Authors: Andrei Bitov
There is special beauty, impossible to translate, in the ties between this book and the twentieth-century Russian poets—Blok, Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Zabolotsky, Kuzmin, Pasternak, Brodsky. The Western reader will hear in their names a litany of persecution and exile, but what must also be remembered is that these people salvage the human spirit from the flames of their century. Many of them knew each other, knew the Caucasus, translated from the Georgian: their work spans the Soviet era. Like the invisible beings poised silently in Bitov’s mountain forest, they are a living presence in the novel.
In its deepest structure, this “pilgrimage novel” is a drama of salvation—a battle between good and evil for possession of the hero’s soul, and for the soul of his nation. The hero’s journey is not done: it is the eternal struggle upward, toward God. But it takes place in time, our time, and its end point in this novel is an unforgettable moment of hope in our history.
The notes that follow [these have been converted to footnotes for ebook] should be consulted only if the reader feels need of further information in order to gauge Bitov’s irony. I have tried to provide relevant details that might be part of a Russian’s general background of awareness. Since Bitov delights in what he calls “rhymes”—seemingly accidental correspondences that give added meaning to life—I have also included a few “rhymes” from my own recollections of the century and its literature. The reader will undoubtedly find many more.
For advice and encouragement in the preparation of this translation I sincerely thank Rosemarie Tietze, the author’s German translator; Professor Michael Connolly of Boston College: Irina Ryumshina, Vladimir Gurin, Boris Hoffman, Rima Zolina, and all the very kind friends who commented on my manuscript.
{1}
When Bitov revised
Birds
in 1993, he “censored” his own opening and closing remarks by substituting symbolic rows of dots, as poets from Pushkin to Akhmatova have sometimes done when lines were cut by official censors.
Bitov also eliminated some of the ecological argument, reshaped the text typographically in a way that suggests his hero’s tendency to intellectualize, and inserted mention of East Prussia and 1968.
{2}
In Mikhail Lermontov’s “The Demon” (1841), the stars sail in the air-ocean, indifferent to earthly passion. The demon of the poem is a fallen angel trying to seduce a Georgian maiden. He pursues her to a convent, but she dies in his embrace, and when he tries to claim her soul the angels bear her away.
{3}
From Alexander Pushkin’s
Journey to Arzrum
(1835). Never allowed to travel abroad, Pushkin unofficially accompanied the Russian army to Armenia, crossed the river into Turkey, and was chagrined to find himself “still in Russia.”
{4}
From an untitled poem by Evgeny Baratynsky (1840). He goes on to say that for the “priest of the word,” thought is a naked sword dividing him from the life of the senses.
{5}
Ivan Krylov, much-loved fabulist (1769—1844).
{6}
From Nikolai Zabolotsky’s poem “A Stroll” (1929), which continues: “An equal suffering is their invisible lot
…
All of nature smiled, like a tall prison
…
And all of nature laughs, dying every second.”
{7}
From Lermontov’s famous lyric “The Sail” (1832).
{8}
The author notes that this is from the poetry of Galaktion Tabidze, a well-known Georgian writer (1892—1959).
{9}
From Maxim Gorky’s “Song of the Stormy Petrel” (1901), a romantic allegory urging revolution.
{10}
Phrases from Soviet songs.
{11}
In
A Captive of the Caucasus,
Bitov writes of Amsterdam as “a city whose name, to us, means Peter the Great.”
{12}
That is, an unbaptized convert, still receiving training in Christian doctrine. In the Russian Orthodox Church, catechumens are “strangers” who may listen to the sermon but must leave before the sacraments.
{13}
The epigraph is taken from the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 66. In Marvin Meyer’s translation (Harper San Francisco, 1992), it reads: “Jesus said, ‘Show me the stone that the builders rejected: That is the cornerstone.’
”
The Gospel of Thomas, although cited by some of the early church fathers, was lost until 1945, when a Coptic version came to light in Egypt. It is a collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, with many parallels to the canonical four gospels. It includes no promise of a second coming, however; in this gospel, Jesus teaches that the kingdom is to be found here, around us and within us, and counsels us to “Be passersby.” The author of the gospel identifies himself as the Apostle Thomas, called Didymus (“The Twin”). Some Christians have believed him to be literally the twin brother of Jesus, but modern scholars generally interpret the name as a metaphor meaning that each person should strive to be as a twin to Jesus.
{14}
Peter’s cabin has been moved from Archangel to Kolomenskoe, a former estate of the Grand Princes of Moscow, overlooking the Moscow River. The dominant feature of the estate is a tall church built in 1532 to celebrate the birth of Ivan IV (the Terrible). There is also a Church of the Beheading of John the Baptist.
{15}
All of these Russian artists [Shishkin, Ayvazovsky, Levitan, Vasiliev] had ties to the late-nineteenth-century group called the “Wanderers.” Shishkin is best known for his paintings of the forest, Ayvazovsky for his seascapes, Levitan and Vasiliev for their emotional landscapes. Repin painted a variety of subjects; one of his historical canvases,
The Zaporozhye Cossacks Write a Letter to the Turkish Sultan,
shows the men gleefully defiant.
{16}
From Pushkin’s play
Mozart and Salieri
(1830). Apropos of rumors that the playwright Beaumarchais had poisoned two wives, Mozart remarks: “But he’s a genius, like you and me. Genius and villainy are two things incompatible. Isn’t that true?” At this point, Salieri drops poison into Mozart’s glass.
{17}
One of Shishkin’s best-loved paintings (
Morning in the Pine Forest
, 1889) includes some bear cubs. The painting is reproduced on the wrapper of a popular Russian candy.
{18}
Ayvazovsky and Repin collaborated on a painting in which Pushkin is shown gesturing with his top hat as he stands on some jagged rocks, dangerously close to the pounding surf. The painting’s title is taken from Pushkin’s poem “To the Sea” (1824).
{19}
From works of Maxim Gorky, founder of Socialist Realism. The “Man with a capital letter” was Lenin.
{20}
Danko, the hero of Gorky’s “Old Woman Izergil,” rips his flaming heart from his breast and uses it as a torch to lead his people through a dark forest.
{21}
From Anna Akhmatova’s “Seaside Sonnet” (1958).
{22}
“Simyon” is not a standard Russian name. The spelling suggests the pronunciation of the name Simeon, a biblical form of Simon (Semyon).
{23}
The ninth-century Byzantine missionaries who created the first Slavonic alphabet (“Cyrillic”) and translated the Bible.
{24}
From an “urban ballad” sung by the author’s friend S. G. Saltykov.
{25}
The Emperor Paul (Pavel Petrovich, great-grandson of Peter the Great) had a quarrelsome disposition and a snub nose. He was assassinated with the complicity of his son in 1801.
Mentioned by Dante (
Inferno,
Canto II), and perhaps also relevant here in this anti-world, is St. Paul’s experience of visiting paradise (II Corinthians 12:2—4): “
…
Whether in the body, or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knoweth.”
{26}
Adapted from Lermontov’s long moral poem
Sashka
(1839).
{27}
In
Dead Souls
(1842), Mizhuev always protests against, but then submits to his brother-in-law, the braggart Nozdrev. (The name Nozdrev derives from the Russian for “nostril”—the hero is following his own nose, so to speak.)
{28}
Anniversary of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact of 1939, which precipitated the Soviet takeover of the Baltic countries and led directly to World War II. The fiftieth anniversary, in 1989, was the occasion for a protest demonstration in which two million people formed a human chain across Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, seeking independence from the USSR.
{29}
Popular in the Caucasus,
chacha
is a strong homemade liquor distilled from grape pressings.
{30}
Alexander Blok, in “Free Thoughts” (1907). Blok died in 1921, a victim of hunger and disease in the aftermath of the Civil War. His ambiguous poem “The Twelve” shows marauding Red Guardsmen as apostles of the Revolution.
{31}
Senyok is a familiar diminutive of the name Semyon. The slang word translated here as “drifter” originally referred to a seaman who had lost his berth on a ship. The word is now broadly applied to any vagrant alcoholic.
{32}
From Lermontov’s poem “Homeland” (1841), in which he professes to love Russia
not
for its “glory bought with blood,” but for its landscape and the homely details of the countryside.
{33}
The hero of Dostoevsky’s novel
The Idiot
(1868).
{34}
The unfulfilled dream of Ostap Bender, the great schemer of Ilf and Petrov’s satire
The Golden Calf
(1931), was to abscond to Rio de Janeiro with his suitcase full of money and walk down the street wearing white pants like the mulattos.
{35}
The alcoholic narrator of Venedict Erofeev’s painfully comic novel
Moscow to the End of the Line
(1977) maintains that “Privy Councillor Goethe” secretly wanted to drink but instead forced Faust and Mephistopheles to drink on his behalf.
{36}
Among the many other structures designed by A. V. Shchusev (1873 – 1949) was Lenin’s mausoleum.
{37}
Lavrenty Beria (1899—1953) played a leading role in Stalin’s purges as head of the Soviet secret police.
{38}
That is, designated to receive a much smaller supply of food and consumer goods than the first-category cities, Moscow and Leningrad. (Voronezh is the provincial capital to which the poet Osip Mandelstam was exiled in the mid-1930s.)
{39}
Anton Chekhov’s familiar story (1899) of ill-starred, middle-aged love.
{40}
From Joseph Brodsky’s “Letters to a Roman Friend” (1972).
{41}
Soviet “Armenian jokes” were often cast in the form of reports from Radio Erevan. The Chukchi, a frequent target of ethnic humor, are a remote Arctic people.
{42}
From “To the Detractors of Russia” (1831), Pushkin’s patriotic reply to Frenchmen who were siding with Polish agitators against the tsar. You hate us, he says, because we toppled your idol Napoleon, but the Russian land—from Finland to Colchis (Abkhazia)—will rise up united against anyone who interferes in our family quarrel.
{43}
Ermak Timofeev (d. 1585) was the Cossack ataman who began Russia’s conquest of Siberia. The
Drang nach Osten
was the “drive to the east” of the medieval Teutonic Knights.
{44}
A novel by Victor Hugo (1866), in which a fisherman trying to raise a sunken ship battles a giant octopus.
{45}
From a Russian folk song. But the motif also brings to mind the beautiful red-shirted youth who is the hero’s rival in Mikhail Kuzmin’s novella
Kings
(1906).
{46}
From “The Cherry,” a bawdy poem classified among the
dubia
of the youthful Pushkin.
{47}
The reference is to a banquet in Stalin’s honor, as recounted by Abkhazian writer Fazil Iskander in his novel
Sandro of Chegem
(1973).
{48}
The prince of Abkhazia sought and received Russian protection in 1810, but the Muslim tribesmen of the highlands resisted infidel rule for the rest of the century. Deluded by promises of religious toleration, thousands emigrated to Turkey.
{49}
This town in the Russian Republic, just over the northern border of Abkhazia, was a center of Partisan resistance against the German Occupation during World War II.
{50}
During the calamitous flood in Pushkin’s “The Bronze Horseman,” Peter the Great
(“He”)
is metaphorically linked with an angry Triton destroying the people.