VLADISLAV CHODASEVIČ’S ‘BEFORE THE MIRROR’:

THE ITALIAN AMALGAM

LADA PANOVA

Abstract This essay is a monographic analysis of Vladislav Khodasevich’s famous poem ‘Before the Mirror’ (1924). It focuses on the work’s biographical context; its mean-ing (midlife crisis superimposed on the poet’s self-portrait in a mirror); its Italian intertexts blended with Russian ones; the metatextual message (the poet ushers himself into the pantheon of great writers such as Dante, Petrarch and Pushkin); and literary craftsmanship (various “mirror” effects). Keywords: V.F. Khodasevich; Dante; Petrarch; Russian Intertexts; Midlife Crisis; Mirror Semiotics; Poetry of Grammar 0. The Poem

Перед зеркалом Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita.

I 1 Я, я, я! Что за дикое слово! 2 Неужели вон тот – это я? 3 Разве мама любила такого, 4 Желто-серого, полуседого 5 И всезнающего, как змея?

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Russian Literature 83–84 (2016) 153–185

0304-3479/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

www.elsevier.com/locate/ruslit

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ruslit.2016.08.009

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II 6 Разве мальчик, в Останкине летом 7 Танцевавший на дачных балах, – 8 Это я, тот, кто каждым ответом 9 Желторотым внушает поэтам 10 Отвращение, злобу и страх?

III 11 Разве тот, кто в полночные споры 12 Всю мальчишечью вкладывал прыть, – 13 Это я, тот же самый, который 14 На трагические разговоры 15 Научился молчать и шутить?

IV 16 Впрочем – так и всегда на средине 17 Рокового земного пути: 18 От ничтожной причины – к причине, 19 А глядишь – заплутался в пустыне, 20 И своих же следов не найти.

V 21 Да, меня не пантера прыжками 22 На парижский чердак загнала. 23 И Виргилия нет за плечами, – 24 Только есть одиночество – в раме 25 Говорящего правду стекла. (179-180)1 Before the Mirror Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita/ In the middle of the journey of our life “I, I, I.” What a weird [lit.: wild] word! Is that man there really I? Can it be that mother loved such a person, Greyish-yellow, with hair turning grey, And omniscient as a serpent? Can it be that the boy who used to dance At country balls in Ostankino in the summer – Is I, who, by each of my answers, Inspire loathing, anger and fear In newly hatched [lit.: yellow-mouthed] poets? Can it be that the same person Who used to throw all his boyish vivacity Into midnight arguments – is I, Who have learned to be silent And to jest when faced with tragic conversations?

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Yet it’s always like this midway On the fatal journey through life; [You go] from one trivial cause to another, And behold, you have lost your way in the desert, And cannot find your own tracks [footsteps]. No panther leaping in pursuit Has driven me into my Parisian attic And there is no Virgil standing at my shoulder. There is only loneliness – framed in the mirror That speaks the truth. (Obolensky 1976: 308-309; with minor changes)2

1. ‘Before the Mirror’ as a Poem on “Suprapersonal Biography” This openly autobiographical poem was written in Paris, July 18-23, 1924, two years after Vladislav Chodasevič and his new life partner, Nina Ber-berova, left Bolshevik Russia. The couple had tried to settle in Berlin and also visited cities like Venice before choosing Paris as their home.3 Their first Parisian address was a servants’ room right under the roof in Zinovij Gržebin’s apartment at Champs de Mars.4 The route Chodasevič undertook in order to feel what life abroad was like can be traced in line 22 of ‘Before the Mirror’. It depicts the “Parisian attic” into which the speaker has been driven by nothing else than his own free will. The short stay in Venice, marred by the poet’s nervous breakdown, contributed the gloomy mood to ‘Before the Mirror’ and its reminiscences of a happier past. Remarkably, when Berberova later recalled her partner’s mental state in Venice, she echoed the imagery of his poem (here in italics):

И вот мы в Италии. Сперва – неделя в Венеции, где Ходасевич захвачен воспоминаниями молодости [concerning his 1911 tour of Italy and affair with Evgenija Muratova, beautiful wife of the Italophile Pavel Muratov and a dancer – L.P.] […] В Венеции Ходасевич был и окрылен, и подавлен: здесь когда-то он был молод и один, мир стоял в своей целостности за ним, еще не страшный. Теперь город отбрасывал ему отражение того, что есть: он не молод, он не один, и никто и ничто не стоит за ним, защиты нет. (Berberova 1983: 242-244) And here we are in Italy. First a week at Venice, where Khodasevich is taken up with recollections of his early years […] In Venice, Khodasevich both took wing and was depressed: here he once was young and alone, and the world in its fullness was open to him, still full of possibility. Now the city cast a reflection of his present state: he was

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not young, not alone, and no one and nothing was there to support him; he was without defense. (Berberova 1969: 208-209; with minor changes)

Yet another fact of Chodasevič’s post-Russian life palpable in ‘Before the Mirror’ is his middle age. Although his precise age, 38, is not mentioned, the poem’s epigraph, Dante Alighieri’s famous formula “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” (1;5 “In the middle of the journey of our life” [Alighieri 1996b: 27]), as well as other details picturing the poet’s biological and existential changes, clearly refer to his actual age. To be sure, ‘Before the Mirror’ was not meant to be a true-to-life account of Chodasevič’s condition in his post-Russia years. While his in-creasing resolve not to return to Soviet Russia is definitely present, he omits other, no less important events, such as leaving his second wife, Anna Ivanovna, for Berberova. Moreover, despite his happy relationships with both women he portrays his persona as suffering from absolute loneliness if not abandonment, a necessary premise of his post-Revolutionary self-presenta-tion. In both non-fiction and poetry, Chodasevič depicted himself as a Poet in peril who cannot count on the outer world. To begin with, Chodasevič contemplated a quick and tragic end in a semi-jocular letter to Anna Ivanovna from February 3, 1922:

“Офелия гибла и пела” – кто не гибнет, тот не поет. Прямо скажу: я пою и гибну. И ты, и никто уже не вернет меня. Я зову с собой – погибать. Бедную девочку Берберову я не погублю [...] Я только обещал ей показать дорожку, на которой гибнут. Но, доведя до дорожки, дам ей бутерброд на обратный путь, а по дорожке даль-ше пойду один. Она-то просится на дорожку, этого им всем хо-чется, человечкам. А потом не выдерживают. (Chodasevič 1997: 441) “Ophelia was perishing and singing” – those who do not perish do not sing. Let me put it bluntly: I am singing and perishing. Neither you nor anybody else can reclaim me. I am calling [someone to come] with me – to perish. I won’t destroy this poor girl Berberova. […] I only pro-mised to show her the path on which people perish. But after leading her up to this path, I will give her a sandwich for the way back, and will go further along this path alone. She is asking for this path, [as] all these [pathetic] people do. And then they can’t take it.

Similar musings about a Poet’s destiny – with the same reference to Afanasij Fet’s Ophelia poem – may be found in his 1926-1927 poem ‘Skvoz’ dikij grochot katastrof’(‘Through the Wild Roar of Catastrophes’): “Но петь

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и гибнуть нам дано, / И песня с гибелью – одно” (315; “But we have to sing and perish, / And a song and ruination are one”). By the way, in his early Parisian days Chodasevič did contemplate suicide:

Ходасевич говорит, что не может жить без того, чтобы не писать, что писать он может только в России, что он не может быть без России, что не может ни жить, ни писать в России – и умоляет меня умереть вместе с ним. (Berberova 1983: 252) Chodasevič says that he cannot live without writing, that he can only write in Russia, that he cannot exist without Russia, that he can neither live nor write in Russia – and he pleaded with me to die with him. (Berberova 1969: 217-218; with minor changes)

True, in ‘Before the Mirror’ he does not go this far. The Dantesque formula about the midway of the fatal earthly journey hints at either im-pending death or human mortality, and later on the persona’s image dis-appears from the mirror, but that is all. So far the death motif underlying ‘Before the Mirror’ has been ignored by Chodasevič scholars.6 What they have thoroughly discussed, however, is its pessimistically sad atmosphere that contradicts the pattern of productive maturation characteristic of Chodasevič’s other poems of the same period. In them the speaker manages to reach a happy balance between the external signs of aging and internal spiritual illumination by undertaking a sort of quest. As a result, he gains insights into the mysteries of life and death and is awarded Orpheus’ lyre or a laurel wreath for his poetic achievement (Miller 1981; Kirilcuk 2002: 384-386). These poems describe a recoil, an arc that begins with a fall but ends with a rise. The fall corresponds to the physical deterioration of the hero’s body, while the rise results in the acquisition of divine creativity or a profound knowledge of life, death and, last but not least, art. This scenario had already been outlined by Chodasevič, with recourse to mirror imagery, in the 1919 sonnet “Net, ty ne prav, ja ne soboj plenen” (“No, you are not right, I am not captivated by myself”).7 The persona, who is in a fallen state and feels like a tired mercenary (“наемник усталый”), then has a revelatory dream about his eventual triumph. While narcissistically examining himself reflected in water (“водное зеркало”), he suddenly discovers a divine wreath of stars (“венок из звезд”, 91-92) crowning his head. It is possible to read stanza I of ‘Before the Mirror’ as foreshadowing a similar process of maturation. The speaker’s grayish hair and yellowing com-plexion are richly compensated with serpent-like wisdom, a proof of inner illumination. Furthermore, stanza II turns the autobiographical narrative into a narcissistic description of his mother’s love for, and the younger fellow

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poets’ fear of, the persona, which the poet enjoys. In the subsequent stanzas, however, the motifs of both wisdom and narcissism disappear. Instead, the speaker experiences an existential deadlock. Thus, in stanza V, his final gaze in the mirror proves that there is no one there. As Jurij Levin put it, “illusions about his ‘divine origin’ have not come true: his soul is no longer reflected in the mirror; it may not even exist anymore” (Levin 1998b: 569; the translation is mine – L.P.). A more general idea developed in Chodasevič scholarship is that in ‘Before the Mirror’ the poet deromanticizes his self-image. Indeed, the poem ends on the notion of truth told by the mirror, in opposition to the usual Romantic dissatisfaction with reality and the search, instead, for ideals, other worlds, transgressions – and the attempt to head inside the looking glass. Chodasevič’s mirror narrative does not cross the boundaries of reality, which would mean siding with the Russian Symbolists, his predecessors and rivals, famous for reviving Romantic topoi and lifestyles. As a post-Symbolist author, his artistic endeavor takes him in the opposite direction. He makes a point of fusing modernity with the classical repertoire, steering clear of big ideas and insisting on neo-classical harmony. True to Chodasevič’s anti-Symbolist stance, the poem’s speaker courageously accepts the desperate situation he finds himself in. ‘Before the Mirror’ shows no signs of self-pity or Romantic/decadent demonization of one’s existential fall. In fact, Cho-dasevič goes as far as to deny the uniqueness of his fall by referring to Dante’s famous example in the epigraph. On the other hand, by putting himself in Dante’s shoes Chodasevič ushers himself into the pantheon of great poets and proclaims his allegiance to neoclassical aesthetics. One more layer of meaning can be found in Chodasevič’s citation of Dante when ‘Before the Mirror’ is seen within the context of his 1926 essay ‘Citaty’ (‘Quotations’). There he states what a man of letters does by openly quoting his predecessors:

Мы, писатели, живем не только своей жизнью. Рассеянные по странам и временам, мы имеем и некую сверх-личную биографию. События чужих жизней мы иногда вспоминаем, как события нашей собственной. История литературы есть история нашего ро-да; в известном, условном смысле – история каждого из нас. (Chodasevič 2009, 2: 375) We, writers, do not live just our own lives. Dispersed in different lands and times, we have a certain suprapersonal biography. Sometimes we recall the events that happened in the lives of others as if they had happened in our own lives. The history of literature is a history of our [human] race; in a certain presumptive sense – it is the story of each of us.

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This argument sheds light on the confluence of transparent autobio-graphical references and corresponding literary clichés that is so central to ‘Before the Mirror’. Indeed, Chodasevič drew his self-portrait by mentioning several recognizable features of his life (his mother’s love; children’s balls at Ostankino and his dancing skill; his career as a literary critic; his cha-racteristic sallow complexion, the result of skin diseases and gallstones; his Parisian attic) and leaving out others (his precise age; his near-émigré status; his poetic career), which he dressed up into ready-made literary formulae. By this means he elevated his private experiences to the suprapersonal level of the life of an exemplary poet. In the case of his citation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, one might suggest that the two works share a courageous way of facing existential misfortunes. ‘Before the Mirror’ also contains hidden literary references that serve the same purpose of transforming the poet’s private biographical existence into a suprapersonal one. Chodasevič is known for his richly intertextual poetics, and this is confirmed in part by the intertextuality already identified in the poem. According to Levin, ‘Before the Mirror’ is a dialogue with Aleksandr Blok on the subject of biological changes (Levin 1998a: 219-220). Alexander Zholkovsky, in his turn, noticed echoes of two classical mirror scenes in it, from Lev Tolstoj’s ‘Smert’ Ivana Il’iča’ (‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’) and Aleksandr Puškin’s ‘Skazka o mertvoj carevne i semi boga-tyrjach’ (‘The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights’; Žolkovskij 2014). In what follows, I will undertake a further examination of the poem’s Italian and Russian subtextual layers.8 First of all, I am going to demonstrate that the Comedy’s influence is more extensive than is believed. Secondly, I am going to pinpoint the presence of the Italian classic number two, Petrarch, in ‘Before the Mirror’, although not as the poet of love but rather as the first humanist in the European tradition.9 Finally, I will try to show that the set of Russian authors whose “Italian”, “mirror”, and “aging” motifs were absorbed by Chodasevič to make his diction so well-rooted in the poetic tradition, com-prises many more than just Puškin, Tolstoj, Blok and Innokentij Annenskij. Dante and especially Petrarch constitute the Italian amalgam of Cho-dasevič’s mirror poem, and for good reason. They authored influential inter-pretations of critical moments of the human condition. If Dante’s impact on ‘Before the Mirror’ is evident, Petrarch’s needs to be demonstrated. First of all, let us note that Chodasevič relied on Canzoniere in his love lyrics and the amorous episodes of ‘Žizn’ Vasilija Travnikova’ (‘The Life of Vasilij Trav-nikov’). Petrarch as a role-model can be seen in the already mentioned poem “Net, ty ne prav, ja ne soboj plenen”. The poem’s Petrarchism is evidenced by its sonnet form, its deeply psychological self-portrait and the image of the star wreath, which may be a reference to Petrarch as one of the most il-

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lustrious of Europe’s early poet-laureates. In a number of poems, Chodasevič cherishes the idea of being crowned with a wreath – a laurel one.10 Yet another Petrarchan motif is the poet’s problematizing his middle age as he contemplates his reflection in the mirror. Needless to say, Dante and Petrarch’s reflections on the human con-dition in a moment of crisis were far from unique. Why then would Cho-dasevič choose them as his points of reference? As I have stated above, the reason for this is suggested by his essay ‘Quotations’, as it mentions Dante’s exile (Chodasevič 2009, 2: 381). Depicting himself as driven to his Parisian attic, though not by Dante’s panther, Chodasevič, an expatriate-to-be, identi-fies himself with Dante, the most famous of all expats. He may also have modeled his image after Petrarch, who saw himself as a Florentine without Florentine citizenship. In fact, it was Petrarch’s father who had been expelled from Florence, most probably, by the same edict as had exiled Dante. What is even more important is that both Dante and Petrarch were invited back – Dante on humiliating conditions and Petrarch on honorable ones – and that both refused. Life outside Florence was a real hardship for Dante but for Pe-trarch it had many pleasant sides. Gradually realizing that a temporary de-parture from Russia was developing into exile, Chodasevič started to rethink his mission in the terms of Dante’s (and possibly Petrarch’s) influence on Italian letters. A decade later, in his 1933 essay ‘Literatura v izgnanii’ (‘Literature in Exile’), he expressed this idea as follows:

История знает ряд случаев, когда именно в эмиграциях создава-лись произведения, [...] послужившие завязью для дальнейшего роста национальных литератур. Таково [...] величайшее из созда-ний мировой поэзии, создание воистину боговдохновенное – [...] Божественн[ая] Комеди[я]. (Chodasevič 1991: 467) History knows several cases when it was in emigration that works were created […] which served as the embryo for the further growth of national literatures. This […] is true of The Divine Comedy, the greatest among world poetic creations, a truly God-inspired creation.

Canzoniere could easily replace The Divine Comedy in this perspective, as this and Petrarch’s other works in Italian were no less formative for the Italian vernacular literary tradition than Dante’s. Chodasevič, who left Russia at the peak of his literary success, presumed that his émigré poetry and prose might influence Russian literature in the future when it would shake itself free of Communist ideology. Discussing the Italian sources of ‘Before the Mirror’ presupposes Chodasevič’s familiarity with the Italian language. In the absence of any conclusive information on the subject,11 I will assume that, in case he had no command of Italian, he could have achieved an adequate familiarity with the

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works of Dante and Petrarch thanks to his high-school knowledge of Latin and French; the extant bilingual editions of the Comedy and Canzoniere; the famous essays about Dante and Petrarch by Aleksandr Veselovskij (Vese-lovskij 1939a; 1939b); and, last but not least, his intimate friendship with the Italophile Muratov, the author of Obrazy Italii (Images of Italy), and with Michail Geršenzon, the translator of Petrarch’s Latin prose and dialogues. 2. Midlife Crisis: A Dantesque Perspective So far it has been taken for granted that the dominant focus of ‘Before the Mirror’ is the speaker’s “I”, first split and then lost. In my view, this is a version of midlife crisis à la Dante. In Chodasevič’s time, which was also that of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung, psychologists and psychoanalysts did not yet recognize midlife crisis as a subject of study. The term was only coined in the 1965 article ‘Death and the Midlife Crisis’ by Elliott Jaques (Jaques 1965). He analyzed 310 cases of prominent male writers, composers and artists, and discovered a turning point in their life trajectories: a midlife crisis happening in their late thirties. Jaques backed his observations with empirical data, which he collected during his séances with male patients not belonging to a creative milieu. Overall, his claim is as follows:

At or soon after 35 men suddenly acquire a sense of their mortality, which in turn triggers depression. They feel like a traveler who has climbed a hill but while reaching its top has to contemplate his inevitable end. The anticipated tragedy of death divides adulthood into two stages, early and mature, each with its own perception of the world, and, as a consequence, its own type of creativity. In the early stage, creativity is intense and spontaneous (as in Mozart, Keats, Shelley, Rimbaud), while in the mature stage it is “sculpted” (see Beethoven, Goethe, Virgil). A genuinely mature artistic production is based on the artist’s testing of reality, experiencing the anticipated tragedy of his death, and obtaining a post-crisis integrity (of the ego) and a revised set of values. Keeping the ability to create is a positive outcome for a man in midlife crisis. But negative outcomes are possible as well. Some men cannot survive the midlife crisis and either die (statistically most often at 37) or lose their creative powers (see Rossini).

Jaques’ major case study was Dante, who introduced the concept of “the middle of our life’s journey”. Jaques wrongly took this to mean 37 years of age (and not 35, implied by Dante, who proceeded from the Biblical estimate of human life lasting 70 years) and interpreted canto 1 of the Comedy in a psychoanalytical vein as an allegory of a midlife crisis with a

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happy outcome. In general, he treated the Comedy as a perfect example of the mature, and thus, “sculpted”, creativity, to which Dante transitioned after creating The New Life, a clear example of the spontaneous creativity cha-racteristic of early adulthood. In post-Jaquesean times, Tolstoj and the protagonist of his ‘Death of Ivan Ilyich’, a 45-year-old bureaucrat reinventing himself during incurable illness, have been added to the extant corpus of legendary figures and characters, corroborating the existence of the pheno-menon in question. Nowadays Jaques’ theory is not universally accepted but is valid at least for some men and less frequently women, mostly Caucasian, who undergo a midlife crisis as they adapt to their bodily, intellectual and psychological change. ‘Before the Mirror’ can be read as a poetic reflection on a midlife crisis. To begin with, Chodasevič refers to Dante’s allegoric rhetoric of a midlife journey and Tolstoj’s realistic narrative about Ivan Ilyich examining his dying body in the mirror. Moreover, his poem brings up a set of typical midlife crisis symptoms: biological aging; identity problems (e.g., the failure to recognize himself in the mirror); а sharp awareness of youth being over, of mortality and the impending end; а focus on transition, triggering a crisis; dissonance with the world, rejection of its conventions (including such essential words as “I”) and of stereotypical cultural strategies such as those of Dante (to be discussed below). In lines 16-17, “так и всегда на средине [...] пути” (“it is always like that in the middle of a journey”), this psychological self-diagnosis is pro-moted to the level of a general law, once again with a reference to Dante. In a sense, Chodasevič can be said to have anticipated Jaques’ discovery by identifying this psychological phenomenon, albeit not in a scientific way. Compared to the Inferno’s first canto, ‘Before the Mirror’ depicts the midway deadlock more explicitly and in a psychologically sophisticated way, which is not surprising. Dante was part and parcel of the Middle Ages and shared that epoch’s allegorical way of thinking and the idea of human nature as corrupt but capable of redemption. Chodasevič, on the other hand, re-presented European Petrarchan Humanism that insisted on trying to under-stand human condition rather than to judge or reinvent it. So far it has been assumed that the epigraph from the Comedy and the first lines of stanza IV are the only parts with a Dantesque tinge. In fact, the entire stanza IV and lines 1-3 of stanza V use the Comedy’s repertoire. To begin with, as noted, Chodasevič’s autobiographical narrative (his mother’s role; children’s balls and passionate teenage disputes; criticism targeting younger poets; the search for identity) morphs into a suprapersonal Poet’s biography, prompted by the first line of the Comedy. This happens in lines 16-17, where the epigraph is restated as a general law: Dante’s pronoun “nostra” (“our”) turns into a more categorical adverb “всегда” (“always”). In passing off his personal experience for a replica of Dante’s and presenting

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both of them as instances of a general law of human condition, Chodasevič relies on the poetry of grammar. The first-person pronoun “я” (I) in the nominative case, lavishly used in the first three stanzas, disappears from the text, making room for various impersonal verb forms (“глядишь”, “заплу-тался”, “не найти”). The pronoun “я” then reappears in stanza V – not in the nominative case (that would mark it as the subject), but in the accusative, indicating that it is the object of some other agent. As a result, the last two stanzas, especially the fourth, become “depersonalized” – they read as chap-ters in a generic biography of an ideal Poet. Moreover, for stanzas IV-V Chodasevič borrows those elements of the Inferno’s canto 1 that fit his biographical self. Dante’s scenario, pessimistic in the beginning, gradually offers some hope if not salvation. “Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita” (1; “in the middle of the journey of our life”; Dante 1996b: 27), or, according to commentaries, in 1300, the 35-year-old Dante had a dream: “mi ritrovai per una selva oscura, / ché la diritta via era smarrita” (1; “I came to myself in a dark wood, for the straight way was lost”; 27). The dark wood symbolizes erroneous life: “Tant’ è amara che poco è piú morte; / ma per trattar del ben ch’i’ vi trovai, / dirò de l’altre cose ch’i’ v’ho scorte” (1-2; “It is so bitter that death is little more so! But to treat of the good that I found there, I will tell of the other things I saw”; 27). As for the straight way, it stands for virtue and righteousness, which Dante no longer possesses: “la verace via abbandonai” (2; “I abandoned the true way”; 27). Then the symbolic darkness in which Dante finds himself in the forest gives way to a rising sun, the symbol of truth. In its light, he sees a deserted slope (3; “la piaggia diserta”). Realizing that by conquering it he will obtain righteousness and, possibly, entrance to Paradise, Dante starts the difficult climb. Suddenly three ferocious predators, one by one, block his way up. The first one is named by the Latinized word “lonza” (a wild cat from medieval bestiary), possibly a she-leopard or a panther: “Ed ecco, quasi al cominciar de l’erta, / una lonza leggera e presta molto, / […] // e non mi si partia dinanzi al volto, / anzi ‘mpediva tanto il mio cammino, / ch’i’ fui per ritornar piú volte vòlto” (3; “And behold, almost at the beginning of the steep, a leopard, light and very swift [appeared] [...] and it did not depart from before my face but rather so impeded my way that I was at several turns forced to go back”; 29). Dante’s other animal foes are a lion and a she-wolf. Allegorically, these three beasts represent his vices as well as places once hostile to him (Florence, France and Papal Rome). Dante feels very lonely and desperate for help when he notices the figure of Virgil hurrying towards him “nel gran deserto” (4; “in the great wilderness”; 29). He gratefully accepts Virgil’s guidance because he has adored and imitated his writings. The two poets decide to find the way to Paradise not by climbing the mountain but by making a detour through the Inferno and Purgatory, dangerous but instructive.

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Chodasevič adopts the general outline of Dante’s scenario, including the metaphor of life as a path and the allegorical picture of existential impasse as straying from the straight road and into a deserted place. At the same time, he switches from the Comedy’s mode into a Biblical one. His words “заплутался в пустыне” (“has got lost in the desert”) clearly refer to the exodus of the Jews from Egypt and their forty-year long wandering in the desert before reaching the promised land under Moses’ guidance (Exodus 14:3). The Biblical rhetoric highlights one more facet to Chodasevič’s iden-tity, a Jewish one. It may also hint at the approaching of his fortieth anni-versary. Finally, the “Biblical” part of the poem, with its conspicuously un-finished and rather confusing rhetoric, can be seen as an iconic counterpart of the speaker’s getting lost in his discourse. Unlike Dante, who in the scary and disturbingly dark forest found (“trovai”; 1) some positive options, Chodasevič’s lyrical persona fails to find (“не нашел”) even the traces of his footprints (“следы”). On a symbolic level, this episode represents his identity being lost during the midlife crisis. From this line on, the poet will rhetorically deny his former self-identification with Dante. In stanza V, he employs two motifs from canto 1, the panther on the slope and Virgil as his rescuer, both in the negative. The absence of both a panther and a Virgil in his life means a situation of hopelessness, or a dreadful existential dead end without a way out. Chodasevič’s departure from Dante is also present in the way the two poets treat the notion of the top. While the Comedy’s upward slope connotes righteousness and Paradise, Chodasevič’s attic is associated with the poor life of Parisian bohemians familiar from literature and opera. Chodasevič does not specify the reason why his lyrical hero has ended up there, but to indicate the deviation from Dante’s midlife scenario he says that the Comedy’s panther is not to blame. When in that very attic the speaker takes a look in the mirror he does not see there a helpful Virgil. Interestingly, this absent Virgil is depicted not in Dante’s spatial terms but rather as a medieval Christian-style angel. In the Comedy, Virgil bravely strides in front of Dante, who cautiously follows him (see the Inferno, canto 10: “lo mio maestro, e io dopo le spalle” [100]; “Now my master, [...] and I at his back” [lit.: after his shoulders – L.P.]; Alighieri 1996b: 155). In ‘Before the Mirror’, Virgil’s position behind the lyrical hero’s shoulders is that of a guardian angel, who secretly keeps a person out of trouble.12 Overall Dante, rescued from the three ferocious animals by Virgil, gets a chance to seek the second half of his adulthood, while the future of Chodasevič’s lonely speaker is at best iffy. The prototype of Chodasevič’s rhetorical figure of identification with Dante followed by a subsequent rupture can be found in Dante’s own argumentation in the Inferno, canto 2, but with a difference: their negative and positive parts are reversed. When Virgil tries to persuade Dante to

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descend into hell, Dante initially refuses. He believes himself unworthy of undertaking the quest of visiting the nether world alive – in the footsteps of Aeneas, the legendary founder of Rome, or, for that matter, those of St. Paul: “Ma io, perché venirvi? o chi ‘l concede? / Io non Enea, io non Paulo sono; / me degno a ciò né io né altri ‘l crede” (13; “But I, why come there? or who grants it? I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul; neither I nor others believe me worthy of this”; Alighieri 1996b: 43). Virgil’s exhortations – his story about Beatrice who organized the rescue operation for Dante, as well as his promise that Beatrice will eventual-ly meet Dante on his way to Paradise – do eventually convince him, and the two poets embark on their journey. Chodasevič’s rebellion against the Dantean cultural stereotype is in line with the nature of his midlife crisis. Yet another explanation, besides the psychological one, could be his rejection of reigning Silver Age fashions. Valerij Brjusov had identified himself with Dante in a number of poems, including ‘Dante’ (1898; “Na vsej zemle proobraz naš edinyj” [“Our single prototype on the whole earth”]), ‘Dante v Venecii’ (‘Dante in Venice’, 1900), ‘Poėtu’ (‘To a Poet’, 1907) and ‘Vskroju dveri’ (‘I will open the doors’, 1921). The same is true about Vjačeslav Ivanov’s ‘La selva oscura’ (1886) and ‘Mi fur le serpi amiche’ (1905)13 in the collection entitled Speculum speculorum/Zerkalo zerkal (Mirror of Mirrors). This pattern was used in Blok’s ‘Pesn’ Ada’ (‘A Song of Inferno’, 1909), written in terza rima (like the Comedy itself), also deploying travel and mirror motifs. Chodasevič was most likely aware of Blok’s essay ‘Nemye svideteli’ (‘Silent Witnesses’, 1909), insisting that the imagination of a modern traveler in Italy cannot help relying on Virgil:

Хорошо, если носишь в душе своего Вергилия, который говорит: “Не бойся, в конце пути ты увидишь Ту, которая послала тебя.” (Blok 1962: 390) It is good if you carry in your soul your Virgil, who says: “Do not fear, at the end of your trip you will see The Lady who has sent you.”

Thus, holding forth in the spirit of “I am Dante but Dante I am not”, Chodasevič broadcasts the anti-Symbolist identity of his lyrical persona. He will not follow Ivanov, Brjusov, Blok and the others in their mythmaking and culturally-oriented writings. He wants to pronounce the ultimate bitter truth about himself instead.

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3. A Monologue in Front of a Mirror and its Petrarchan Halo Levin has made a number of semiotic observations on Chodasevič’s mirror imagery:

В прямом контрасте с “Про себя” зеркало тут [in ‘Before the Mirror’ – L.P.] не мелиорирующее, не отражающее сущность, душу и т.д., а “говорящее правду”. Правда же горька и состоит в том, что вну-тренняя жизнь, память о прошлом и другие проявления души и духа иллюзорны, а реально лишь “желто-серое, полуседое” отра-жение и одиночество (подчеркнутое возможностью диалога лишь со своим отражением). (Levin 1998: 569) In direct contrast with ‘About Myself’, the mirror here is “speaking the truth” rather than ameliorating or reflecting the essence, the soul, and so on. This truth is bitter and consists in that the inner life, memory of the past and other manifestations of the soul and spirit are illusory; the reality is a “yellow-grayish, graying” reflection and loneliness (under-scored by the possibility of a dialogue only with the mirror reflection).

The theoretical framework for such a reading of ‘Before the Mirror’ is that the mirror is a “readymade object” with a preset number of properties. The writer makes use of some of them, and by reconciling them with the general design of his text, provides a new meaning for the image. What is missing in Levin’s approach is the major intertextual dimension of the poem. Converting his very personal self-portrait as a 38-year-old man examining his aged body in the mirror into a suprapersonal portrait of an ideal Poet, he relies on the experience of Petrarch, who at 38 also found himself looking into a mirror and seeking there the unbiased truth about himself. Chodasevič learned about Petrarch’s use of this image from his dialogues in Latin and his sonnets in Italian. The dialogues had been translated into Russian by Ger-šenzon, Chodasevič’s mentor, friend and beloved companion, whose words and deeds were characterized by “the purity of truth” (“чистота правды”);14 as for Petrarch’s two “mirror” sonnets, they remained untranslated. In ‘Frančesko Petrarka. 1304-1374’, his introduction to the translation of Petrarch’s works, including dialogues, known as Secretum in Latin and Franciska Petrarki kniga besed o prezrenii k miru, kotoruju on ozaglavil “Svoej tajnoj” in Russian, Geršenzon stated that the dialogues had been created when the writer was “in the years of full blossom, at 38” and that he had immortalized his split self in them:

Звучат два спорящих голоса: борьба совершается перед нашими глазами. В мировой литературе не много документов такой глуби-

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ны и тонкости, как эти диалоги раздвоившейся души. (Geršenzon 1915: 71) [In them] two voices are heard arguing: the struggle takes place in front of our eyes. In world literature there not many [human] documents of such depth and subtlety as these dialogues of a split soul.

One voice of this dialogue belongs to Francesco, a Renaissance figure who is very preoccupied with himself, while the other is that of Augustine, a medieval ascetic. In a scholarly dispute with Augustine conducted in the pre-sence of the Lady Truth, Francesco goes through a harsh examination of his faith, his inner world, and life. What ‘Before the Mirror’ and Secretum have in common is the mirror motif. Augustine urges Francesco to come to terms with his mortality and start mortifying his flesh, as this is the way to defeat his three sins (“acedia”, or pessimism/depression, vanity and sensuality). Observing that his inter-locutor is not responsive, he resorts to a mirror maneuver:

< А в г у с т и н > [...Г]ляделся ли ты недавно в зеркало? [...Н]е видишь ли ты, что твое лицо меняется с каждым днем, и не за-метил ли, что на твоих висках местами серебрятся седые волосы? < Ф р а н ц и с к > [...Р]асти, стареть и умирать есть общая участь всего, что рождается. Я заметил на себе то же, что вижу почти на всех своих сверстниках […] < А в г у с т и н > […В]ид твоего изменившегося тела вызвал ли какое-нибудь изменение в твоей душе? [...] Что же ты почувст-вовал тогда и что сказал? < Ф р а н ц и с к > Что иное, по твоему мнению, я мог сказать, как не слова императора Домициана: “Спокойно несу стареющие в юности волосы” [...] Нашелся пример и среди поэтов, так как наш Вергилий, в своих “Буколиках”, написанных им, как известно, на тридцать втором году жизни, сказал о самом себе в лице пастуха: “В годы, когда под железом брада упадала, белея.” < А в г у с т и н > […Ч]то другое внушают эти примеры, как не пренебрегать скоротечностью времени [...]? Между тем единствен-ная цель нашей беседы – чтобы ты всегда помнил о ней. (Petrarka 1915: 196-197) <A.> [...] Have you seen yourself in a mirror recently? [...] [H]ave you noticed how your face changes from day to day, and how some white hairs have already begun to appear on your head? <F.> [...] These are things that happen to everyone: growing up, growing old, dying. I only see in myself what I have seen in my con-temporaries. […]

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<A.> [...] Has the sight of your changing body made any changes at all in your mind? [...] But how did you react? What did you say to yourself? <F.> What do you think? Simply what the Emperor Domitian said: “My hair is growing old while I am still young and I bear that with fortitude.” [...] And we are not without an example from among the poets, since Virgil, in his Eclogues, which we know he wrote at the age of twenty-six [in Geršenzon’s translation the age is thirty two – L.P.], says speaking of himself in the person of a shepherd: “when white hairs began to fall from my beard as I shaved.” <A.> [...] What do these examples do but persuade you to ignore the passage of time […], while the whole aim of our conversation is to make you keep those things in mind? (Petrarch 2002: 77-78) < А в г у с т и н > [ . . . ] Дни бегут, тело дряхлеет, а душа не ме-няется; все портится и гниет, а она не достигает своей зрелости. Правду гласит поговорка: одна душа изнашивает несколько тел. Ребяческий возраст проходит, но ребячество, как говорит Сенека, остается; и верь мне, ты уже не настолько ребенок, как тебе, может быть, кажется: ведь бóльшая часть людей не достигает того возраста, в каком ты находишься. […] Оставь ребяческий вздор, погаси юношеское пламя, перестань вечно размышлять о том, чем ты будешь, сознай, наконец, чтó ты есть, не думай, что зеркало без надобности поставлено пред тобою, вспомни, что написано в “Quaestiones naturales” [by Seneca – L.P.]: “Ибо для того изобре-тены зеркала, чтобы человек знал самого себя […]: юноша – да познает, что в этом возрасте должно учиться и начинать деятель-ность мужа, старик – да откажется от плотских мерзостей и начнет наконец помышлять о смерти.” (Petrarka 1915: 200-201) <A.> [...] The days rush away and the bodies grow weaker, but the mind [in Geršenzon’s translation, the soul – L.P.] remains unchanged. Everything rots without reaching maturity, and it’s true what is gene-rally said, that one mind can outlive many bodies. As Seneca says, childhood passes but childishness remains. And, believe me, you are not so young as you may think you are: most men don’t reach your present age. [...] Put away childish things; extinguish the fires of youth; stop thinking of what you used to be like; give some consideration to your present state. And don’t imagine that I mentioned the mirror to you without good reason. Remember how Seneca in his Natural Phe-nomena writes: “The purpose of mirrors is to allow a man to know himself: [...] the young man, to recognize that his time of life is for learning, and for getting to grips with the obligations of manhood; the old man, to give up whatever does not suit his white hairs, and to start to think about death.” (Petrarch 2002: 79-80)

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Chodasevič could have found a similar mirror motif in two Canzoniere sonnets. Sonnet 168 features a mirror reflection of a middle-aged Petrarch, while sonnet 361 has a mirror reflection of the poet in his old age. Both soliloquies are musings about the persona’s changes in appearance and his split self being poor companions for love. Although both stages are to prepare the poet for a transition to the other world, the speaker’s passion for Laura drives his thoughts about death away:

Sonnet 168 Amor mi manda quel dolce pensero che secretario antico è fra noi due, et mi conforta et dice che non fue mai come or presto a quel ch’io bramo et spero. Io, che talor menzogna e talor vero ò ritrovato le parole sue, non so s’il creda, et vivomi intra due: né sì né no nel cor mi sona intero. In questa passa ‘l tempo, et ne lo specchio mi veggio andar ver la stagion contraria a sua impromessa et a la mia speranza. Or sia che po: già sol io non invecchio; già per etate il mio desir non varia; ben temo il viver breve che n’avanza. (Petrarca 1996: 258) Love sends me that sweet thought, that one that is a confidant of old between us two, and comforts me, and says I never was so close to what I yearn and hope for now. I, who have found his words at time a lie, at times the truth, do not know if I can believe him, and I live between the two: not yes, not no, rings true within my heart. Meanwhile, time passes, and the mirror shows myself nearing the time that contradicts both what he promises and my own hope. So be it; but, not only do I grow old; and yes, my age does not change my desire; I do feel, though, the short time left to live. (Petrarca 1996: 259)

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Sonnet 361 Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio, l’animo stanco, et la cangiata scorza, et la scemata mia destrezza et forza: “Non ti nasconder più, tu se’ pur veglio.” “Obedir a Natura in tutto è il meglio, ch’a contender con lei ‘l tempo ne sforza.” Subito allor, com’ acqua ‘l foco amorza, d’un lungo et grave sonno mi risveglio; et veggio ben che ‘l nostro viver vola, et ch’esser non si po più d’una volta; e ‘n mezzo ‘l cor mi sona una parola di lei ch’è or dal suo bel nodo sciolta, ma ne’ suoi giorni al mondo fu sì sola ch’a tutte, s’i’ non erro, fama à tolta. (Petrarca 1996: 504) I am told often by my faithful mirror and by my weary soul and changing skin, by my diminished strength and liveliness: “Admit it to yourself now, you are old;” “obey whatever nature says, it’s better, for time takes power from us to oppose her.” Then quick as water putting out a fire I wake up from a long and heavy sleep, and I see clearly that our life flies by and that you have only one life to live; and my heart there sounds a single word of her now loosened from her lovely knot but in her days upon the earth she was so unique that, if I am not mistaken, she outshone [lit.: stole fame from] all other [women]. (Petrarca 1996: 505; with minor changes)

Adapting Petrarch’s repertoire of mirror imagery to his self-portraiture, Chodasevič suppresses its love component and moves its mortality motif into the subtext (as I will demonstrate below). But he follows Petrarch as he turns stanzas I-III and lines 4-5 of stanza V into a soliloquy in front of the mirror, which objectivizes his self-evaluation and pronounces the bitter verdict about his existential dead end.

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Sonnet 361 “Dicemi spesso il mio fidato speglio…” was especially important for Chodasevič as it contained the metaphor of a speaking mirror. In ‘Before the Mirror’, it is fused with Puškin’s wording from ‘The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Knights’. The Princess’ stepmother owns a magic speaking mirror, so that each time she asks who is the most beautiful woman in the world she gets the correct answer, sometimes favorable for her and other times favorable for her stepdaughter. The lexical indication of Puškin’s presence in ‘Before the Mirror’ are the words “стекло” (“glass”) and “говорить” (“speak”), both referring to the mirror. Another strong link between sonnet 361 and ‘Before the Mirror’ is their focus on the biological signs of aging, especially the complexion, as well as on inner changes. Both poems open with a self-portrait stressing the speak-er’s appearance and psychology. Chodasevič also ends his poem with a focus on the reflection in the mirror. Interestingly, in this finale, the self-portrait, although actually absent, acquires the status of a painting. This effect is achieved by naming only parts of the mirror, which are its “рама” (“frame”) and “стекло” (“glass”), corresponding to the frame and canvas of a painted portrait. Thus Chodasevič creates a ring-like structure which iconically de-picts an existential dead end as well as the image of a person incapable of escaping from himself. Like Petrarch in sonnet 361, Chodasevič uses the word “mirror” (“зеркало”) sparingly. In ‘Before the Mirror’, it appears only in the title. In the poem’s beginning, it is replaced by the speaker’s reflection, while in the ending it is split into two synecdoches: “frame” and “glass”. Chodasevič’s mirror scenario is as pessimistic as Petrarch’s, but there the similarities end. Overall, Chodasevič treats Petrarch exactly the way he treats Dante. The life and writings of his Italian predecessors are used as a background for depicting the modern poet’s own. There are two other cha-racteristics that make the poem so typically Khodasevichian. First, ‘Before the Mirror’ features unique mirror effects, thus displaying his artistic ori-ginality. Second, in order to make his diction sound unmistakably Russian he involves the mirror vocabulary of the 18th and 19th century Russian tra-dition, from Gavriil Deržavin through Puškin and Tolstoj to Anton Čechov. The “mirror” in the title is semantically akin to such words as the pronoun “I” and the noun “footsteps”, which are replicas of the speaker. “Я” is a shifter, that is, a word that any speaker can use to designate himself. Indeed, the same is true about the mirror as a physical object: it reflects who-ever is looking into it. By putting these two similarly functioning “ready-mades” together Chodasevič proves himself to be a master wordsmith. As for “следы”, they are a synecdoche for the person who left them. Distancing himself from the wild “я, я, я” (“me, me, me”), dissociating from his mirror reflection (referring to himself as “вон тот”, “that other”), failing to find his footsteps in the desert and, finally, discovering only “loneliness” in the

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mirror’s glass, the poet eloquently varies the theme of the middle-age crisis. Having lost his self, the lyrical persona cannot identify his presence any-where, be it in the language, the physical world or the mirror. As for the Russian predecessors of ‘Before the Mirror’, it was Nikolaj Nekrasov who coined this title in his 1866-1867 satire of a typical Russian bureaucrat. The plight of an aged person noticing changes as he contemplates his/her appearance in the mirror had also been treated in Deržavin’s poem ‘Razgovor s Anakreonom’ (‘A Conversation with Anacreon’), Ivan Krylov’s fable ‘Razborčivaja nevesta’ (‘The Scrupulous Bride’), Tolstoj’s Anna Kare-nina (Konstantin Levin before the mirror in Book 3, ch. 31) and the finale of Anton Čechov’s ‘Dama s sobačkoj’ (‘The Lady with a Lapdog’). In ‘Before the Mirror’, Chodasevič used this tradition, as well as the legacy of Petrarch and Dante, to portray himself, thus securing a place of honor in the tradition of European humanism. 4. A Conflict Between Literary Authorities (Clarifying Stanza V) When a poem quotes strong statements from several literary authorities, the reader can expect them to be reconciled with one another as well as with the poet’s own message. From this point of view, Dante’s medieval stance, openly declared in ‘Before the Mirror’, clashes with those of other authorities whose presence is hidden, and this results in a conflict both cultural and moral. Among those who are involved in the conflict, Petrarch should be mentioned first. To be sure, Chodasevič was aware of the contradiction, and, judging by the hermetic stanza V, tried to resolve it in a very sophisticated way. 4.1. Virgil “Behind the Speaker’s Shoulders” vs. the Speaker’s Loneliness This contradiction appears at the very moment the speaker realizes that Dante’s midlife crisis scenario does not apply to him. The reason is that Dante’s experience takes as its premise the medieval hierarchy, with God at the very top and the Virgin Mary, Santa Lucia, Beatrice and Virgil occupying lower rungs. As a result, the rescue, which occurs while he is on the deserted slope, reaches him while descending along the divine vertical axis. In stanza V, Chodasevič’s speaker realizes that his midlife crisis follows the opposite scenario, that of loneliness, which involves no rescue. He acknowledges that he sees no Virgil “standing at his shoulder” in the mirror. Instead, what he sees is loneliness. This latter statement sounds both metaphorical and para-doxical, as loneliness is a non-visible attribute of someone’s mode of exist-ence. To be sure, in the context of the Comedy, loneliness reads as a negative

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value, meaning abandonment, the absence of spiritual guidance from a higher force and, as a result, of salvation. Pessimism, however, is not the only aspect of Chodasevič’s loneliness. On the level of the plot, it can boast the status of a positive value that the speaker achieves thanks to his midlife crisis. In a sense, один- (“one”), the root of the Russian word “одиночество”, implies the newly found integrity of the speaker’s ego. I do not insist on this interpretation, as there are no other signs of Chodasevič explicitly proclaiming a happy outcome of his crisis. Moreover, the question whether the speaker’s split self finally obtains whole-ness in stanza V remains open. A positive reading of loneliness accompanies the speaker’s switch from Dante’s allegories to Petrarch’s humanism and, perhaps, European existentia-lism of the modernist era with its acceptance of the human condition as the necessary basis for self-understanding. In Chodasevič’s earlier poem “Puskaj minuvšego ne žal’” (“Let’s Have no Regrets about the Past”, 1920-1921), the existentialist scenario of loneliness leading to self-respect is quite explicit. Its hero, a humble man, experiencing first loneliness and then pride, triumphant-ly achieves spiritual uplift. This process is compared to the grass reappearing each spring: “и одиночество взыграет, / и душу гордость окрылит / […] так нынче травка прорастает / сквозь трещины гранитных плит” (128; “and loneliness will play up, and pride will inspire [lit.: lend wings to] the soul […] it’s like [the way] the grass now grows through the cracks of granite slabs”). Existentialist loneliness requires the recognition of a single authority, which is the man’s self. Remarkably, Chodasevič promotes his loneliness to a suprapersonal level: the experience of an ideal Poet. He also manages to reinforce this modern condition with classical motifs, just as he relies, in stanza V, on Petrarch as an Apostle of Solitude. This intertextual link might have resulted from his acquaintance with Geršenzon’s introductory essay ‘Frančesko Petrarka. 1304-1374’, which affirmed “our consanguinity with Petrarch” (Geršenzon 1915: 4) because: “он любил свое ‘я’ во всех своих проявлениях” (33; “he loved his ‘I’ in all its manifestations”); “за мучи-тельную борьбу, за раскаяние и томление он любил себя еще с удво-енной нежностью, как мать – больное дитя”, с тем “болезненн[ым] сладострастие[м]”, которым “человек бередит свои раны” (33-34; “[…] he loved himself with double tenderness for his agonizing struggle, repentance and vexation – the way a mother loves her sick child; he did it with the painful voluptuousness with which one relishes reopening one’s old wounds”); […] вообще, Петрарка “был первым [...] человеком нового времени, постигнутым тою болезнью внутреннего раздвоения, которою с тех пор [...] болеет культурное человечество” (51; “[…] overall, Petrarch was the first person [...] of the new era suffering from the same disease of

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inner duality with which all civilized humanity has been infected ever since”). Thus, the clash between Virgil and loneliness is resolved in favor of loneliness, which means that Petrarch’s Humanism, leaving a man face to face with himself, takes the upper hand over Dante’s medieval hierarchy that places man at the very bottom. Petrarch’s stance as represented in ‘Before the Mirror’ requires further explication. To begin with, Petrarch isolated himself from the world not just for the sake of self-knowledge but also for the sake of artistic freedom. In dealing with the literary tradition, he took liberties the previous epoch did not allow. Moreover, he worked out a new concept of authorship, independent of existing groups, movements and fashions. He developed arguments in favor of the writer’s independence in his treatise ‘De vita solitaria’ and the Can-zoniere poems. Sonnets 35 and 259 are of particular interest for the under-standing of ‘Before the Mirror’, as they contain a hypogram of loneliness that was to be inherited by Chodasevič’s poem:

Loneliness results in a man’s focus on his ego and the right life values, especially love. Love, in its turn, stimulates creativity, which is able to cement man’s split ego together and produce a (healthy) integrity.

Sonnet 259 opens with a confession: “Cercato ò sempre solitaria vita” (Petrarch 1996: 362; “I’ve always sought a solitary life” [363]) in order to avoid company of those who – and Petrarch uses Dante’s wording here – have lost the path to Heaven (“la strada del Cielo ànno smarrita” [362]). The sonnet also touches upon Petrarch’s emigration: “fuor del dolce aere de’ paesi toschi” (362; “outside the sweet air of Tuscany” [363]). The same cluster of motifs – loneliness, lost way and emigration – are present in ‘Before the Mirror’. Sonnet 35, in its turn, may have suggested Chodasevič’s imagery of the desert and footprints, featured in stanza IV:

Solo e pensoso i più deserti campi vo mesurando a passi tardi e lenti, e gli occhi porto per fuggire intenti ove vestigio uman l’arena stampi. (Petrarch 1996: 56)

Alone and deep in thought I measure out the most deserted field, with slow, late steps, with eyes intent to flee at whatever sign of human footprint left within the sand. (57)

In contrast to sonnet 259, which by 1924 had not yet been translated, sonnet 35 existed in several Russian translations. Gavriil Deržavin, Chodasevič’s

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favorite predecessor, entitled his 1808 rather free version of it ‘Zadumčivost’’ (‘Pensiveness’):

Задумчиво, один, широкими шагами Хожу, и меряю пустых пространство мест; Очами мрачными смотрю перед ногами, Не зрится ль на песке где человечий след. Увы! я помощи себе между людями Не вижу, не ищу, как лишь оставить свет […] Но нет пустынь таких, ни дебрей мрачных, дальных, Куда любовь моя в мечтах моих печальных Не приходила бы беседовать со мной. (Deržavin 2002: 498)

Pensively, alone I walk and with wide steps measure empty places’ space; I look with gloomy eyes before my feet for a human footprint noticeable in the sand. Alas! I do not see nor search for help from among people but [only want] to leave [high] society […] But there are no such deserts or gloomy distant wildernesses where my love would not come to converse with me in my sad dreams.

Geršenzon outlined the Petrarchan program of loneliness, both in everyday life and in creativity, in a way that suits Chodasevič’s poem very well:

С первых дней своей зрелости и до конца Петрарка жил один, как в пустыне, наслаждаясь беседами с самим собою. Многие годы он действительно жил в полном уединении, но и при дворах князей он оставался одиноким. Ему никогда не бывало скучно в одино-честве. Он точно первый из людей открыл глаза на всю природу, – на себя, на людей, на мир, – больше всего на самого себя. (Geršenzon 1915: 4) From the earliest days of his maturity until the end Petrarch lived alone like in a desert and enjoyed talking to himself. For many years he indeed lived in complete solitude; even at princes’ courts he remained lonely. He was never bored while alone. He seems to have been the first to open his eyes on the whole of nature – on himself, the people, the world – but mostly on himself. [О]н умеет жить один. [...] [О]н выступил из сословной органи-зации средневекового общества; формально он – клирик, в дейст-вительности он – вполне независимый человек, литератор. [...] Его индивидуальная свобода для него дороже богатств и почестей. (46)

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He knows how to live alone. […] He has stepped outside of the class organization of medieval society; formally he is a cleric, but in fact he is a quite independent man, a man of letters. [...] His individual freedom is dearer to him than wealth and honors. О Петрарке верно сказали, что он был зеркалом самого себя. Его взор как бы поминутно обращается внутрь [...] Петрарка с любо-знательностью психолога изучил самые отдаленные закоулки своей души. (6) Petrarch is rightly said to have been a mirror of himself. Every moment his gaze turns inward [...] With a psychologist’s curiosity Petrarch studied the most remote corners of his soul. В противоположность средневековому писателю, которому поня-тие писательской индивидуальности так же чуждо, как и понятие литературной собственности, [...] Петрарка требует от писателей, чтобы они, заимствуя чужое, перерабатывали его самостоятельно, как пчела перерабатывает сок цветов; но еще выше он ставит самостоятельное творчество шелковичных червей. “Хочешь знать, какого мнения я держусь? – пишет он Боккаччио. – Я стараюсь идти по дороге, проложенной нашими предками, но не хочу раб-ски ступать в следы их ног. Я хочу не такого вождя, который на цепи рабски тащил бы меня за собою, а такого, который шел бы впереди меня, только указывая мне путь; я никогда не соглашусь ради него отказаться от моих глаз, свободы и суждения.” (45) Unlike a medieval writer, for whom the notion of literary individuality was as alien as the concept of literary property [...], Petrarch requires from writers that they rework what they have borrowed from someone else, like a bee processing nectar; but he values even higher the independent creative work of silkworms. He writes to Boccaccio: “Do you want to know what opinion I adhere to? I try to follow the road paved by our ancestors, but I do not want to slavishly follow in their footprints. I want not a guide who will pull me along by a chain, slavishly, but one who will walk in front of me, only pointing out the way; I will never agree to relinquish my own vision, freedom and judgment because of him.”

Like Petrarch, Chodasevič deliberately kept a distance between himself and his fellow writers. He never belonged to any literary movement (such as Symbolism) or literary grouping (such as Acmeism or the “Poets’ Guild”) and proudly declared himself (as well as another outsider, Marina Cvetaeva) “wild”. In his mature poetry, he treated traditions freely, à la Petrarch, as has been shown in the above with respect to ‘Before the Mirror’. What should be emphasized in this discussion is that there are several keywords in the poem,

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such as “desert”, “loneliness”, “mirror” and “footsteps”, that have a clearly Petrarchan tinge. Incidentally, in Russian there is no particular word to match Petrarch’s concept of loneliness, which Chodasevič suggested by the just listed words plus the references to Virgil. In fact, the concept of loneliness and the image of a non-appearing Virgil both oppose and at the same time complement each other. They para-doxically emblematize mutually exclusive lifestyles and different types of creativity. To express the dilemma of creativity, Chodasevič depicted the non-appearing Virgil in the classical pose of the Muse, hovering behind the Poet’s back, the better to move his pen and put ideas into his head. The absence of Virgil from the plot can be seen as targeting the Russian Sym-bolists, who cultivated an imitatio of Dante, including his type of creativity under Virgil’s guidance. In contrast, Chodasevič makes a gesture of solidarity with Petrarch’s loneliness as a basic principle of art, philosophy and life. For better understanding Petrarch’s presence in ‘Before the Mirror’, it is im-portant to remember that Petrarch acknowledged Virgil as his mentor and the greatest poet that ever existed; thus he both followed Dante and at the same time refused to “slavishly imitate” any predecessor. To sum up, the image of “одиночество” (“loneliness”) in ‘Before the Mirror’ represents a telling antithesis highlighting a cultural and moral clash between Dante’s and Petrarch’s creative scenarios. The latter turns out to be preferable for Chodasevič as suiting his idea of truth. Reflecting on this conflict, readers come to understand the relationship between good and evil, pessimism and creativity, isolation and abandonment, as they figure in Cho-dasevič’s poetic world. They are also led to appreciate Chodasevič’s courage in choosing an outsider position in Modernist literature. 4.2. Midway of Life Trajectory vs. Possible Death in the Mirror This is another conspicuous contradiction in ‘Before the Mirror’. Referring to the Comedy, Chodasevič introduces the archetypal metaphor of life as a journey a man undertakes as an active subject endowed with free will. At the midpoint of this itinerary, he experiences difficulties, i.e. gets lost in a desert, which means that – alas – the second half does not merely depend on his free will. His destiny turns him into its passive object. The post-Dante intertexts of ‘Before the Mirror’, such as Secretum, the mirror sonnet 168, ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’ and some others, suggest the hidden motif of a possible death at the midpoint of man’s earthly travels. Let us first quote from Secretum:

< А в г у с т и н > Ты горд добрыми качествами этого тела [...]? Но что тебе нравится в твоем теле? Мощность его, или цветущее здоровье? Но усталость, возникающая от ничтожных причин, и

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приступы разнообразных болезней [...] доказывают, что ничего нет более хрупкого. (Petrarka 1915: 116) <A.> Do you boast of your physical attractions […]? What do you like about your body? Its health and strength? There is nothing more feeble. It can be destroyed by weakness which steals upon you for almost no reason at all, [and from] a variety of illnesses. (Petrarch 2002: 29)

Another influential example of the same topos is Puškin’s “Pora, moj drug, pora! pokoja serdce prosit” (“It is Time, My Dear, it is Time! The Heart Begs for Peace”), a monologue about death waiting to interrupt a couple’s happy life:

Летят за днями дни, и каждый час уносит Частичку бытия, а мы с тобой вдвоем Предполагаем жить, и глядь – как раз умрем. (Puškin 1959: 387)

The days fly past, and every hour carries off a fragment of existence: and you and I make plans together to live, yet watch out! suddenly shall we die. (Obolensky 1976: 115; with minor editing)

Chodasevič clearly refers to Puškin’s poem with the colloquialism “и глядь”, – paraphrased as “а глядишь”. Stanza V, with its motif of the speaker not seeing himself in the mirror, might also be echoing Ivan Bunin’s ‘Zerkalo’ (‘The Mirror’, 1916), which developed the theme quite openly:

[…] и все, что отражалось, Что было в зеркале, померкло, потерялось... Вот так и смерть, да, может быть, вот так. В могильной темноте одна моя сигара Краснеет огоньком, как дивный самоцвет: Погаснет и она, развеется и след Ее душистого и тонкого угара [...] (Bunin 1993: 313)

[…] and all that had been reflected, what had been in the mirror – faded, got lost… And so death is, yes, perhaps, just like that. In the grave’s darkness there is only my cigar shining dimly red and twinkling like a wonderful gem: it will also go out, and the trace of its sweet and subtle intoxication will dissolve…

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A similar situation, perhaps based on Bunin’s ‘Mirror’, is also featured in Chodasevič’s unfinished poem “Za štorami – sedogo dnja mercan’e” (“Behind the Curtains, the Hoary Day’s Twinkle”, 1918), which ends with the words: “Вот зеркало. В нем пусто. Нет меня” (284; “Here is the mirror. It is empty. There is no me in it”). In general, by abundantly citing various literary authorities’ treatment of such issues as midlife death, transition from middle (or old age) to the other world, and the mirror as a doorway into the other world, Chodasevič saturated the language of ‘Before the Mirror’ with intimations of mortality and death. Along with the motif of a fatal midpoint of life’s journey, these suggest two different readings of stanza V and, accordingly, the poem as a whole. The first envisions the speaker’s long life (up to Dante’s age of 56 or Petrarch’s nearly 70), despite the midlife crisis and foreseen future tragic end. The second is more impressive – and, perhaps, more controversial. The speaker’s life is going to be cut off in its middle (like Puškin’s, at age 37), and the final self-portrait in the mirror becomes reminiscent of Kazimir Malevič’s square, be it black or white, devoid of any picture. In the course of the plot, the mirror loses its inherent responsiveness, ceasing to reflect the speaker’s appearance. Instead, it obtains magic qualities – the ability to let a person in on something the ordinary person has no knowledge of. Inci-dentally, the figure of Virgil – as a mediator between a living human being and the other world, one who is responsible for Dante’s visits to Inferno and Purgatory and also for the transition from one period of adulthood into the next and eventually, for his salvation, – conveys the same idea. To be sure, stanza V defies the rules of ordinary realism, which suggest that a person looking into a mirror will necessarily see his/her reflection. It also avoids the Symbolists’ escape into the otherworldly looking glass (as in Blok’s ‘Song of Inferno’). Even Chodasevič’s own recurrent motif of finding his lost identity in the mirror, represented in poems other than ‘Before the Mirror’, is not tapped in stanza V. A possible clue to its understanding may be found in the finale of Chodasevič’s ‘Polden’’ (‘Noon’, 1918). Its lyrical persona immerses himself in his Venetian recollections, and, perhaps, by association with Venetian mirrors, dives inside himself, enjoying a narcis-sistic intoxication, and having regained his previously lost ego, returns to reality:

И я смотрю как бы обратным взором В себя. И так пленительна души живая влага, Что, как Нарцисс, я с берега земного Срываюсь и лечу туда, где я один, В моем родном, первоначальном мире,

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Лицом к лицу с собой, потерянным когда-то – И обретенным вновь... (106)

And I am looking as if with a reverse gaze into myself. And the soul’s living moisture is so captivating that like Narcissus I hurtle and fly from the earthly shore to where I am alone, to my native, primeval world, face to face with myself once lost and now regained...

What does this entail for the reading of stanza V? To begin with, this stanza implements the magic features of mirrors from Chodasevič’s other poems. In accordance with the pagan rituals of Christmas-time divinations, the mirror does not tell about the person’s current state but foretells his future; see for example ‘Ručej’ (‘A Creek’, 1916), whose lyrical persona “воду черпает рукой / И пьет – в струе, уже ночной, / Своей судьбы не узнавая” (86; “scoops water with his hand and drinks it – in the jet, already nocturnal, not recognizing his destiny”). In an earlier ‘Gadanie’ (‘Fortune-telling’, 1907), the speaker asks a mirror about his fate, and the mirror shows “Шута ль веселого? / Собаку, гроб или змею?” (35; “A merry jester? a dog, a coffin or a snake?”) In ‘Rjaženye’ (‘Mummers’, 1907) the lyrical persona in a crowd of mummers fearfully imagines that his soul can easily enter someone else’s body: “Я – не я? Вдруг да станется?” (35; “Me or not me? Suddenly, can [anything] happen?”). Read against the background of these lines, stanza V suggests that the speaker, who is trying to divine the truth about the second part of his adulthood with the help of a mirror, does get a truthful answer, which is his non-appearance in its glass, equivalent to his impending end. What he also understands while looking in the mirror is his loneliness, and, perhaps, his abandonment by higher forces. Hence in Chodasevič’s poem, this magic twist of the plot reconciles Dante’s midlife crisis with Petrarch’s. 5. Problems of Self-identification (Once Again Around Stanza V) On first reading, it may seem that the “I, I, I” theme, so powerfully present in stanzas I-III, disappears in IV-V. In fact, Chodasevič is engrossed in his problematic self-identification at every point in the poem, and what is taken for an absence of “I” is the result of the poet’s switch from openly lexical means to hidden structural ones. To begin with, the idea of a split personality is reenacted on the level of the poem’s composition. The discourse moves from the grammatical and rhetorical symmetry of stanzas I-III to a con-siderable rupture in stanza IV. Rhetorically, the rupture is evident in the unfinished phrase “Oт ничтожной причины – к причине” (“From one tri-vial cause to another”). Chodasevič begins it but then leaves off without a

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predicate – for a reason. Its structure emblematizes the decomposition of the speaker’s speech, mind and body. In this sense, the phrase under scrutiny may also provoke associations with mortality or even the death of the lyrical persona. The place of “I” in the design of stanzas I-III is also telling. This pro-noun opens the first line of stanza I, boosting the regular anapestic trimeter with two spondees, and closes the last line of stanza II as well as the last line of stanza III, this time hidden, as it were, in the last letter/syllable of the word “змея” (“snake”). This rhythm of repetitions demonstrates Chodasevič’s pre-occupation with his self-identification, as well as his mastery in using the various levels of his poetic discourse to convey one theme. Furthermore, in stanzas I-III with their model symmetry Chodasevič equates various incarnations of his ego. The starting point of this mental operation is his physical body in the mirror introduced by the alienating formula “вон тот” (“that one there”). He questions whether this reflection is identical with his former states (such as boyhood and adolescence) and his former social roles (such as the scathing critic, the nemesis of debutant poets, or the silent or mocking participant of tragic conversations). In stanza IV the motif of non-recognizing himself is developed not through mirror imagery but through the image of the Biblical desert where the speaker cannot find his footsteps. The mirror reappears, however, in stanza V. This time it reflects the speaker’s loneliness, – his condition or, perhaps, destiny, – rather than his body. The poem consistently develops the idea of a man’s body/personality, first maturing and then declining. This theme is expressed by words referring to the speaker’s age, as straightforward as “мальчик”/“мальчишечью” (“boy”/“boyish”) and as sophisticated as shocking color adjectives. Thus, the inexperienced young poets are ironically called “желторотый” (literally: “yellow-mouthed”, like a baby chicken), while the wise middle-aged speaker presents himself as “желто-серый, полуседой” (literally: “yellow-gray”, concerning his complexion; half-gray, concerning his hair). Symbolically, all these words are meant to trace the speaker’s journey from one stage of life to another. Characteristically, the life Chodasevič portrays in ‘Before the Mirror’ is that of a poet. To emphasize this, he has the speaker going as it were through the process of acquisition of linguistic skills, given that language is the writer’s tool. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker relies on simple vo-cabulary including lexical primitives like “I” but gradually starts to saturate his diction with more complex vocabulary, e.g. compound words like “yel-low-gray”. Another manifestation of the speaker’s gradual maturing is the motif of active motion. Intense in stanzas I-III, this comes to a standstill in stanza V. As a boy, the speaker used “to dance” at children’s balls, and as a young man he imparted a “мальчишечья прыть” (“boyish vivacity”, or,

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literally, “impetuous movement”) to disputes. In middle age, he wandered in the desert. Compared to the two previous modes of movement, this is a pointedly meaningless activity, leading nowhere. In stanza V, the quality of “прыть” no longer characterizes the speaker. It is taken over by the panther, who jumps to follow its prey. Chodasevič underlines this switch of moving agency in several ways, first of all, by the alliteration of “p” in the words “прыть”, “пантера”, and “прыжками” (“bounces”),15 and also by the fact that the speaker is chased into a Parisian attic. Finally, it is emphasized by switching from the nominative case of “I” to the accusative (mentioned earlier). As a result, the speaker is no longer the master of his free will or even of his body. He is led by something else, be it destiny or a Dantesque panther. Moreover, in the finale of stanza V he seems to freeze in front of the mirror. At this moment, the subject-object boundaries are blurred to such an extent that the reader has to make an effort in order to understand who it is looking in the mirror and (not) reflected in it. 6. The Self-Portrait in the Mirror: The Metapoetic Dimension The weaker the lyrical persona of ‘Before the Mirror’ becomes, the stronger its metatextual reach. Characteristically, the only literary figure featured in the poem appears in the last stanza, not earlier, for instance, not in the epi-graph. Chodasevič clearly outlined his cultural agenda by involving Virgil, Dante and Petrarch into the narrative and by ennobling his “дикое слово” (“wild word”) with references to various Russian writers from Deržavin to Bunin and from Tolstoj to Čechov. In his collection of poems European Night and especially in ‘Before the Mirror’, one of that collection’s major poems, he depicts himself as a Europeanized Russian keen on upholding the classical tradition. Moreover, not unlike Dante, who, in the Inferno’s canto 4 converses with the five greatest classics of antiquity and boasts that “[…] io fui sesto tra cotanto senno” (37; “I was sixth among so much wisdom” [Alighieri 1996b: 75]), Chodasevič considers the great writers as his most desirable interlocutors. As his ticket into that pantheon, he produces his self-portrait in the mirror in an homage to Petrarch’s similar undertaking. Chodasevič’s self-portrait, both personal and suprapersonal, pointedly visual in the first three stanzas and nearly invisible by the end, is true to life but at the same time makes a magic leap into the future. As a result, ‘Before the Mirror’ has earned the best possible reputation – that of “if not an immortal poem, then a non-mortal one” (“если не бессмертные, то вне-смертные стихи”; Ivask 1985: 129).

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NOTES

The present article is an abridged and revised version of Panova (2012). The same year, 2012, Tomas Venclova published his three-page long essay on ‘Before the Mirror’, which also touches upon the semiotics of mirror and Dante’s relevance to the plot. Venclova considers Chodasevič’s poem in the context of such Russian modernist poets as Aleksej Kručenych, Boris Pasternak, and Sergej Esenin. I would like to thank Alexander Zholkovsky and Marcus Levitt for their help in editing my English.

1 Chodasevič’s poetry in the original is quoted from Chodasevič (2009: 1),

citing pages in parentheses. 2 On untranslatability of Russian razve and neuželi, see Alexander Zholkov-

sky’s essay in the present volume. 3 See Berberova (1983: 249). 4 See Berberova (1983: 248-249). 5 Dante’s Comedy (Inferno) in the original is quoted from Alighieri (1996a),

citing pages in parentheses. 6 See Miller (1981: 171-173); Levin (1998a: 219-220; 1998b: 569); Kirilcuk

(2002: 384-386); Postoutenko (2002). 7 See Levin (1998b: 546-569) and some other works on ‘Before the Mirror’. 8 On Dante’s presence in ‘Before the Mirror’, see for example Kirilcuk (2002:

385); Venclova (2012: 384-385). 9 Similar medley of Dante’s and Petrarch’s repertoires can be found in other

works of Chodasevič, such as Žizn’ Vasilija Travnikova (The Life of Vasilij Travnikov); for more detail, see Panova (2015a).

10 See Panova (2015a; 2015b). 11 I am grateful to Inna Andreeva, Nikolaj Bogomolov, John Malmstad, Robert

Hughes and Valerij Šubinskij for their consultation on this issue. 12 For a happy turn, the appearance of a trustworthy Guide in the mirror, see

Michail Kuzmin’s collection of poems Seti (Nets, 1908), especially “Vzojdja na bližnjuju stupen’” (“Climbing the Nearest Step”):

Взойдя на ближнюю ступень, Мне зеркало вручил Вожатый; Там отражался он как тень, И ясно золотели латы; А из стекла того струился день. Я дар его держал в руке, Идя по темным коридорам. К широкой выведен реке, Пытливым вопрошал я взором, В каком нам переехать челноке. (Kuzmin 2000: 102)

184 Lada Panova

13 Their titles being borrowings from Comedy mean ‘The Dark Forest’ and ‘The

Serpents were My Friends’ respectively. 14 See ‘Geršenzon’ (1925) in Chodasevič (1991: 338). 15 See also paronymy in lines 21-22: “ПантеРа ПРыЖКами [...] ПаРиЖсКий”

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