An Introducton to Nikolai Klyuev

Nikolai Klyuev, 1894-1937
The Past, the Present, and the Future – recovered,
mythologized, remade…
Nikolai Klyuev, 1884-1937
Nikolai Klyuev is
one of the most
interesting,
contradictory, and
complex figures of
the Modernist
period
Left – with his close
friend Nikolai
Arkhipov in Vytegra,
early 1920s; right,
around 1930
He was born and
brought up in the
area around the
little town of
Vytegra, not far
from the southern
end of Lake Onega,
in northern Russia
He was probably born and certainly baptized in the village of Koshtugi, on
the Rivers Kimreka and Megra,
in 1884
Koshtugi, 60 km from Vytegra
Koshtugi at the end of the
C20th
The village is now in
terminal decline. In
Klyuev’s day, it had about
1,000 residents; now that
number is around 200
The church where the poet was
probably baptized
Before the Communist period there were two active churches in the village; one was demolished in
the C20th, the other used as a club, then a barn; reconsecrated in the late Soviet period, it is rarely
used (there is no priest in the village), and near to collapse
Koshtugi, summer 2003
There is no record of the
location of Klyuev’s house
The village today has no running water, and
no sewage system. There is electricity. The
school closed several years ago.
The future poet and his
father
In the 1880s the Klyuev family
moved from Koshtugi to the village
of Zhelvachevo, where his father, a
former soldier and police constable,
worked in a government liquor store
Zhelvachevo is part of the larger village (selo) of Makachevo, north of Vytegra
Zhelvachevo, 2003
Two of the last three permanent residents of Zhelvachevo (note, on the right,
the traditional stove and ukhvat – long fork for moving pots in the stove)
The Klyuev family house was moved
in the Soviet period to the center of
Makachevo, where it served as a
school building. It then stood empty
for some years, but is now home to
the village library. Late in the Soviet
period, a memorial plaque was
installed on the building
Memorialization
Two plaques – one
from the Soviet period
(left), the other, postSoviet, installed on the
site where the family
house once stood
Almost nothing is left of Makachevo’s
churches or its churchyard, but a cross has
been installed on the approximate burial
site of the poet’s parents.
Vytegra
The poet lived in
Vytegra at times
during the 1910s
and the early
1920s
Klyuev country
Memorialization
Participants in the annual Klyuev symposium
held in Vytegra always visit the graveyard where
the poet’s parents were buried (note the new
cross, 2003). As with many aspects of literary
memorialization, note the strong cultic elements
here.
History and loss
Almost everything in the story of Klyuev
seems about loss
 The rural life that the poet mythologized
as it was disappearing seems now in
complete ruins
 The poet himself was “lost” in the purges
 Much of his work was inaccessible for
most of the C20th…

“Authentic” or “Invented”?
Authenticity – the “real Russia” is a key
issue
 Klyuev “dressed up” as a peasant, but was
he “dressing up as himself”
 And what about that “authentic self” –
archaist and homosexual, anti-urbanist
and fully-fledged modernist…?

Klyuev in his Leningrad apartment
(note the folk objects surrouning him,
note his dress); Klyuev and the young
artist Anatolii Yar-Kravchenko (the
love of his life); Klyuev and another
famous poet – Sergei Esenin
The house where the poet lived in Leningrad (a grand house,
formerly home to a princely family, in the centre of town). The
poet’s small apartment, furnished in peasant style, was at the back.
Klyuev – Paradoxical Poet
Poet of archaic culture and rural life
 After 1923, big-city dweller
 Fully-fledged Russian Modernist
 Homosexual
 Greeted the Bolshevik revolution
enthusiastically, soon inveighed against
it…

Klyuev locates himself in the Soviet epoch, 1921/2
The poet’s reaction to
historical events. Initially
positive about the Bol’shevik
coup, he soon became
disenchanted, as this poem
suggests
От иконы Бориса и Глеба,
От стригольничьего Шестокрыла
Моя песенная потреба,
Стихов валунная сила.
Кости мои от Маргарита,
Кровь от костра Аввакума.
Узорнее аксамита
Моя золотая дума:
Чтобы Русь как серьга повисла
В моем цареградском ухе...
Притекают отары-числа
К пастуху — дырявой разрухе.
И разруха пасет отары
Татарским лихим кнутом,
Оттого на Руси пожары
И заплакан родимый дом.
....
И желанна великая треба,
Чтоб во прахе бериллы и шелк
Пред иконой Бориса и Глеба
Окаянный поверг Святополк!
From the icon of Boris and Gleb
From the Strigol´nik Six Wings
Comes my song sacrifice,
The boulder power of my verse.
My bones are from Chrysostom’s Pearl,
My blood from Avvakum’s fire.
More elaborate than ancient velvet
Is my golden thought:
May old Russia hang like an ear-ring
In my Constantinopolitan ear…
Flocks of days gather round their
Shepherd — tattered destruction.
And destruction tends the herds
With a wild Tatar whip,
Hence old Russia burns
And the family home is mourned.
….
A great rite is needed,
That before the icon of Boris and Gleb
In ashes, beryls and silk
Be laid down by cursed Svyatopolk!
The concluding poem of one of his best collections, 1920
Apocalypse or renewal?
Поле усеянное костями.
Черепами с беззубой зевотой,
И над ним, гремящий маховиками,
Безыменный и безликий кто-то.
Кружусь вороном над страшным полем,
Узнаю чужих и милых скелеты,
И в железных тучах демонов с дрекольем,
Провожающих в тартар серные кареты.
Вот шестерня битюгов крылатых,
Запряженных в кузов, где Есенина поэмы.
Господи, ужели и в рязанских хатах
Променяли на манишку ржаные эдемы!
И нет Ярославны поплакать зигзицей,
Прекрасной Евпраксии низринуться с чадом...
Я – ворон, кружусь над великой гробницей,
Где челюсть осла с Менделеевым рядом.
Мои граи почитают за песни народа, -Он был в миллионах годин и столетий...
На камне могильном старуха свобода
Из саванов вяжет кромешные сети.
Над мертвою степью безликое что-то
Родило безумие, тьму, пустоту...
Глядь, в черепе утлом осиные соты,
И кости ветвятся, как верба в цвету.
Светила слезятся запястьем перловым,
Ручей норовит облозаться с лозой,
И Бог зеленеет побегом ветловым
Под новою твердью, над красной землей.
A field sown with bones,
With skulls in toothless grins,
And over it, rattling flywheels,
A nameless, faceless someone.
I circle like a crow above the fearful field,
I recognize the skeletons of strangers and friends,
And, in iron clouds, the demons with stakes,
Accompanying to Tartarus the sulphur chariots.
Here's a team of six winged cart-horses,
Harnessed to a cart containing Esenin's epics.
Lord, have they, even in the peasant huts of Ryazan',
Swapped their rye paradises for city shirt fronts!
There's no Yaroslavna to sing like a cuckoo,
Nor fair Evpraksiya to fall with her child...
A crow, I am circling above the great coffin,
Where donkey jaws lie beside Mendeleev.
My caws will be taken for songs of the people,
Existing for millions of years and of centuries...
The old woman freedom, sat on her grave stone,
Is knitting from shrouds her dark nets.
Above the dead steppe a faceless something
Gave birth to insanity, darkness, a void...
Look, wasp honeycombs are in the frail skull,
The bones are now sprouting like willows in flower.
The stars weep tears of pearl bracelets,
The stream is attempting to kiss the vine,
And God becomes verdant in rushing of willows
Beneath a new firmament, above a red land.
By the end of the 1920s, Klyuev was persona non grata in public life – labelled a “kulak poet” for
his mythologization of archaic Russian culture and peasant life, he was attacked in the press and
his work was not published. However, he continued to write and to give readings of his verse
In 1934 he was arrested and
convicted on two charges (anti-Soviet
activities and homosexuality – newly
outlawed). He was exiled to Siberia,
first to the settlement of Kolpahsevo,
Narym, and then to the city of Tomsk.
In the 1937 he was arrested in Tomsk,
interrogated, convicted, and shot. He
was buried in a mass grave, with
many other victims of Stalinist
repression.
Klyuev’s last poem, written in 1937, foretelling his death and
reasserting his cultural position.
Есть две страны; одна -- Больница,
Другая -- Кладбище, меж них
Печальных сосен вереница,
Угрюмых пихт и верб седых!
Блуждая пасмурной опушкой,
Я обронил свою клюку
И заунывною кукушкой
Стучусь в окно к гробовщику:
"Ку-ку! Откройте двери, люди!"
"Будь проклят, полуночный пес!
Кому ты в глиняном сосуде
Несешь зарю апрельских роз?!
Вот почему в кувшине розы,
И сам ты – мальчик в синем льне!..
Скрипят житейские обозы
В далекой бренной стороне.
There are two countries – one the Hospital,
The other – Cemetery, between them
Runs a row of sad fir trees,
Gloomy pines, and gray willows!
К ним нет возвратного проселка,
Там мрак, изгнание, Нарым.
Не бойся савана и волка, -За ними с лютней серафим!»
Wandering in the shadowy glade,
I dropped my walking stick
And like a dreary cuckoo
Knock at the gravedigger’s window:
«Приди, дитя мое, приди!» -Запела лютня неземная,
И сердце птичкой из груди
Перепорхнуло в кущи рая.
“Cuckoo! People, open up the door!”
“Be damned, midnight cur!
To whom are you carrying a clay bowl
With the dawn of April roses?!
Весна погибла, в космы сосен
И первой песенкой моей,
Вплетает вьюга седину..."
Где брачной чашею лилея,
Но, слыша скрежет ткацких кросен,
Была «Люблю тебя, Расея,
Тянусь к зловещему окну.
Страна грачиных озимей!»
И вижу: тетушка Могила
И ангел вторил: «Буди, буди!
Ткет желтый саван, и челнок,
Благословен родной овсень!
Мелькая птицей чернокрылой,
Его, как розаны в сосуде,
Рождает ткань, как мерность строк.
Блюдет Христос на Оный День!»
В вершинах пляска ветродуев,
Под хрип волчицыной трубы.
Читаю нити: "Н. А. Клюев,Певец олонецкой избы!"
Я умер! Господи, ужели?!
Но где же койка, добрый врач?
И слышу: «В розовом апреле
Оборван твой пердсмертный плач!
Spring has perished, and into the pines’ mane
The snow storm weaves gray hair…”
But, hearing the rattle of a weaver’s loom,
I lean towards the sinister window.
And see: old aunt Tomb
Weaving a yellow shroud, and the shuttle,
Flashing like a black-winged bird,
Gives birth to fabric, like the rhythm of verse.
In the heights above the winds dance
To the wheezing of the she-wolf chimney.
I read the words sewn in the shroud: “N. A. Klyuev,
The singer of the Olonian peasant house!”
I’ve died? Lord, surely not?!
But where’s the sick bed, good doctor?
And I hear, “In rosy April
Your last lamentation was cut off!
That’s why there are roses in the pitcher,
And you are a boy in blue flax!…
Life’s carts rattle by
In a distant, mortal land.
No way leads back to them,
There all is darkness, exile, Siberia.
Don’t’ fear the shroud and the wolf,
After them comes a seraph with a lute.”
“Come, my child, come!”
Sang the unearthly lute,
And my heart sprang like a bird
From my chest into the groves of heaven.
And my first song,
When the lily was a wedding chalice,
Was “I love you, simple Russia,
Country of rook-covered winter crops!”
And the angel answered, “Be it so, be it so!
Blessed is the native rite of spring!
It, like roses in the vessel,
Is watched by Christ for Judgment Day!”
In the 1980s a Klyuev Museum was created in Vytegra, where an
annual symposium on the poet also takes place
The museum displays objects that once belonged
to the poet, as well as modern items about him
His samovar, seen in the photograph
from the 1920s
Inscriptions in books
Михаилу Ручьеву с пожеланием
весны и малиновой юности
Н. Клюев 1923
To Mikhail Ruch’ev with best wishes for
spring and a raspberry youth
N. Klyuev 1923
Note the very ornamental hand, a
stylization in the manner of a premodern mss
The Annual Klyuev Symposium
Local Publications about the Poet – who
forms a link between the small provincial
town and “big culture”
In Tomsk Klyuev is also memorialized
now. Above is the plaque on the house
which he occupied for about a year. To
the left, the house where he was arrested.
It too had a plaque. Sadly this house was
demolished for a real estate development
in 2007.
1990s publications of Klyuev, when he
“returned home” in full. Note the
martyrological and/or iconographic
presentation of the poet in many publications.
Klyuev was and remains a much-disputed figure: for some, the
authentic voice of popular spirituality, for others, someone who
“made himself up” to suit the cultural climate
Attributed to the Symbolist poet
Aleksandr Blok:
“Christ among us”
From the memoirs of another Symbolist poet, Georgii
Ivanov
But Gorodetsky missed the only real poet of this genre [the “new-peasant poets”]. He read his manuscripts and did not pay any attention to them.
It was the “soul-less” Bryusov who discovered Klyuev.
Yet, on his arrival in Petersburg, Klyuev fell immediately under Gorodestsky’s influence and firmly acquired the manner of a pet travesty of the
peasantry [muzhichok-travesti].
“Well, Nikolai Vasil´evich [sic], how have you settled in Petersburg?”
“Thank the Lord, the Virgin continues to intercede for us sinners. I have found myself a little cell of a room, that is all we need. Come to see me,
my son, favor me with your presence. I live on Morskaya, round the corner...”
Once I did go to visit Klyuev. The cell turned out to be a room in the Hôtel de France, fully carpeted with a wide ottoman couch. Klyuev was
sitting on the couch, dressed up in a collar and tie, and reading Heine in the original.
“I can manage a bit of their infidel tongue [marakayu malost´ po-basurmanskomu]”, — he said in response to my astonished glance. “A little bit. But
there’s no soul in it. Our nightingales have better voices, oh, much better...”
“But what am I thinking of”, he said anxiously, “what sort of reception is this for an honored guest. Sit down, my son, sit down, my dear. What
may I offer you? I do not drink tea, nor smoke tobacco, and have no gingerbread. But”, he winked, “if you are not in a hurry, perhaps we
should take luncheon together. There is a little tavern here. The owner is a good man, even if he is French. Just round the corner. He is
called Albert.”
I was not in a hurry.
“Well, that is fine, that is wonderful, — I will get dressed”.
“Why get changed?”
“Come now, come now — surely I could not go out like this? The dogs would make me a laughing stock. Wait just a minute, I’ll be back
straightaway.”
He emerged from behind a screen in a peasant coat, waxed boots, and a scarlet peasant shirt: “Well now, that’s better”.
“But you’ll not get into a restaurant dressed like that.”
“We won’t be asking for the main dining room anyway. We peasants know our place is not among the gentlemen. Everyone should know their
place [znai, sverchok, svoi shestok]. We won’t be in the dining room, we’re going to a little cell, that is, to a private room. They will allow
that...”
What he said about himself
“Bearing the people’s consecration” (first line
of a poem)
“A poet of the people, gifted with foresight,
who has astonished his great
contemporaries… A son of the Olonian
forests, striking Russian literature with
verbal thunder.” (a characterization of
Klyuev published anonymously, but
apparently written by … Klyuev)
“My legs were worn down by the 1,000
devotions rule of the Solovetsky
Monastery and by the heavy weights I
carried to mortify the flesh: I carried tenpound weights on my shoulders until the
Red Year. I wore them in St Petersburg,
drinking tea with all manner of spiritstruggling writers and scholars” (From
an autobiographical text)
Who was Klyuev…?
The authentic voice of peasant Russia, expressing
the special, secret religious spirit of the people?
 A figure who invented himself to suit the interests
of an urban intelligentsia, who believed in that
kind of Russia?
 Both possibilities were argued then, and are
argued again today, while the secondary
reconstruction of Klyuev’s own reconstructed,
mythologized world renders the issues ever more
complex

Klyuev and the 21st Century
School children read his work in his home region – how will
he fit into the new century…?
Only time will tell…