Here is another confession…I really hate nineteenth century literature. In particular I really hate Jane Austen which led to my hate of romantic literature in general. First, my apologies to Dr. Anne Higginbotham at Eastern Connecticut State University, who subjected me to Austen's romantic exploits on two separate occasions. In that case, maybe she should apologize to me. I remember in class when she handed out the book list and I saw "Mansfield Park" was on the book list, unconsciously I rolled my eyes but she saw me. "Ms. Mueller you will read it and you will like it." I read (the Cliff Notes) and I hated it even in Cliff Notes form. So began my disdain for things defined as "romantic". But I should explain why because you can't just carry around free floating disdain without reason.
Virtually everything that qualifies (at least in my culture) as "romantic" takes two forms. The first portrays love and romance in an over idealized saccharin view of love or romance. Like Jane Austen, possibly Wuthering Heights and finally Nicholas Sparks. Romance portrayed as hearts on fire, kissing in the pouring rain, and all this punctuated by lines like "You complete me." Every year a new crop of young women in my classroom will ask me if I have seen fill- in- the- blank- romantic- movie. Or "How could you not LOOOOOVE The Notebook." Easy, there are no explosions.
The other form of course looks at passion, and only passion so true love is boiled down to sexual gratification and how sexually compatible the couple is especially when they fall into bed with each other either in the first 30 minutes of the film or first 50 pages of the book. Passion is of course an amazing force burns out quickly if not fed by something else. Sex can be great, but becomes meaningless if really there is nothing else in common.
All this disdain for romance is coming from a woman who married her high school sweetheart and now loves Pushkin. The latter, one could argue is the most romantic poet ever produced in world literature, the former is working on it.
There is really nothing I should like about Pushkin. He wrote about love and he was a poet. Poetry is the other problem. I never really liked poetry either. One reason could be because I did not understand it. Also most of what passes for poetry is just prose written in fragments and read in an earnest, over emotional manner. I can read the phone book this way, it does make it poetry. Call me old school but I like it to rhyme.
When I first started to communicate with real Russians eventually the topic would turn to literature and also poetry and so really Pushkin. Had I read him? Did I like him? Hmm 19th century Russian poet. I did not think there was much of a chance given my well formed prejudice against the 19th century and its literature. But then I was sent this:
Я вас любил
Я вас любил: любовь еще, быть может,
В душе моей угасла не совсем;
Но пусть она вас больше не тревожит;
Я не хочу печалить вас ничем.
Я вас любил безмолвно, безнадежно,
То робостью, то ревностью томим;
Я вас любил так искренно, так нежно,
Как дай вам бог любимой быть другим.
I loved you once
I loved you once, and still, perhaps, love's yearning
Within my soul has not burned away.
Yet may they nevermore you be concerning
I do not wish you sad in any way.
My love for you was wordless, hopeless cruelly
Drowned now in shyness, now in jealousy.
And I loved you so tenderly so truly
As God grant by another you may be.
If that does not move you I am pretty sure you are dead.
And really if you hear it in Russian it will knock you over. (See note at the end) Over the past two years I have opened up about poetry in general and romantic poetry on particular. I love Pushkin. I currently own a bilingual copy of Мой Талисман/My Talisman which even at a heafty700+ pages I carry with me practically everywhere. It was in this copy I found my favorite poem which I will share at the end. My Russian teacher can be easily distracted at the mention of Pushkin. But is more than simply amazing poetry, Pushkin reformed the Cyrillic alphabet he changed the way Russians wrote not only poems but other literature. Pushkin had a political side also writing poetry walking a very careful line with the Tsar but in tacit support of the Decemberist uprising.
He wrote short stories but is most famous for the poem Evgeny Onegin. Onegin is the story of the unrequited love between Onegin and Tatiana, members of the Russian aristocracy that never seem to connect. It is a long poem and not the kind of thing I would normally attempt but I did and to my shame have not finished. I have a good excuse. I was reading this poem and loving it when one morning while working with one Russian friend who shall remain nameless asked me how I liked Onegin. I was being swept away by it and describing how much I was enjoying it when out of nowhere my friend wrote "And what did you think when he shot his friend." I had not gotten that far yet and now the best part was spoiled. Someday I will forgive, but not yet.**
Here is what I love about Pushkin aside from the lyricism, the quantity of work and the influence of Russian literature and history. It comes down to the way Pushkin writes about love is real because it is heartbreaking. You can see it in the poem above. He has given up on this love, this woman, but maybe not quite it is not all yet "burned away". He never told her, but loved her in silence. For whatever reason we do not know his prayer is that another may love her. But it begs the question. Love her how? Another silent unrequited love? Real love? And he writes about this love is painful and tormenting. This is what hooked me. It is never enough for Pushkin to write about love for love's sake or for the pain of love ending or forgotten. But he leaves you with the question…what's next? Like life. There is no happy ending in Pushkin just more questions. This is what I love about Pushkin and dislike about other forms of the romantic genre. For most romance stories there is a happy ending, the couple ride off together to be happy and in love for all eternity. But life is not like that and Pushkin knows it. Love fades, love remains unspoken, and people live with the joy and the pain of love. We live and die for love, and in between who knows. We certainly don't and as for A.S. Pushkin neither did he. He married a woman much younger than himself and was mortally wounded in a duel on January 27, 1837 and died two days later. This last poem, dear reader embodies everything I love about Pushkin and although I cannot read it fluently in Russian, to do so and to memorize it, remains a personal goal.
Цветок
Цветок засохший, безуханный,
Забытый в книге вужу я
И вот уже мечтою странной
Душа наполнилась моя
Где цвёл? Когда? Какой весною?
И долго ль цвёл? И сорван кем.
Чужой, знакомой ль рукою?
Иположен сюда зачем.
На память нежного ль свиданья.
Или разлуки роковой
Иль одинокого гулянья
В тиши полей, в тени лесной
И жив ли тот, и та жива ли?
И нынче где их уголок?
Или уже они увяли
Как сей неведомый цветок.
The flower
A dried out flower without fragrance,
Forgotten in a book I see
My soul's somehow already racing
And fills with a strange reverie
Where did it bloom? In which spring? When?
Did it bloom long? Who picked it then?
Was it a stranger or a friend?
And who put it here and to what end?
In memory of tender trysting?
Or else of fateful parting day?
Or else perhaps of lone walk wistful
In silent fields and wooded shade?
Do he and she still live, I wonder?
And where now is their little nook?
Or have they faded, lost their luster,
Like this small flower in this book.
*Thanks to my friend Roman for helping me complete this thought.
** Мой друг, я тебе прощаю.
(http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/texts/loved_you_once.htm) This is a great website called From the Ends to the Beginning and is a bilingual Russian poetry site. You can hear the poem read in very emotive Russian. This site also has a number of other wonderful Russian poets in both English, and of course Russian.
