I’ve gotten to the third chapter of The Cambridge History of Russian Literature
At Zhukovsky‘s hands the individual word in Russian poetry for the first time becomes multivalent, and its shades of meaning often turn out to be more essential than its basic sense. The author seeks to describe not so much his physical environment as the world of his feelings and experiences, his subjective sensations. […] By his pioneering experiments in the field of multivalency of the Russian poetic word, Zhukovsky paved the way for Russian symbolists such as Alexander Blok and Valery Bryusov, whose poetry dissolved the reality of everyday existence and summoned readers to the ideal worlds of Plato or of Vladimir Solovyov. [pp. 124-5]
[. . .]Zhukovsky, we recall, extended the semantic boundaries of the poetic word by endowing it with numerous supplementary shades of meaning. Batyushkov, to the contrary, made the word astoundingly precise by bestowing upon it within the poetic context the only possible objectified clear and definite meaning. Possibly it is for that reason that Batyushkov is so drawn to painterly color epithets: purple grape, yellow hops, lilac hands, leaden waves, and so forth. If Zhukovsky is a predecessor of Russian symbolism, then Batyushkov might be considered a forerunner of the acmeists, who rejected symbolism’s polysemantics and strove for the precision of the poetic word with a single meaning. It is indicative that Batyushkov was one of Osip Mandelshtam’s favorite poets: Mandelshtam spoke of the “grapeflesh” of Batyushkov’s verses. [p. 127]
Obviously one could pick holes in the comparison if one were so inclined, but I find this sort of thing very useful in getting me to see familiar names from new angles and think about them in different ways. (Here‘s Peter France’s translation of the Mandelshtam poem quoted at the end; he uses the variant readings Замостье, a place name, for замостье, a rare word meaning ‘place beyond a bridge’ and Зафну, an exotic female name borrowed by Batyushkov from Parny’s Zaphné, for Дафну ‘Daphne’ — both readings make sense but are not in the most authoritative editions, so I don’t know what to think. Batyushkov is a wonderful poet who went mad in 1821 and never wrote again.)
I can’t get to the translation, it’s behind the paywall.
Re Zamostye vs zamostye (proper vs common), I’d say that although the common noun is very rare in Russian it is still immediately recognisable as meaning the area or district beyond the local bridge. Zarechye (beyond the river) or Zagorye (beyond the hills) are perhaps more common.
It might also be interesting to note the stress on the first syllable, sounds Mid-Russian to me. My relatives in the Northerly Pskov region put the stress on the first syllable ZAmostye. There is, or was an actual village next to theirs, called ZAmostochye (a place over the bridge), and a Pskov district is called ZApskovye (over the river Pskova) in contrast to the Moscow district/area of Zamoskvo-REchye.
Yes, Batyushkov is wonderful.
Mm, shouldn’t it be Зафна in the nominative?
oh sorry, I meant to write the stress on the second syllable in the poem – zaMOstye as opposed to regional first syllable stress.
I can’t get to the translation, it’s behind the paywall.
Woops, sorry about that! The relevant (first) stanza is:
It might also be interesting to note the stress on the first syllable
Don’t know what you mean; the line is “Он тополями шагает в замостье,” and it rhymes with тростью — i.e., the stress is on the second syllable.
shouldn’t it be Зафна in the nominative?
The word, sure, but I’m talking about the reading, i.e., the form of the word in the actual line, “Нюхает розу и Дафну поет.”
oh sorry, I meant to write the stress on the second syllable in the poem
You snuck in there before I corrected you!
sorrey, again!
I see your point about Daphnoo. The translation sounds wonderful. In English the Za – Za alliteration feels even punchier than in Russian. Mandelstam uses ZAmostye – roZU, and in the next stanza raZLUku (separation) against ZAvistyu (envy).
Since you like it, here’s the rest of the translation:
Funny, no paywall for me.
the poetic word with a single meaning
How is that even possible? Did they make verse solely out of narrowly defined technical terms? Or was it a hieratic program of pretending that each word has only one meaning?
And here’s Peter France’s translation, from his Poets of Modern Russia:
And Richard and Elizabeth McKane, from The Moscow Notebooks:
How is that even possible? Did they make verse solely out of narrowly defined technical terms? Or was it a hieratic program of pretending that each word has only one meaning?
I think it’s more a matter of focusing on a single meaning rather than encouraging a whole range of senses to shade one’s use of the word.
I should add that the McKanes identify Zamostye in the notes at the back as “a town in Eastern Poland,” i.e., Zamość (now called Замосць in Russian, but traditionally Замостье); I have no idea what their warrant for this is, since while Batyushkov spent a lot of time abroad, I don’t think he had any connection with Poland, and there are a lot of towns of that name in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Strange, there could be a story behind the poem. From the lower case one would surmise it’s generic, not proper.
No, I like France’s better. I’ll have to chew on grape-flesh for a bit to tell why.
From the lower case one would surmise it’s generic, not proper.
There are Russian editions with it uppercase, though. As you know, Mandelstam’s texts are a mess (he didn’t write them down to begin with, and after he was arrested it became dangerous for anyone to have copies, so a lot of them survive only from people’s memories).
oh yes
it may be very confusing
No, I like France’s better.
Me too, it’s got more poetry in it. And I lost all sympathy for the McKanes when they went with the clichéd and inaccurate “wine” for “виноградное мясо.”
It could be worse: Google Translate makes it “grape meat”.
Well, that’s what the Russian literally says, and the phrase is in fact used in English (google it and see: “Slow currents carry bits of stem and grape meat on voyages,” “Letting the oozy grape meat slide down my throat like an oyster,” “Why do I suck the grape meat and complain about the bitterness of the skin?” etc. etc.). OED sense 5:
and there is of course mincemeat for sweet pies.