstone» (1935) allows us to conclude that after death poet, according to Tsvetaeva, is not underaround, and not at above-world height, he continues to live in poetry readers – not the newspapers readers, but those who are capable of hearing in the word-shell the sound of the ocean.

Keywords: mythologeme of ear/hear, poetic of Tsvetaeva, mythologeme of the seashell, concept «old woman»

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