The Scythians and The Rite of Spring: Documents

Here are a selection of documents and sources – videos, images, and text – relating to and referred to in the piece I just published, on the influence of Nicholas Roerich and Asiatic culture on Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring.

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Mikhail Glinka, Ruslan and Lyudmila (1842) – Overture

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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade, Op. 35 (1888)

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Vladimir Soloviev, ‘Pan Mongolism’ (1894)

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Pan Mongolism! The name is monstrous

Yet it caresses my ear

As if filled with the portent

Of a grand divine fate.

–

While in corrupt Byzantium

The altar of God lay cooling

And holy men, princes, people and king

Renounced the Messiah –

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Then He invoked from the East

An unknown and alien people,

And beneath the heavy hand of fate

The second Rome bowed down in the dust.

–

We have no desire to learn

From fallen Byzantium’s fate,

And Russia’s flatterers insist:

It is you, you are the third Rome.

–

Let it be so! God has not yet

Emptied his wrathful hand.

A swarm of waking tribes

Prepares for new attacks.

–

From the Altai to Malaysian shores

The leaders of Eastern isles

Have gathered a host of regiments

By China’s defeated walls.

–

Countless as locusts

And as ravenous,

Shielded by an unearthly power

The tribes move north.

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O Rus’! Forget your former glory:

The two-headed eagle is ravaged,

And your tattered banners passed

Like toys among yellow children.

–

He who neglects love’s legacy,

Will be overcome by trembling fear…

And the third Rome will fall to dust,

Nor will there ever be a fourth.

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Golden bull figurine, from the Maikop kurgan (excavated 1897)

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World of Art magazine, 3rd Edition (1901)

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Nicholas Roerich, Guests from Overseas (1901)

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Nicholas Roerich, Set Design for Act III of The Polovtsian Dances (1909)

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Nicholas Roerich, Preliminary Paintings for ‘The Great Sacrifice’ (the working title of The Rite of Spring) (1910)

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Nicholas Roerich, Costume Designs for The Rite of Spring (1913)

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Nicholas Roerich, Set Designs for The Rite of Spring (1913)

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Original Costumes for The Rite of Spring (1913)

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Igor Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring (1913)

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Alexander Blok, The Scythians (1918)

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You are millions. We are hordes and hordes and hordes.

Try and take us on!

Yes, we are Scythians! Yes, we are Asians –

With slanted and greedy eyes!

–

For you, the ages, for us a single hour.

We, like obedient slaves,

Held up a shield between two enemy races –

The Tatars and Europe!

–

For ages and ages your old furnace raged

And drowned out the roar of avalanches,

And Lisbon and Messina’s fall

To you was but a monstrous fairy tale!

 –

For hundreds of years you gazed at the East,

Storing up and melting down our jewels,

And, jeering, you merely counted the days

Until your cannons you could point at us!

–

The time is come. Trouble beats its wings –

And every day our grudges grow,

And the day will come when every trace

Of your Paestums may vanish!

 –

O, old world! While you still survive,

While you still suffer your sweet torture,

Come to a halt, sage as Oedipus,

Before the ancient riddle of the Sphinx!..

–

Russia is a Sphinx. Rejoicing, grieving,

And drenched in black blood,

It gazes, gazes, gazes at you,

With hatred and with love!..

 –

It has been ages since you’ve loved

As our blood still loves!

You have forgotten that there is a love

That can destroy and burn!

 –

We love all- the heat of cold numbers,

The gift of divine visions,

We understand all- sharp Gallic sense

And gloomy Teutonic genius…

 –

We remember all- the hell of Parisian streets,

And Venetian chills,

The distant aroma of lemon groves

And the smoky towers of Cologne…

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We love the flesh – its flavor and its color,

And the stifling, mortal scent of flesh…

Is it our fault if your skeleton cracks

In our heavy, tender paws?

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When pulling back on the reins

Of playful, high-spirited horses,

It is our custom to break their heavy backs

And tame the stubborn slave girls…

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Come to us! Leave the horrors of war,

And come to our peaceful embrace!

Before it’s too late – sheathe your old sword,

Comrades! We shall be brothers!

–

But if not – we have nothing to lose,

And we are not above treachery!

For ages and ages you will be cursed

By your sickly, belated offspring!

 –

Throughout the woods and thickets

In front of pretty Europe

We will spread out! We’ll turn to you

With our Asian muzzles.

 –

Come everyone, come to the Urals!

We’re clearing a battlefield there

Between steel machines breathing integrals

And the wild Tatar Horde!

 –

But we are no longer your shield,

Henceforth we’ll not do battle!

As mortal battles rages we’ll watch

With our narrow eyes!

–

We will not lift a finger when the cruel Huns

Rummage the pockets of corpses,

Burn cities, drive cattle into churches,

And roast the meat of our white brothers!..

–

Come to your senses for the last time, old world!

Our barbaric lyre is calling you

One final time, to a joyous brotherly feast

To a brotherly feast of labor and of peace!

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Vaslav Nijinsky

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Stravinsky and Nijinsky

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Credit for the two poems goes to From the Ends to the Beginning: A Bilingual Anthology of Russian Verse; a project hosted at: http://max.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/index.html

Alexander Blok – ‘Night, street, street-light, drugstore,…’ (1912)

Alexander Blok (Александр Блок) (1880-1921) was the foremost of the Russian Symbolists, who changed the face of Russian letters from the late 1890s through until the Russian Revolution, leading Russian literature into a ‘Silver Age’ after the great works of the previous century.

Chekhov died in 1904, and Tolstoy, over thirty years his senior, not until 1910. Tolstoy published his final novel, Resurrection, in 1899; worked on Hadji Murat – which wasn’t published until after his death – until about 1904; and wrote and published one of his great short stories, ‘Alyosha the Pot’, in 1905. Chekhov’s stature as a playwright owes to his later years: The Seagull premiered in 1896, Uncle Vanya in 1899, Three Sisters in 1901, and The Cherry Orchard in 1904. Some of his best short stories were written during the same period, including ‘The Bishop’ as late as 1902, but especially ‘Lady With the Toy Dog’ (1899) (otherwise known as ‘Lady With the Little Dog’, or ‘Small Dog’, or ‘Pet Dog’, or simply ‘Dog’) and ‘In the Ravine’ (1900). Indeed, Chekhov’s career as a serious writer was only established in the latter half of the 1890s, when the Symbolist movement in Russia was itself emerging under Merezhkovsky, Balmont and Bryusov.

Still, the work of Chekhov and the later works of Tolstoy sit happily alongside the writings of Pushkin, Gogol, Dostoevsky and Turgenev, as well as Tolstoy’s earlier pieces. All of these writers extended, in various manners and through various disciplines, into the twentieth century and beyond; but they seem, certainly in retrospect, together as one tradition, which is that of the 1800s. This perhaps owes something to their lack of immediate and gifted successors in the novel and the short story. The Symbolists had the effect of reestablishing poetry as the primary form in Russian literature. Anna Akhmatova, Osip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaeva and Vladimir Mayakovsky would follow them in differing ways. The Symbolists held their forebears in the highest regard. Andrei Bely wrote penetrating essays on Russian prosody, and on Gogol in particular, rescuing his work from the socially conscious realm delimited by Vissarion Belinsky. Yet in their metaphysics, and in their formal innovations, they took Russian literature into a distinctly new and decidedly modern era.

Blok wrote from a young age and was publishing his poetry to acclaim by 1903. He soon found himself at the head of the second wave of Russian Symbolism. This Symbolist movement in Russia was something quite distinct from the Symbolist movement in France. Edmund Wilson, in Axel’s Castle, characterises the movement in France as the ‘second swing of the pendulum away from a mechanistic view of nature and from a social conception of man’ – which is to say that it took its lead from Romanticism, and its related but sometimes unclear (especially outside of Germany) sense of philosophical Idealism, and sought the individual against the Naturalism associated with Émile Zola. While the social realist model of literature had continued to thrive in Russia after Belinsky, and whilst there were contemporary realist writers to respond and react against, in Russia there were other important influences: in the writings of prominent religious thinkers and mystics; and also in a nascent attention being paid towards folk art. Consequently Symbolism in Russia was itself more mystical, and more explicitly and thoroughly philosophical. This was so at least in the early years of its writers, who moved on significantly throughout their careers in both form and thought.

D.S. Mirsky calls the lyrics Blok wrote between 1908 and 1916, which together comprise the third volume of his collected poems in Russian, ‘certainly the greatest body of poetry written by a Russian poet since the middle of last century’, the time of Pushkin, Tyutchev and Lermontov. Mirsky also calls much of this poetry untranslatable, as it ‘depends to such an extent on the ‘imponderables’ of diction, sound and association’. Yet some of the musical, stridently rhythmic qualities of Blok’s verse do, I believe, show through in translations of his work.

One of my favourite poems by Blok is also one of his most well-known and reproduced. It bears no title, but is dated 10 October, 1912. Below I will give the poem in Russian; in my own admittedly rough transliteration, which I think still gives a strong sense of the flow of sounds; and then in three different translations into English.

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Russian Text

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Ночь, улица, фонарь, аптека,

Бессмысленный и тусклый свет.

Живи ещё хоть четверть века –

Всё будет так. Исхода нет.

–

Умрёшь — начнёшь опять сначала,

И повторится всё, как встарь:

Ночь, ледяная рябь канала,

Аптека, улица, фонарь.

–

10 октября 1912

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English Transliteration

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Notch, oolitsah, fonar, aptyekah,

Byessmuyslennuyi ee tooskluyi svet.

Zheevee yeshe hhot chetvyerrt vyeka –

Vsyeh boodyeht tak. Eeshhuhda nyet.

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Oomryesh – natchnesh opyaht snatchahlah,

Ee puhvtoreetsyah vsyeh, kak vstahr:

Notch, lyedyahnayah rryahb kanahla,

Aptyekah, oolitsah, fonar.

–

10 Oktyabryah 1912

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Transliterated by me, Christopher Laws

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English Translation 1

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The night. The street. Street-lamp. Drugstore.

A meaningless dull light about.

You may live twenty-five years more;

All will still be there. No way out.

–

You die. You start again and all

Will be repeated as before:

The cold rippling of a canal.

The night. The street. Street-lamp. Drugstore.

–

10 October 1912

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Translated by Vladimir Markov and Merrill Sparks

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English Translation 2

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Night, street and streetlight, drugstore,

The purposeless, half-dim, drab light.

For all the use live on a quarter century – 

Nothing will change.  There’s no way out.

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You’ll die – and start all over, live twice,

Everything repeats itself, just as it was:

Night, the canal’s rippled icy surface,

The drugstore, the street, and streetlight.

–

10 October 1912

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Translated by Alex Cigale at albany.edu

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English Translation 3

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A night, a street, a lamp, a drugstore

A meaningless and dismal light

A quarter century outpours –

It’s all the same. No chance to flight.

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You’d die and rise anew, begotten.

All would repeat as ever might:

The street, the icy rippled water,

The store, the lamp, the lonely night.

–

October 10th, 1912

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Translated by Dina Belyayeva at silveragepoetry.com

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Markov, V. and Sparks, M. Modern Russian Poetry (MacGibbon & Kee, 1966)

Mirsky, D.S. A History of Russian Literature (London; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968)

Wilson, E. Axel’s Castle (Glasgow; Fontana, 1976)

‘Silentium!’, by Fyodor Tyutchev

Silentium!

Speak not, lie hidden, and conceal

the way you dream, the things you feel.

Deep in your spirits let them rise

akin to starts in crystal skies

that set before the night is blurred:

delight in them and speak no word.

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How can a heart expression find?

How should another know your mind?

Will he discern what quickens you?

A thought once uttered is untrue.

Dimmed is the fountainhead when stirred:

drink at the source and speak no word.

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Live in your inner self alone

within your soul a world has grown,

the magic of veiled thoughts that might

be blinded by the outer light,

drowned in the noise of day, unheard…

take in their song and speak no word.

Fyodor Tyutchev (1830), translated by Vladimir Nabokov

Fyodor Ivanovich Tyutchev (1803-1873), a poet from the Golden Age of Russian literature, was persuaded to first begin publishing his poetry in 1836. In that year, under only the initials F.T., his poems began appearing in Pushkin’s recently founded journal, Sovremennik (‘The Contemporary’). D.S. Mirsky describes that there were ‘from 1836 to 1838 about forty lyrics, all of which (quite literally) are known by heart today by everyone who cares for Russian poetry’.

Mirsky was writing in the middle of the 1920s, in his landmark work A History of Russian Literature; Tyutchev’s poems received little attention upon their first publication, and – though he continued to publish poetry sporadically throughout his life, whether romantic poetry, nature poetry, or his later political verse, writing always in Russian despite using predominantly French in his personal relations and in his public life – he only became fully recognised and recovered by the Symbolists, around the turn of the twentieth century.

In his work, Mirsky considers Tyutchev second in Russian poetry only to Pushkin. He goes on to note that ‘from personal experience…when English poetry readers do discover him they almost invariably prefer him to all other Russian poets. This is only natural, for of all Russian poets Tyutchev abounds in those qualities which the English poetry reader has learned to value in nineteenth-century poetry’. The philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev even argued that Russian literature of the early twentieth century followed Tyutchev’s spirit of ‘torment and anxiety’ more than the spirit of any other Russian writer.

I considered naming this website ‘Silentium’; however, the domain has already been taken by a firm specialising in noise-reduction. Still, I wanted to open with Tyutchev’s poem because it is one of my favourites, and makes for a pleasing and perverse introduction to the enterprise of having a website and writing pieces for it. Tyutchev’s repeated invocation to ‘speak no word’ is one by which he himself did not abide; but his poem nevertheless retains its truth, depicting the insular and self-contained nature of the artist, and suggesting the ambivalence of any art which dwells within personal emotions, reflections and preferences, yet must be expressed in public in order to survive.

I think Tyutchev’s poem can be read in the context of the internet, blogging, and so on. Its demand that we conceal our feelings, suppress our thoughts, remain silent whilst allowing our inner lives to soar, is precisely opposed to the inclination to publish online in a ceaseless stream what we are feeling, what we are doing, our immediate responses to things, even our most strongly held likes and dislikes. I think that it is important to state and maintain this opposition even whilst beginning and developing a website, writing articles for it, and engaging in other quicker forms of media. It is a message to keep some things especially close; that sometimes it is important, and sometimes it can be richer, not to express yourself.

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Gibian, G. (ed.) The Portable Nineteenth-Century Russian Reader (Penguin, 1993)

Mirsky, D.S. A History of Russian Literature (London; Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1968)