Nikolai Klyuev: Time and Text, Place and Poet

410 Pages·2010·2.067 MB·English

by  Michael Makin

Nikolai Klyuev
Northwestern University Press
Studies in Russian Literature and Theory
Series Editors
Robert Belknap
Caryl Emerson
Gary Saul Morson
William Mills Todd III
Andrew Wachtel
Nikolai Klyuev
TIME ANd TExT, PLACE ANd PoET
Michael Makin
Northwestern University Press / Evanston, Illinois
Northwestern University Press
www.nupress.northwestern.edu
Copyright © 2010 by Northwestern University Press.
Published 2010. All rights reserved.
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN 978-0-8101-3483-6
The Library of Congress has cataloged the original, hardcover edition as follows:
Makin, Michael.
Nikolai Klyuev : time and text, place and poet / Michael Makin.
p. cm. — (Studies in Russian literature and theory)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8101-2657-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Kl(iue˙v, Nikola˘ı Alekseevich. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in Russian literature
and theory.
PG3476.K544Z76 2010
891.713—dc22
2009040434
To my wife, Alina

Contents
Preface ix
Note to the Reader xv
Introduction 3
Chapter One Lives of the Poet: Klyuev’s Life, as Lived,
Imagined, Re-created, and disputed 9
Chapter Two Text, Time, and Place: What, When, Where,
How, and Why in Klyuev’s Poetics 73
Chapter Three Texts of Fraternity: Klyuev’s Early Collection
Bratskie pesni, Transformation of the Lyric,
Popular-Religious Motifs 155
Chapter Four Prose of Identity and the Identity of Prose:
“Gagar’ya sud’bina”—Klyuev’s Prose, Questions
of Genre, Problems of Autobiography 210
Chapter Five Poetry of destruction and the destruction
of Poetry: Klyuev’s Late Lyric Poetry and
the “Razrukha” Cycle 231
Chapter Six Mother Song: Pesn’ o Velikoi Materi and
other Poemy 276
Conclusion 325
Notes 329
Selected Bibliography 359
Index of Works by Nikolai Klyuev 373
Subject Index 387

Preface
I first became interested in Nikolai Klyuev while working on Marina Tsve-
taeva. Searching for points of contrast and comparison for her folkloric
poemy, I read Bazanov’s article on Klyuev’s narrative poem Pogorel’shchina,
and then that work itself (both are discussed in the following pages). I was
fascinated, at times mesmerized, by Klyuev’s language and by the story told
in Pogorel’shchina. I was also intrigued to see that Bazanov had published in
the Soviet Union a scholarly article on a poem which itself had not, at that
time (1979), been published there. Reading through Sochineniya (the two-
volume edition of Klyuev published in Munich in 1969, which was for many
years the most complete and reliable edition of his poetry and prose) and
then looking at the glasnost-era publications of the poet, I was even more
fascinated by his poetry, by his story, and by the story of his texts (the three
things which form the core of this book). I began to work on him, first casu-
ally, and then more seriously. Reading Klyuev, even as provisionally and hes-
itantly as I have often read him, is a serious challenge, perhaps a task for a
lifetime (especially, it must be confessed, for a non-native speaker). My desk
and the floor of my study have often been covered in piles of books more
varied in character than is usually the case, even with the most demand-
ing of Russian authors. Many dictionaries and atlases, books on and from
the old Belief, guides to the folk arts of the Russian north, collections of
medieval literature, architectural and artistic compendia, and encyclopedias
of popular beliefs have demanded space in my study alongside philological
volumes and collected works.
This book is the result of that reading, of my fascination and my
struggles with Nikolai Klyuev. It aims to look at Klyuev as both a “philo-
logical” and a “culturological” (to use the Russian terms) phenomenon, and
aspires to be of interest not only to readers of literature, but also to anyone
engaged in the study of modern Russian culture. I hope that it will help to
introduce Klyuev and his work to the English-speaking reader, while also
using the example of the poet to discuss some of the most intriguing cultural
problems and paradoxes of Russian culture, as they appeared in the later de-
ix