Nikolai Gumilev on the distant star Venus. On the distant star Venus

The following abbreviations are accepted:

IV— N. Gumilyov, Collected works in four volumes, vol. IV, Washington, 1962;
JV — Collection of works by R. Khlebnikov, t. 1-5, Leningrad, 1929 - 1933;
NP— V. Khlebnikov, Unpublished works, Moscow, 1940;
BS — Blok's collection, 2, Tartu, 1972;
Livshits— Benedict Livshits, One-and-a-half-eyed Sagittarius, Leningrad, 1933;

RSP— Yu.I. Levin, D.M. Segal, R.D. Timenchik, V.N. Toporov, T.V. Tsivyan, “Russian semantic poetics as a potential cultural paradigm” ( Russian literature № 7-8, 1974);
PZhRF — The first magazine of Russian futurists, Moscow, 1914;
RM- and. Russian thought;
SevZ- and. Northern notes, St. Petersburg;
NW — vs. Modern notes, Paris;
SEER — The Slavonic and East European Review.

Notes

* No. 1 in Russian Literature 7/8, 1974.
1 SEER, London, 1972, vol. 50, no. 118, p. 103. (My dating is somewhat different from that given by the publisher Amanda Haight). In a footnote to the Acmeist manifesto, Gumilyov promised a special article on the futurists ( IV, 171). Back in a letter dated March 28, 1913 to Bryusov regarding Bryusov’s article on the futurists ( RM 1913 No. 3) Gumilyov noted: “Your analysis of their “discoveries” is truly brilliant. God grant that they learn it ‹...› in No. 4 Apollo My article will appear, where I will partly touch on the same topic.” No such article appeared.
2 Published posthumously (apparently inserted as a proof - date: July 1921) in: Almanac of the Workshop of Poets, Petrograd, 1921, p. 85. Cf. humorous Gumilevian futurology in the memoirs of G. Ivanov: “Then I’ll buy myself an airplane.” I’ll say: “Pasha, give me my airplane” ( NW, 1931 No. 47, p. 315). Breg's project dates back to 1920: an airplane with a pressurized cabin for space travel.
3 Shklovsky wrote: “Gumilev’s blue leaves are a poetic metaphor. He was an excellent poet, but could not foresee the emergence of a new science - astrobotany. According to the founder of this science G.A. Tikhov, Martian plants must have “blue leaves”, having adapted over long eons of evolution to the harsh conditions of this planet. And on Venus, precisely because the “Sun is fiery and golden” there, the foliage of the trees, according to Tikhov, should be orange and even red ‹...›” ( News, 1961, February 13, pm. issue). Fiction contemporary to Gumilyov usually treated this subject in a more “grounded” way - see, for example, the chapter “Flora of Venus” in the “astronomical novel” by B. Krasnogorsky and D. Svyatsky Islands of the Ethereal Ocean(Petersburg, 1914): flora of the Carboniferous period, horsetails, club mosses and “a plant similar to our kuzmichy grass or “steppe raspberry”.
4 “Descendants of Cain” (“Pearls”). Wed. to possible associations with Venus in this poem: ‹...› a sad, stern spirit that took the name of the morning star.
5 “Eagle” (“Pearls”):

He died, yes! But he couldn't fall
Entering the circles of planetary movement.
The bottomless maw gaped below,
But the gravitational forces were weak.

6 “Nature” (“Bonfire”).
7 Wed. K. Mochulsky: “Master Gumilyov in “The Fire” concluded the task of new poetry in a strict formula: Only virgin names Poets are allowed to leave. The task is clearly impossible, but dazzlingly daring” ( NW, 1922 No. 11, p. 371). Such a program is the property not only of Acmeists, but of all those who “overcame symbolism.” Khlebnikov wrote to Kruchenykh: Ardent words in defense of Adam find you together with Gorodetsky. This makes sense: we are writing after “Tsushima” (NP, 367) . As for the languages ​​of the “inhabitants of the planets,” again, representatives of the Flammarion tradition were not very inventive - for example, in the novel by Le Fort and the Countess (Russian translation - 1926), the language of the “Venusians” is very similar to the ancient Greek language.
8 Wed. onomatopoeic explanation of the word ‘catacombes’ by Charles Nodier. This example used Nyrop ( Grammaire historique de 1a 1angue francaise, IV: Semantique, Copenhagen, 1913). In Russian translation by Vlad.B. Shklovsky: “It is impossible to find a chain of more picturesque sounds to convey the echo of death, which goes and hits sharp stone corners and suddenly freezes between the graves” ( Collections of the theory of ethical language, vol. I, Petersburg, 1916, p. 65). Vl. Shklovsky translated ‘cercueil’ as ‘death’, but cf. translation ‘coffin’ (S. Ullmann, Semantics. An Introduction to the Science of Meaning, Oxford, 1967, p. 89).
9 In the same place, Mandelstam speaks of the “Stone Age” of the existence of the word. On the problems of these formulas, see the works of E.A. Toddes and Omri Ronen.
10 A. Bely, Symbolism, Moscow, 1910, p. 619. At the end of the 1900s, Gumilev experienced a passion for theosophy.
11 Prof. A.L. Pogodin, Language as creativity. Kharkov, 1913 ( Issues of theory and psychology of creativity, vol. 4), p. 502.
12 Wed. eg there, page 280 (about words that sound like ia in one of the Polynesian languages).
13 This interjection had already appeared in Gumilyov’s work before, causing the surprise of his fellow poets: “‹...› naive, touchingly naive, so strange in Gumilyov’s mouth, such a sincerely lyrical “ah” that fluttered into the formula: The sun of the spirit, ah, never sets, / No earth can overcome it” (A. Polyanin (S. Parnok), SevZ, 1916 No. 6, p. 218).
14 Yu. Lotman, B. Uspensky, Disputes about language in early XIX V. as a fact of Russian culture. Works on Russian and Slavic philology, XXIV, Tartu, 1975, p. 283.
15 Gumilyov’s acquaintance with this article is very likely because his poems and Bryusov’s reviews of “Evening” and “Alien Sky” were published in the same issue.
16 “Such things as ‹...› ауо are pronounced with tension, regardless of the strain of hearing when perceiving them” (L. Sabaneev, Music of speech. Aesthetic research, Moscow, 1923, p. 105).
17 It is appropriate to recall that the “counterfeeling” inherent in a number of aesthetic theories to each literary text, among the Acmeists was brought to the surface of the text. N. Sredin (E. Nedzelsky) wrote about the “two-dimensionality of the theme” among the Acmeists ( Central Europe , 1929, No. 48, p. 8).
18 A.M. Peshkovsky, " Principles and techniques of stylistic analysis and evaluation of literary prose» ( Ars poetica, I, Moscow, 1927, pp. 35-36).
19 Wed. words by A.A. Smirnov that Gumilev’s “some pretentiousness with a touch of mannerism” turned “into a fully matured original manner” ( Creation, Kharkov, 1919. No. 3, p. 27).
20 N. Khardzhiev, V. Trenin. Poetic culture of Mayakovsky, Moscow, 1970, p. 75.
21 I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay, naturally, responded to this part of the declaration with the remark that ‘e’ is “not a vowel, but only a combination of a consonant with a vowel” ( Responses, 1914, No. 8, February 27). Did Gumilev remember this when he proposed “a language made up of vowels only”?
22" Dead moon"(1913). Here we present the second edition (Moscow, 1914, p. 79). “Heights” was discussed by Bryusov in the article “Common Sense Tartarars” ( RM, 1914 No. 3, reprinted in: Valery Bryusov, Collected Works, t. 6, Moscow, 1975, pp. 425-426), questioning the “hidden meaning of vowels”, because “Each language pronounces vowels differently.”
23 Wed. o "euy" - "rude, unpronounceable word” (N.P. Rozanov, Ego-futurism, Vladikavkaz, 1914, p. 22). “Words” from some vowels also appear in other poems by Kruchenykh, for example, in “Go snow kaid...”: “Sinu ae xel.”
24 A. Kruchenykh, Seifullina's abstruse language, Sun. Ivanov, Leonov, Babel, I. Selvinsky, A. Besely and others. Moscow, 1925, p. 24.
25 Wed. in his letter to Akhmatova in the summer of 1912: “I’m already reading Dante, although, of course, I only grasp the general meaning and only some expressions” ( SEER, 1972, No. 118, p. 101). Gumilyov was a student of the Romance-Germanic department. Wed. memories Vlad. Shklovsky about meetings with him ( Book and revolution, 1922, No. 7(19), p. 57). Lozinsky already had a cult of Dante at that time - see his memoirs about his travels to Florence and Ravenna in 1911 and 1913: Neva, 1965, No. 5, p. 202.
26 Translation by A.G. Gabrichevsky ( Dante Alighieri. Small works, Moscow, 1968, pp. 213-214).
27 It is especially worth recalling the “magic of vowels” among the Gnostics. From scientific literature 10s see: Franz Dornseiff, Das Alphabet in Mystik und Magie, Leipzig-Berlin, 1922.
28 Viktor Shklovsky. Lived once, Moscow, 1964, p. 259. Shklovsky was then opposed by V.K. Shileiko (V. Piast, Meetings, Moscow, 1929, pp. 250, 278).
29 Wed. widely known, cited by I.P. Sakharov ( Tales of the Russian people, St. Petersburg, 1885, p. 99) so-called. "Song of the Witches on Bald Mountain":

‹...› A.a.a. - ooo. - i.i.i. - e.e.e. - u.u.u. - e.e.e.

Wed. also in Fayste Goethe:

Den Laffen mussen wir erschrecken
A, a! E,e! I,i! O! U!
(“Aufführungen des Fürsten Radziwill in Berlin”).

30 One of the Russian translations of “Vowels” belongs to Gumilev:

A - black, white - E, U - green, O - blue,
And - red... I want to reveal the birth of vowels.
A - a mourning corset under a flock of terrible flies,
Swarming around as if in carrion or mud.

World of darkness; E - peace of fog over the desert,
The trembling of flowers, the rise of dangerous glaciers;
And - purple, a clot of blood, a smile of beautiful lips
In their rage or in their madness before the shrine.

U - wonderful circles of greenish seas,
The meadow is motley from animals, the peace of wrinkles, crumpled
Alchemy on the foreheads of thoughtful people;

Oh - the dull end of the copper ringing,
Silence pierced by a comet, an angel:
- Omega, the ray of Her lilac eyes.

31 N. Khardzhiev, V. Trenin, cit. op., page 33.
32 Spring contract of muses, Moscow, Spring 1915, pp. 95-96. On the question of the reliability of Gumilyov’s acquaintance with the almanacs of the futurists - in a note from 1913, he refers to Khlebnikov’s works from “A Slap in the Face of Public Taste”, “Dead Moon”, “Youth Union” No. 3 ( IV, 324-325), he specially reviewed both “Zardok of Judges” ( IV, 260-261, 318-319), an excerpt from Khlebnikov’s “The Death of Palivoda” (“the battle of the Cossacks”), published in “Roaring Parnassus,” he intended to include, according to the 1915 project, in the anthology of new Russian prose; The first magazine of Russian fiction was received by the editors Apollo(1914, No. 5, p. 78), where Gumilev took all the poetry collections for review; about the reaction to Spring contract of muses(i.e., on Pasternak’s poems placed there) see the memoirs of G. Adamovich and N. Otsup.
33 See RSP, page 48.
34 It is unlikely that Khlebnikov (and perhaps Gumilyov) was familiar with the following text - in the novel by Wilhelm Heinze Hildegard von Hohenthal(1796) one of the heroes expounds his doctrine:
“Fur alles, was aus unseren Innern unmittelbar selbst kommt, ist der Vokal der wesentliche Laut.” Der Wilde sieht etwas Schones von weitem, und ruft: A! Er nahert sich, erkennt es deutlich, und ruft: E! Er beruhrt es, wird von ihm beruhrt, und beide rufen: I! Eins will sich des andern bemachtigen, und das, welches Verlust befurchtet, ruft: O! Es unterliegt, leidet Schmerz und ruft: U!” — “Die funf Vokale mit ihren Doppellauten sind die Tonleiter des Alphabets aus der gewohnlichen Aussprache” (quoted no: F. Dornseiff, op. cit. , S. 51).
However, we note that Kuzmin, with whom Khlebnikov met intensively in 1909 and whom he called a teacher ( JV, 5, 287), was an attentive reader of Heinze (G.G. Shmakov, “Blok and Kuzmin”, BS, page 352). It is possible that Heise, whom Klebnikov included in the list German thinkers (PZhRF, page 80; SP, 5, p. 191, cf. SP, 5, p. 188) is a typo instead of “Heinze”. If we're talking about about the famous philologist Heyse, we note, just in case, his discussions about vowels (Gustav Gerber, Die Sprache als Kunst., Berlin, 1885, Bd. I, S. 206).
35 SevZ, 1914 No. I (reprinted in: N.O. Lerner, Stories about Pushkin, Leningrad, 1929, pp. 180-189).
36 “The glory of the word, shaken “on the left” by Zaumya and “on the right” by Every Acme, is resurrected by the power of Brentano (Troll, Trilltrall, aus dem Grabe) and Khlebnikov” (Boris Lapin, 1922nd book of poems, Moscow, 1923, p. 54). Wed. his poem “On the Death of Khlebnikov” (ibid., p. 17) and dedicated to Khlebnikov “Yesterday his azure elbow...” (B. Lapin, E. Gabrilovich, Lightning, Moscow, 1922, p. 18).
37 According to N.Ya. Mandelstam, especially remembered the lines:
There, biting the fingers of the asters, Trill-Thral kissed the flowers...
38 B. Lapin, 1922nd book of poems, p. 41. “Forest” often appears among futurists as a motivation for the abrogation of vowels and the play on interjections (“Finland” by Elena Guro and others). In his first article about the futurists (RM, 1913 No. 3, 2 pages, p. 129), Bryusov cites the poems of “Josephine Gant de Orsail” (the pseudonym of V. Gnedov, as A.E. Parnis pointed out to me): A-and! Ahh! Green decrepit branches .../ Ahh! Ahh! Ahh! Woohoo! Such examples somewhat clarify the statement of Ivan Aksenov: “The interjection, which the Milanese used so widely, filling entire quatrains with it (Nodier, by the way, composed entire chapters of this kind of sayings), was adopted into use only by Vadim Shershenevich, both sporadically and then 1915 ‹...›” ( Print and revolution, 1921, No. 3, p. 91).
39 Wed. poem "Trees":

I know it's for the trees, not for us
Given the greatness of a perfect life,
On the gentle earth, sister to the stars,
We are in a foreign land, and they are in their homeland.

40 In the utopia “We and Home” ( JV, 4, 286; Wed the mark I and E on Khlebnikov’s architectural drawings - Science and life, 1976, No. 8, p. 107), in which, by the way, we find a metaphor alphabet of consonants made of iron and vowels of glass.

41 Wed. V. Markov, The longer stories of Velimir Khlebnikov, p. 81 (“special sonic effects”).
42 “The Death of Vladimir Mayakovsky”, Berlin, 1931, pp. 7-8. For Khlebnikov’s meetings with Gumilyov, see: JV, 5, pp. 286-7, 327; NP, pp. 198-9, 423-6. Personal relationships were complicated (if not interrupted) in January 1914 after the appearance of the “Go to Hell” manifesto (cf. Livshits, page 264). Apparently, this is why the publication of Khlebnikov’s “What are you shy about, pechenezh...”, intended for No. 8, was postponed Hyperborea(Archive of M. Lozinsky).
43 See Works on sign systems, 5, Tartu, 1971, p. 280.
44 The testimony of M. Voloshin is curious: “Perhaps the first of the modern poets who began to read Dahl was Vyacheslav Ivanov. In any case, modern poets of the younger generation, under his influence, subscribed to Dahl’s new edition” ( RUssia morning, 1911, No. 129, May 25).
45 PZhPF, page 49. Another option in “Roaring Parnassus” (SP, 2, 180). Apparently, in the author’s pronunciation the text was based on the antithesis of “bird sounds” and “human voice.” Compare: “Fed up with glossolalia, he left to look for wisdom in a snare, into the element of bird speech, reproducing it with virtuosity, of which the “musical notation” in “Roaring Parnassus” does not give any idea” ( Livshits, page 274). Wed. also I. Berezark’s memories of Khlebnikov: “He knew how to imitate birds and believed that bird voices were somehow akin to poetry” ( Star, 1965, No. 12, p. 173)

46 Wed. in "The Mistake of Death": Everything from tears to lungwort, / Everything earthly will be “bah” (JV, 4, 252), in the poem “The clouds seemed like scarlet whiskers...”: Oh!... We are exhausted in eternal eternal greed! / And the child, imitating us, squeaked “ba!”, in "Krymsky": Oh! I'm tired of wandering around alone! / And the child, seeing the sun, shouted: “ great” (JV, 2, pp. 284 and 47).
47 Wed. about the language of hunting life in Annensky’s “Pedagogical Letters” ( Russian school, 1892, No. 7-8, p. 165).
48 Wed. put into Verlaine’s mouth in Zenkevich’s “Otkhodnaya Poem” (1926): “Death did you a bo-bo, / Oh, my boy Rimbaud!” Note that the ending of “Man” was perceived by the general public of the 1910s almost as futurist shocking - cf. in a newspaper report on a lecture by Gabriel Gershenkreun (one of the early and sensitive critics of Mandelstam’s poetry): “a quoted poem by Annensky, indeed a state councilor, director of the lyceum (sic! - R.T.), the district inspector, which he ends with inarticulate sounds that most closely resemble the barking of a dog, the lecturer did not, it seems, convince anyone of the need for this kind of “antithesis”” ( Odessa news, No. 9688, April 25, 1915). Earlier, V. Wolkenstein called this poem a “curiosity” ( Modern world , 1910, No. 5, 2 pages, p. 113).
49 Unwitting coincidence with Khlebnikov’s introspection: a self-twisted word has a five-ray structure (PZhRF, page 79; JV, 5, p. 191), I studied examples of self-talk and found that the number five is quite remarkable for it; the same as for the number of fingers (JV, 5, p. 185; printed in Youth Union, No. 3, 1913). Among Khlebnikov’s “Proposals” there was name numbers with five vowels: a, y, o, e, and ‹...› quinary number (JV, 5, p. 158).
50 A. Bely, Symbolism, page 416; A. Bely, “Aaron’s Rod”, Scythians, 1, Petrograd, 1917, pp. 179, 196.
51 Perhaps Gumilev is being slightly parodic here - “a technique that is extremely characteristic of Balmont and, perhaps, belongs to him alone is translation. He names the word - and either reveals it etymological meaning, or simply translates into another language:
‹...› And so the dew is called Shang-Chi-Shui / Which means: The sorcery of higher streams. ‹...› Shout “Who is like God!” there is a name Mikhail” (D. Vygodsky, Chronicle, 1917, No. 5-6, p. 254).
52 See for example: M. Grammont, Traite de phonetique, Paris, 1933, p. 406. Referring both to the future and to the past, perhaps, echoes Khlebnikov’s internal declension of words (JV, 5, pp. 171-2, 205), which Gumilyov expounded in 1913 - “he believes that each vowel contains not only an action, but also its direction” ( IV, 324), and Khlebnikov himself summarized in the article “Our Basis”: As for vowel sounds, regarding O and Y we can say that the arrows of their meanings are directed in different directions, and they give words reciprocal value ‹...› But vowel sounds are less studied than consonants (JV, 5, p. 237). Apparently, Khlebnikov later abandoned his 1913 constructions: And connects, A against, O increases growth, e decline, fall, at humility. So the poem is full of meaning from only vowels (JV, 5, p. 189).
53 Wed. F. Schlegel's metaphor: consonants are the body, vowels are the soul of the language (Gustav Gerber, cit. op.., p. 201).
54 “For depicting the world of angels ‹...› he found a completely suitable color scheme, tender and joyful, consisting of light blue paint, jubilant red, blond, glowing like copper, and finally, gold, dousing the celestials with a radiant shine ” (R. Muter, History of painting, part I. Per. with him. edited by K. Balmont, St. Petersburg, 1901, p. 44)
55 Wed: “I remember how in the first issue ‹...› Hyperborea(1912) Sergei Gorodetsky was indignant at N. Gumilyov for his unexpected and eccentric love for the humble art of Fra Beato Angelico for an acmeist. ‹...› No, you are wrong, you who are hungry for revelation! / Don’t expect Adam to appear from Beato.‹...› Acmeist, “hungry for revelation” and who loved “humble simplicity” Fra Angelico is higher than the terrible perfection of Buonarotti and the magical hops of da Vinci... Yes, this could seem like a whim. In fact, there was something more here” (B. Eikhenbaum, RM, 1916 No. 2, 3 pages, p. 17). Perhaps Gumilev looked closely at Fra Angelico as a candidate for the Acmeist pantheon in connection with the idea of ​​“balance”; cf.: “possessed a rare uniformity of creative power” (Robert Zaichik, The People and Art of the Italian Renaissance, St. Petersburg, 1906, p. 230).
56 Compare: “This old position of Maurice Grammont, to our surprise, is also found in newest researchers verse: “Nasal vowels predominate among the French mainly in erotic poetry. The pronunciation here conveys the nasal sound that occurs during salivation caused by longing for love (I. Fonagy)”“ (Jiri Levy, The art of translation, Moscow, 1974, p. 325).
57 Lef, 1923, No. 1, p. 144.
58 See verse. Gumilyov “The sacred ones float and the nights melt...” (end of 1914)
59 L. Reisner, review of “Gondla” ( Chronicle, 1917, No. 5-6, p. 364). The author of the review is like a prototype main character, and the pseudonym “Lera-Laik” phonologically encrypts the name Larisa (not without memories of Pushkin’s Laisas).
60 Sagittarius, 1, Petersburg, 1915, p. 58.
61 Mandelstam’s formula may be related to the ideas of V.V. Rozanova (“except for consonants, there is nothing in the Holy Scriptures!”).
65 Vladimir Gippius, Human face. Poem, Petrograd-Berlin, 1922, p. 189. One can see here (“fully calculated”) an attack on Gumilyov, who wrote about Vl. Gippius Return: “It seems that the poet is most captivated by the play of vowels ‹...› Four ‘i’ in a row in two lines ‹...› unpleasant for the ear” ( IV, 310-11).
66 K.D. Balmont, Poetry is like magic, 1915, pp. 57-58. It is noteworthy that B. Eikhenbaum, in his review of this book, brings together the aspirations of the symbolists and futurists: “If the sound-letter itself, taken separately, is a “guessing,” then words are not needed, because then they are simple accumulations of these sounds that can live separately. Then words can and should be composed mechanically, combining individual sounds - outside the traditions of the language, outside its forms. One more step - and the sound will be superfluous, and the “guessing” will be a letter or punctuation mark” ( RM 1916, No. 3, 4 pages, p. 2). The last phrase hints at Khlebnikov’s reading on January 10, 1914 in the Poets’ Workshop, which Eikhenbaum witnessed, which he probably told Yu.N. Tynyanov (“The Problem of Poetic Language”, note 21).
67 See: I. Postupalsky, “On the question of scientific poetry” ( Print and revolution, 1929, No. 2-3). Wed. G. Arelsky’s late declaration “On the problems of the poetry of the future”: “Acmeism, which must be understood exclusively as a transitional stage from symbolism to scientism”, “Science gives us the opportunity to get an idea of ​​​​the conditions of life on the planets, and scientific poetry should paint pictures of this life ‹ ...›” ( Herald of knowledge, 1930, No. 2, p. 54).
68 In a note to Lev Gornung: “He wanted to be only the “conscience” of poetry. He is a judgment on poetry, and not poetry itself ‹...›” To paraphrase Mandelstam’s famous confession, we can say that in his dying poem Gumilyov “speaks for everyone with such force ‹...›”
69 Compare: “stars, the meaning and truth of which is that they are unattainable” ( IV, 304). Wed. “inaccessible, alien stars” in the finale of “Starry Horror,” written shortly before “Venus.”
70 Wed. correction by prof. I. Shklovsky. To the possible parody - cf.: “Balmont, for the sake of rhyme, carefreely calls the stars planets” (Prof. P. Bicilli, Sketches about Russian poetry, Prague, 1926, p. 78).
71 See, for example, the poems of P. Shirokov: “And we wish for better accomplishments / Then what is now an aeroplane,” as well as the northerner’s “Blériot couch,” the aeroplane poems of K. Olympov, the stylization of egofuturism by Nelly-Bryusov: “If what else I like, / This is a free airplane. / It would be nice, like him, to head / To the infinity of the blue countries,” etc. In July 1910, Gumilyov wrote to Bryusov: “I believe, moreover, I feel that the airplane is beautiful, Russo-Japanese War tragic, the city is majestic and terrible, but for me it is too connected with newspapers, and my hands are too weak to tear it all away from everyday life for art.” Simultaneously with “On Venus,” Gumilyov sketched the poem “Airplane”:
Poetics 78 Wed. about the same arch by B. Livshits (“Palace Square”): Hooves in the air, and the vault / Crimson larynx. The convergence of architectural and landscape “gaping” (gap, truancy) with articulation (non-closure of lips) is found in a number of Mandelstam’s texts.
79 Let us venture the assumption that the initial gaping in the word aonides determines the nature of the vocalization attributed to the Muses - a predominantly vocalized “sob” (with a possible, however, subtext - Baratynsky’s poem “When your voice, oh poet...”: And over the silent Aonida / Sobbing, your ashes will honor), just like the character of the beginning of the word ‘airplane’, the pronunciation of which was discussed in the 10s (Prince Sergei Volkonsky, Expressive word, St. Petersburg, 1913, pp. 46, 49) partly determined the predilection for vowels on Venus (cf. V.A. Nikonov’s assumption about the connection of the name Aelita in A.N. Tolstoy with aero - Poetics and stylistics of Russian literature. In memory of academician V.V. Vinogradova, Leningrad, 1971, p. 416). Wed. V Glossololia A. Bely (Berlin, 1922, p. 46): “Actually, the pre-consonantal stage of sound is “a-e-i”: - “Aei” - forever" Excerpts from this “poem about sound” were published in the almanac The Dragon(Petrograd, 1921) and therefore known to Gumilev, - for example: “In ancient, ancient Aeria, in Aer, we, sound people, once lived” ( The Dragon, page 64).
80 See about this: Kiril Taranovsky, Essays on Mandel"stam, Harvard University Press, 1976, p. 46.

On the distant star Venus
The sun is fiery and golden,
On Venus, ah, on Venus
The trees have blue leaves.

There are free ringing waters everywhere,
Rivers, geysers, waterfalls
They sing the song of freedom at noon,
At night they glow like lamps.

On Venus, ah, on Venus
There are no offensive or powerful words,
Angels on Venus say
A language made up of only vowels.

If they say “ea” and “ai” -
This is a joyful promise
“Uo”, “ao” - about ancient paradise
Golden memory.

On Venus, ah, on Venus
There is no tart and stuffy death,
If they die on Venus -
Turns into air steam.

And golden smokes wander
In the blue, blue evening bushes,
Or, like joyful pilgrims,
They visit those still living.

***
Sixth Sense

The wine we love is wonderful
And the good bread that goes into the oven for us,
And the woman to whom it was given,
Having first been exhausted, we can enjoy.

But what should we do with the pink dawn?
Above the cooling skies
Where is the silence and unearthly peace,
What should we do with immortal poems?

Neither eat, nor drink, nor kiss -
The moment flies uncontrollably
And we wring our hands, but again
Everyone is condemned to go by, by.

Like a boy, forgetting his games,
Sometimes he watches the girls' bathing,
And, knowing nothing about love,
Still tormented by a mysterious desire,

As once in the overgrown horsetails
Roared from the consciousness of powerlessness
The creature is slippery, sensing on the shoulders
Wings that have not yet appeared,

So, century after century - how soon, Lord? -
Under the scalpel of nature and art,
Our spirit screams, our flesh faints,
Giving birth to an organ for the sixth sense.

***
About you

About you, about you, about you,
Nothing, nothing about me!
In human, dark fate
You are a winged call to the heights.

Your noble heart -
Like a coat of arms of bygone times.
Being is sanctified by them
All earthly, all wingless tribes.

If the stars are clear and proud,
They will turn away from our land,
Yee has two best stars:
These are your brave eyes.

And when the golden seraph
The trumpet will sound that the time has come,
We will then raise before him,
As protection, your white scarf.

The sound will freeze in the trembling pipe,
Seraphim will disappear in the heights...

About you, about you, about you,
Nothing, nothing about me!

***
There are many people who fall in love

There are many people who, having fallen in love,
The wise ones build houses for themselves,
Near their blessed fields.
Playful children wander after the herd.

And for others - tough love,
Bitter answers and questions,
Mixed with bile, their blood screams,
Their ears are stung by the vicious ringing of a wasp.

And others love the way they sing,
How they sing and marvelously triumph,
In a fabulous shelter hide;
And others love the way they dance.

How do you love, girl, answer,
What languor do you yearn for?
Can you really not burn?
A secret flame familiar to you?

If you could appear to me
By the blinding lightning of the Lord,
And from now on I'm on fire
Rising to heaven from the underworld?

Other articles in the literary diary:

• 30.04.2014. 12 days that can change everything!
• 29.04.2014. Anna Karenina threw herself under a train
• 26.04.2014. She lives in a world undivided into north and south...
• 25.04.2014. Happiness is dear, warm hands,
• 23.04.2014. I wanted the most ordinary thing - love.
• 16.04.2014. Arie Rothman. Song of Songs Shlomo.
• 15.04.2014. Remember the feelings, forget the words.
• 13.04.2014. For how many years love has been sleeping in me.
• 10.04.2014. On the distant star Venus
• 07.04.2014. You are always mysterious and new Anna Akhmatova
• 06.04.2014. 15 tips for female writers from Astrid Lindgren
• 03.04.2014. John Donne good morning
• 02.04.2014. Slowly a snail crawls along the slope of Mount Fuji.

The daily audience of the portal Stikhi.ru is about 200 thousand visitors, who in total view more than two million pages according to the traffic counter, which is located to the right of this text. Each column contains two numbers: the number of views and the number of visitors.