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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 January 2017
“One of Nekrasov's very greatest works, the long poem Moroz, Krasnyi Nos, which by virtue of its profound penetration into the life of the peasant and its powerful pictorial and lyrical style transcends almost everything which has been written about the Russian countryside, has yet to be studied [izucheno] in our country.” So wrote Kornei Chukovskii a quarter of a century ago.
The critic's complaint was surely exaggerated. After all, one of the century's most eminent Nekrasov scholars, Vladislav E. Evgen'ev-Maksimov, had given the poem his serious and sustained attention, and lesser investigators have in the last fifty years significantly increased our understanding of its metrical, folkloric, and polemical aspects. These critical forays notwithstanding, in a sense Chukovskii's statement holds true to this day. For if it is agreed that what we expect most from criticism is an expanded understanding of what a literary work is about; if, in other words, it is the critic as exegete whom we value most highly (there are of course those who would dispute the premise), then Moroz, Krasnyi Nos has indeed been neglected. For, more than 120 years after its publication a serious hermaneutic study of this famous poem is still wanting.
1. Chukovskii, Kornei I., Masterstvo Nekrasova (Moscow, 1971), p. 375 Google Scholar. Chukovskii made thisstatement in the first edition (1952) of his study, and it remained unchanged in all subsequent editions.One can only assume therefore that he continued to hold this opinion until his death in 1969.
2. V Evgen'ev-Maksimov [Vladislav E. Maksimov], Zhizri i deiatel'nost N. A. Nekrasova (3 vols.; Moscow and Leningrad, 1952) 3:322–51; idem, Tvorcheskiiput’ N. A. Nekrasova (Moscow,1953), pp. 148–58. A detailed analysis of the poem may also be found in Charles Corbet's Nekrasov, l'homme et le poète (Paris, 1948), pp. 321–32.
3. Most notably, Andreev, N. P., “Fol'klor v poezii Nekrasova,” Literatumaia ucheba 7 (1936):60–85 Google Scholar; Chistov, K. V., “N. A. Nekrasov i narodnoe tvorchestvo,” Nekrasovskii sbornik 1 (1951): 102–16Google Scholar; Kolosova, T. S., “Traditsii narodnoi skazki v poeme Nekrasova‘Moroz, Krasnyi Nos,’ “Nekrasovskii sbornik 2 (1956): 197–210 Google Scholar; Evnin, E E., “O poeme‘Moroz, Krasnyi Nos,’ “Nekrasovskii sbornik 3 (1960): 59–85 Google Scholar; Kolesnitskaia, I. M., “Iz tvorcheskoi istorii poemy N. A. Nekrasova‘Moroz,Krasnyi Nos,’ “Nekrasovskii sbornik 3 (1960): 326–39.Google Scholar
4. This remark, which I have slightly edited for the sake of concision, was made by Nekrasovat a public reading of the work in 1864. It was recorded by the novelist Petr D. Boborykin (Biblioteka dlia chtenia 2 [1864], p. 68) and quoted by Kolesnitskaia, “Iz tvorcheskoi istorii poemy N. A. Nekrasova,” p. 208. Boborykin, it should be noted, interpreted the remarks as an attempt by the poetto camouflage the political tendentiousness of his work at a time—Nikolai G. Chernyshevskii hadrecently been arrested, The Contemporary was soon to be closed by government edict—when socialprotest could invite severe reprisal on the part of the regime.
5. The most systematic chronological reconstruction of the work that I know may be found inthe Bradda students’ edition of the poem edited by V. E. J. Holttum (Letchworth, U.K., 1963),pp. 13–14.
6. Because the events in the poem are confined to a single twenty-four hour period, becausein the first part the point of view shifts repeatedly, and because in the second a device akin to thestream of consciousness technique (Dar'ia's mental fantasies) is used Moroz, Krasnyi Nos could beseen as anticipating in certain significant respects James Joyce's Bloomsday in Ulysses.
7. Surveys of the critical reception of Moroz, Krasnyi Nos may be found in Evgen'ev-Maksimov,Zhizn’ i deiatel nost, 3:346–51; Nekrasov, N. A., Polnoe sobranie sochinenii ipisem, ed. Evgen'ev-Maksimov, Vladimir E., Egolin, A. M., and Chukovskii, K. I. (12 vols.; Moscow and Leningrad, 1948–1953), 2:677–78Google Scholar; and Nekrasov, N.A., Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii v trekh tomakh, ed. Chukovskii, K. I.(3 vols.; Leningrad, 1967), 2:618–20Google Scholar. These accounts (none of them exhaustive) may besupplemented by Sbornik kriticheskikh statei o N. A. Nekrasove, ed. Vasilii A. Zelinskii (3 vols.;Moscow, 1886–1887), 1:68; 2:1–6; 3:86.
8. Skabichevskii, Aleksandr M., Istoriia noveishei russkoi literatury, 1848–1892 (St. Petersburg, 1900), p. 441.Google Scholar
9. Chukovskii, Masterstvo Nekrasova, pp. 375–77.
10. N. A. Nekrasov, Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 2:112. Because the portrait of the “majesticRussian woman” (IV) arises directly out of the description of Dar'ia, leads directly back into afurther description of her character (V), and tallies in its details with that description, critics have,rightly I believe, taken the generalized portrait to be in effect a portrait of Dar'ia herself.
11. Ibid., 2:123–24.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid., 2:125. These lines acquire additional force by producing in their metrical and syntacticalcontext the effect of what might be called a “clashing” enjambment. Specifically, in the sequence “My na nee liubovat'sia / Budem, zhelannyi ty moi. // Umer ne dozhil ty veku,” the happy ty of poem XIX functions like the pseudosubject of the tragic umer of the following poem, agreeingwith it in gender and number, and yet semantically clashing with it.
15. Ibid.
16. Ibid., 2:132–33.
17. Ibid., 2:115.
18. Ibid.
19. They are also, it must be pointed out, somewhat inconsistent with the image of Prokl as a successful provider and proud husband. Whatever hardships he may have faced in his life, nothingthe poet has related suggests that he would have been better off dead.
20. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 2:133.
21. Ibid., 2:134.
22. One may note that an ontological transformation seems to take place as Red Nosed Frostpatrols his domains. At the outset he appears to be the personification of winter drawn from thewell-known skazka, “Morozko” (Aleksandr N. Afanas'ev, Narodnye russkie skazki, ed. V. la. Propp(3 vols.; Moscow, 1957), 1:140–44) and is quite unrelated to the mental processes of the dyingheroine. As he draws close to Dar'ia, however, he seems—despite the poet's claim that she is now “without thoughts “—to enter into her mind and become part of her perception, however hallucinatory,of reality: “Vgliadis', moloditsa, smelee, / Kakov voevoda Moroz!” By the time we reachtheir dialogue (XXXII) there can be no doubt that he is part of her mental experience. The exactmoment when his objective, mythological role is supplanted by his subjective one is impossible to determine.
23. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 2:186–87. This passage, it will be noted, corresponds closelyto the dialogue between Marfushka and Morozko in the Afanas'ev version of “Morozko” (n. 22),which contains nine repetitions of the word teplo.
24. Ibid., 2:137.
25. See for instance Dobroliubov's defense of suicide in his review of Aleksandr N. Ostrovskii's Groza: Nikolai A. Dobroliubov, “Luch sveta v temnom tsarstve,” Sobranie sochinenii (9 vols.; Moscowand Leningrad, 1963), 6:289–363. I owe this insight to my Vassar College colleague, AlexisKlimoff.
26. Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii, 1:98–99.
27. Ibid., 1:95.
28. Ibid., 1:188–91.
29. Ibid., 2:59–65.
30. Ibid., 2:267–69.
31. Ibid., 2:112.
32. Ibid., 2:497.
33. Ibid., 2:498.