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Flight of the Angels: The Poetry of Lev Loseff

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2017

Gerald S. Smith
Gerald S. Smith*
Affiliation:
Oxford University
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Extract

Among the poets of the Third Emigration are a few who were officially recognized and published in the Soviet Union. The vast majority of them, though, hardly published anything in that country; sometimes because they were denied access and more often because they did not seek publication in the Soviet Union, preferring samizdat or publication abroad. Lev Loseff is a unique figure who falls into neither of these categories. He was a professional journalist and writer for children until he left the Soviet Union in 1976, but, although he was a popular figure in Leningrad's unofficial literary life, he was not known to be a poet. In fact, Loseff began as a serious poet in 1974 at an age—thirty-seven—that by any standards is very late and by Russian standards is something like the beginning of the afterlife: It is the age at which Pushkin was killed.

Type
Articles
Information
Slavic Review , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , Spring 1988 , pp. 76 - 88
Copyright
Copyright © Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies. 1988

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References

I am grateful to Lev Loseff for his comments on this article; I take full responsibility for all statements of fact and opinion and also for translations of Loseff's poetry, none of which are to be taken as authorized. Statements in this article pertaining to the lyric hero of Loseff's poetry should in no wise be taken to reflect upon the character and habits of Loseff himself.

1. So far we have no general studies of Third Emigration poetry; an overview is contained in Smith, G. S., “Russian Poetry outside Russia since 1970: A Survey,” in Soviet and Emigre Literature, A. B. McMillin, ed. (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, in press)Google Scholar; this collection will contain papers delivered at the III World Congress for Soviet and East European Studies). Valuable discussion of Third Emigration writing, including specific comment on certain individual poets, is to be found in OlgaMatich with Heim, Michael, eds., The Third Wave: Russian Literature in Emigration (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984)Google Scholar; Matich, Olga, ed., Soviet and East European Literature in Exile (Los Angeles: UCLA Slavica, 1984 Google Scholar; the entire issue of Humanities in Society 7 (Summer-Fall, 1984); and Loseff, Lev, “Emigre Literature, Russian: Third Wave, 1970, ” in The Modern Encyclopedia of Russian and Soviet Literature, Weber, Harry, ed. (Gulf Breeze, Fla.: Academic International, 1982) 6: 148–151 Google Scholar.

2. The major publications are as follows: Ekho 4 (1979): 52–65; Kontinent 24 (1980): 89–98; Chasfrechi 1 (1980): 77–83; Russica 81 (New York, 1982): 72–78; Kontinent 34 (1982): 95–106; Kontinent 38 (1983): 76–82; Tret'ia volna 15 (1983): 16–17; Strelets 3 (1984): 12–13; Kontinent 44 (1985): 110–120; 2245 (1985): 3–8; Strelets 1 (1986): 6–7.

3. Losev, Lev, Chudesnyi desant (Tenafly, N.J.: Ermitazh, 1985)Google Scholar. References to this book will begiven as page numbers within the text of this article. The collection was reviewed by A. Kopeikin, Kontinent 46 (1985): 381–384; Aleksei Tatarinov, Russkaia mysl', 3595, 15 November 1985, p. 10; and Boris Paramonov, Grani 140 (1986): 149–160. An important statement by Joseph Brodskii wasappended to the poems in Ekho 4 (1979): 65–66. The latter publication includes eleven poems not collected in Chudesnyi desant. Brodskii's statement, with a rejoinder by Konstantin Kuz'minskii, is reprinted along with a selection of Loseff's poems in Kuz'minskii, K. K. and Kovalev, G., eds., The Blue Lagoon Anthology of Modem Russian Poetry, (Newtonville, Mass., 1986) 2B: 342–363 Google Scholar.

4. Loseff gives an account of his friendship with Eremin, Kulle, Ufliand, and Vinogradov during their student years at Leningrad University in his essay “Tulupy my,” in Kuz'minskii and Kovalev, eds. Blue Lagoon Anthology (1980) 1: 141–149.

5. Loseff has reported on his experiences as a working Soviet writer in a number of authoritativeessays and reviews, the most important ones of which are collected in his Zakrytyi raspredelitel’ (AnnArbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1984). The poem ” … v ‘Kostre’ rabotal. V etom tusklom meste” (p. 54) givesa graphic account of his job on the Leningrad children's magazine Koster.

6. The metrical typology of 140 lyrics published by Loseff up to the beginning of 1986 is as follows: iambic, 42.8 percent; trochaic, 5.7 percent; ternary, 31.4 percent; dol'nik, 13.6 percent; others, 6.4 percent; the proportion for the ternary meters is extraordinarily high. The most prominent individual measures are iambic pentameter, 36 poems; anapaestic trimeter, 16; iambic tetrameter, 10;amphibrachic trimeter, 8; mixed iambics and 4-ictus dol'nik, 6 each; and 3-ictus dol'nik, 5. Of the 140poems 65 are in quatrains of various kinds, and the unusually high proportion of 15 are in six-linestanzas. All but three of the poems use rhyme. For a contextual description of the current metrical repertoire of Russian poetry outside Russia see Smith, G. S., “The Metrical Repertoire of ShorterPoems by Russian Emigres, 1971–80,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 27, no. 4 (1985): 385–399.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7. For example, “Klassicheskoe” (p. 97), in which the name of the Aegean Sea (in Russian, Egeiskoe more) is derived from the exclamation “Ege!” There are also the shorter items from the “Vypiski iz russkoi poezii” sequence (pp. 82–86) that are reminiscent of clerihews.

8. Loseff's real surname is Lifshits; his pseudonym was invented for him by his father, a wellknownwriter for children. In one poem Loseff makes a typically sardonic, self-deflating pun on hisreal name: “Lif popravliaet lenivo rybachka./Shit-s na peske ostavliaet sobachka” (p. 28).

9. 22, 45 (1985): 3; reprinted, Strelets, 1 (1986): 6. The phrase “slyshal zvon” plays on the saying “slyshal zvon, da ne znaet, gde on,” which is used of a person who argues from false assumptions.

10. “Tulupy my,” p. 143. The statement is undercut by the fact that its opening phrase parodiesMaksim Gor'kii's famous declaration “Vsem khoroshim vo mne ia obiazan knige. “

11. Loseff is professor of Russian literature at Dartmouth College; he has published severalacademic studies of Russian literature, including On the Beneficence of Censorship: Aesopian Languagein Modern Russian Literature (Munich, 1984); he is the editor of Poetika Brodskogo (Tenafly, N.J.: Ermitazh, 1986). Loseff has contributed several substantial articles to The Modem Encyclopedia ofRussian and Soviet Literature, including: “Children's Literature, Russian” (1981) 4: 71–87, and “EmigreLiterature, Russian: Third Wave. “

12. For the Italian tutor, see Baratynskii, E. A., “Diad'ke-ital'iantsu,” Polnoe sobranie stikhotvorenii (Leningrad, 1957), pp. 201–204 Google Scholar; for Pnin see Nabokov, Vladimir, Pnin (New York: Putnam, 1953 Google Scholar. Tolstoi's character Karl Ivanych is the hero of a separate poem, Stikhi o romane, II ( “Ianeizmennyi Karl Ivanych “) (pp. 90–91), Loseff's most extended comment on his situation as an emigreteacher. This poem contains the couplet “O ia priv'iu germanskii genii/k stvolam rossiiskikh sikhrastenii,” a sardonic echo of Khodasevich's famous claim: “I kazhdyi stikh gonia skvoz’ prozu/Vypikhivaiakazhduiu stroku, /Privil-taki klassicheskuiu rozu/K sovetskomu dichku.” See Khodasevich, Vladislav, Sobranie sochinenii, I, Stikhotvoreniia (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1983), p. 141 Google Scholar.

13. On “dry-eyed” as against “wet-eyed” emigre Russian poets, see G. S. Smith, “Russian Poetry Outside Russia since 1970. “

14. The same version of the poem appears in Kontinent 38 (1983): 78–79; a truncated version ofit was published in Chast’ rechi, p. 83, and Kontinent 24 (1980): 98.

15. The poem appears without a title in Chudesnyi desant, p. 63; it was earlier published twice with the title “Natiurmort “; see Kontinent 41 (1984): 96, and Strelets 10 (1984): 8.

16. “Pushkinskie mesta” (p. 94) was originally published as “Pskovshchina” Kontinent 38 (1983): 80–81.

17. Strelets 1 (1986): 6.

18. “Spoi eshche, Aleksandr Pokhmelych” (p. 38); “Nu, slava Bogu, est’ chto pit’ i est',” Ekho 4 (1979): 63.

19. “Tevtonskie voinstvennye gongi,” Ekho 4 (1979): 64.

20. The title PBG is the contemporary abbreviation for “St. Petersburg” and also the initialletters of the title of Anna Akhmatova's Poem without a Hero. Loseff has published a scholarly essayon the latter poem: “Who's the Hero of the Poem without One?” Essays in Poetics 11, no. 2 (1986): 91–104.

21. “Maiakovskomu, I. Rasskaz kompozitora I. Koizerova o vselenii v novuiu kvartiru,” Strelets1 (1986): 7.

22. The most recent discussion of this tradition is Monas, Sidney, “Unreal City: St. Petersburgand Russian Culture,” in Brostrom, Kenneth B., ed., Russian Literature and American Critics: InHonor of Denting B. Brown (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 1986), pp. 381–391.Google Scholar

23. “Serdtsu slyshitsia privet,” Kontinent 44 (1985): 110–111.

24. The poem parodies Maiakovskii's “Rasskaz liteishchika Ivana Kozyreva o vselenii v novuiukvartiru” (1928).

25. Another masterpiece of skaz, but without an element of parody, is “Pis'mo na rodinu “ (p. 115), in which a member of the Third Emigration not from the intelligentsia reports on his new found prosperity in the United States; within it Loseff s lyric hero permits himself a blunt declarationthat he would perhaps not utter in his first-person role: “A, vse zhe, svoboda luchshe uiuta, /v rabotnikakhluchshe, chem v rabakh. “

26. “Brat'ia K*,” Kontinent 44 (1985): 111–112.

27. “Petrenko vskochil v polovine vos'mogo,” Ekho 4 (1979): 64–65.

28. “Maiakovskomu. 2. Stikhi o molodetskom pastyre,” Strelets 1 (1986): 7.

29. Ibid. The poem echoes Maiakovskii's “Parizhanka” (1929).

30. On Khodasevich, see most recently Bethea, David, Khodasevich: His Life and Art (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

31. Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii 1: 141–142.

32. “Skvoz’ oblaka fabrichnoi gari,” ibid., p. 203.

33. On the poetry of Georgii Ivanov, see Vladimir Markov, “C/eorgy Ivanov: Nihilist as Light-Bearer,” in Karlinsky, Simon and Appel, Alfred Jr., eds., The Bitter Air of Exile: Russian Writers in theWest, 1922–1972 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp. 139–163 Google Scholar; the -nicle contains anextended comparison between the work of Ivanov and that of Khodasevich.

34. “M. V. Abel'manu,” Izbrannye stikhi (Paris, 1980), p. 176.

35. “Khorosho, chto net Tsaria,” ibid., p. 25.

36. Compare the information given in note 6, with the details of Georgii Ivanov's versificationin Smith, G. S., “The Metrical Repertoire of Russian Emigre Poetry, 1941–1970,” The Slavonic and East European Review 63, no. 2 (1985): 210–227.Google Scholar