Poetry Bookclub 3

[stlukesguild]

From what I remember reading of Pasternak he was certainly rooted far more closely with Symbolism. He was exposed to all the arts as a child... his father was an important painter and his mother had been a successful concert pianist. He grew up literally surrounded with the arts. Leading intellectuals frequently visited the family home. Scriabin and Rachmaninoff would perform their latest works. Pasternak clearly remembered his sense of a nascent artistic consciousness first coming to life one day upon awakening to a performance of Tchaikovsky's piano trios being performed in the family home for Tolstoy and other family friends. The most important of his early poetic influences was the young poet, Rilke, another guest of the family.

Such an artistic upbringing was quite in line with certain aspects of Symbolism... the aestheticism... the blurring of boundaries between senses and between art forms... the almost musical preference for suggestion... mood... atmosphere... over literal meaning. Pasternak studied as a painter and a composer (among other disciplines) before settling upon his true calling as a poet. His poetry was greatly informed by his studies of and love of other artistic forms. His imagery is often quite visually suggestive, and his language musical.

Symbolism was perhaps the most important poetic movement in Russia prior to the Revolution. Among the major practitioners were Fyodor Sologub, Ivan Bunin, Valery Bryusov, and Aleksandr Blok. Acemism and Futurism were perhaps the two leading early Modernist schools in Russian poetry... but Pasternak never seems to embrace these aspects of Modernism quite as much as Mandelshtam or Mayakovsky. Perhaps a portion of his reluctance was due to a a sense of personal doubt with regard to sweeping notions of "better living through technology" and the Revolution. In the final poem of My Sister-Life, The Higher Sickness... Pasternak makes clear some of his doubts about the role of art... art in support of politics.

[JBI]

Lets get back to the poem for a minute - the question of the observer within the weeping garden, in light of symbolism provokes interesting things.

Firstly, the garden as a symbol, which is clearly the centre of the poem, no matter how you look at it - the description of the garden though, is inverted. The garden, generally representing Eden, or at least always touching on Eden, is here transformed into a "weeping" garden, a desolate place, an almost Eliotic inversion that darkens the poem.

The notion of pores coming out of the earth, and a fecundity of weeds create dark images of desolation - in addition to the sense of abandonment - the weeds have devoured this weeping garden, this somewhat anti-Edenic symbol.

Yet the strangeness is in the role of the poet here - he refers to himself more as an observer and as an eavesdropper - against the expanse of abandonment - of, and again I am drawn to wasteland parallels - of Dante's vision on boarding the ferry to Inferno;

Unreal City,
Under the brown fog of a winter dawn,
A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many,
I had not thought death had undone so many.
Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled,
And each man fixed his eyes before his feet.

A very dark, and often common symbol of the time - it most certainly seems to be charged with that sense of unfulfillment - meaninglessness.

[Virgil]

I guess it's somewhat symbolist, though that's not what occured to me. The central controling image is the weeping orchard, which strikes me quite melodramatic. If this were a poem by a lit netter I would applaud the control, but I would say what exactly is it that you're saying? It's a moment captured. One can make the assumption that this is the projection of the poet's emoton unto nature. The "witness" -which in my version the word gets repeated-feeling tears and so see the orchard weeps and drips. What's the rhetorical term for the projection of one's feelings reflected in nature? I can't remember and I tried looking it up. That to me is the whole of this poem. The fourth stanza strikes me as key:

I will bring it to my lips and listen:
am I the ony one in the world,
ready to weep on the slightest occaision,
or is there a witness?

Frankly we have no idea why the poet feels this way. It just seems like a pure expression. Is there anything other than that that I'm missing?

[stlukesguild]

Certainly any garden image leads one to make connections with the Garden of Eden... but Pasternak seems to begin much of his poems with personal experiences... the places he knows... the people. The poem strikes initially as contrasting the absence of any human presence... emphasized in the repeated question: "is there a witness?"... with the animated aspect of the garden or nature. I get the feeling of the experience of the poet who has come upon a scene of an abandoned estate... perhaps somewhere that he once knew when it was full of life... perhaps somewhere that he knew as a child... where the orchard has gone to seed... the very earth "chokes under the burden" and dead branches scrape against the windows. Vegetation sprawls over the house... down the roof and spills over the gutter. The poet takes "it"... the orchard... an apple to his mouth... almost is a communal act... perhaps in an attempt to recapture what has been lost... and then the sense of desolation overcomes him... he is ready to weep. The sense of loss reminds me in a manner of Shelley's Ozymandias... or even more so of Tu Fu's Jade Flower Palace:

The stream swirls. The wind moans in
The pines. Gray rats scurry over
Broken tiles. What prince, long ago,
Built this palace, standing in
Ruins beside the cliffs? There are
Green ghost fires in the black rooms.
The shattered pavements are all
Washed away. Ten thousand organ
Pipes whistle and roar. The storm
Scatters the red autumn leaves.
His dancing girls are yellow dust.
Their painted cheeks have crumbled
Away. His gold chariots
And courtiers are gone. Only
A stone horse is left of his
Glory. I sit on the grass and
Start a poem, but the pathos of
It overcomes me. The future
Slips imperceptibly away.
Who can say what the years will bring?

I am also reminded of the melancholia of some photos of abandoned country homes from the pre-Revolutionary days let go to ruin:

[Dark Muse]

Oh wow those are really cool houses

[JBI]

I guess it's somewhat symbolist, though that's not what occured to me. The central controling image is the weeping orchard, which strikes me quite melodramatic. If this were a poem by a lit netter I would applaud the control, but I would say what exactly is it that you're saying? It's a moment captured. One can make the assumption that this is the projection of the poet's emoton unto nature. The "witness" -which in my version the word gets repeated-feeling tears and so see the orchard weeps and drips. What's the rhetorical term for the projection of one's feelings reflected in nature? I can't remember and I tried looking it up. That to me is the whole of this poem. The fourth stanza strikes me as key:



Frankly we have no idea why the poet feels this way. It just seems like a pure expression. Is there anything other than that that I'm missing?

I'm going to have to disagree - I don't think he's doing any such thing as using images to create a moment - the thing is called the Weeping Orchard, I think the title is drawing direct focus to the Orchard, as a symbol. And as such, the symbol is allowed to expand - it is naive to assume he would write a poem just about a simple Orchard, or a certain moment - he is a poet of more skill than that, and as such, the Orchard must not be taken on surface value - the rest of the poem seems to suggest it can't be anyway. Have you noticed the vagueness in addressing the actual concreteness and physicality of the Orchard? The orchard is more a feeling than a physicality - it is a symbol, and to use a fancy phrase, Objective Correlative, as are all the images, to create a sense of the state of the poet, and the state of the perhaps nation, or society, or meaningfulness, or world, depending on your reading.

[stlukesguild]

it is naive to assume he would write a poem just about a simple Orchard, or a certain moment - he is a poet of more skill than that

Why is it naive? Are we to assume that only some subject matter of great profundity is worthy of the artist's efforts? Czeslaw Milosz writes of the poet, "Pasternak... did not pluck fruits from the tree of reason, the tree of life was enough for him. Confronted by argument, he responded with his sacred dance... Pasternak's poetry is anti-speculative, anti-intellectual... His worship of life meant a fascination with what can be called nature's moods- air, rain, clouds, snow in the streets, a detail changing thanks to the time of the day or night, or the season." The translator of My Sister-Life, Mark Rudman, writes, "Pasternak has a radically original way of looking at the world- as though it were born again every day. There is nothing he does not marvel at." Certainly he is not merely presenting a simple literal representation of an experience... but there is no reason to believe that his work is not still rooted in experience... albeit the poet's unique impression or feeling of the experience. This does not negate the symbolic. Rather there seems to be a suggestion that experience is composed of a fusion of elements: memory, imagery, thought, fantasy, emotion, etc...

[Dark Muse]

Though I do not know much about Pasternak and his theories of writing I agree with Stlukes point here. I do not see what is wrong or invalid in writing a poem about a garden for the gardens sake, or writing a poem about nature just for nature's sake. It could be a refection of a moment, a personal experience which had touched him. Expressing both the beauty, solitude and as well as somberness of nature. I do not think that everything must have some greater perplexing and complicated intent or reason behind it. That is not to say that symbolism does not play into his work as well, but I think perhaps sometimes people have a tendency to over analyze things and want to find something where perhaps there is not.

As well it seems a bit harsh to suggest that he would be a lesser poet if he merely wished to capture the feeling and mood of a garden as you stated

he is a poet of more skill than that,

suggesting that to write a poem capturing the essence of nature, would mean they would have to be of lesser skill. I think the beauty of prose itself should speak of the writers talent as much as the intent and meaning the poet is trying to convey.

[quasimodo1]

Not wanting to change the subject...but one term that comes up with Pasternak, both poetry and prose, is ekphrasis (and Stlukes may correct me) where the poet makes more of a unit the joining of poem and painting (or image). In this limited example, I think there is something to it. You might even add sound to the collage. "Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness. A descriptive work of prose or poetry, a film, or even a photograph may thus highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening, or what is shown in, say, any of the visual arts, and in doing so, may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description. One example is a painting of a sculpture: the painting is "telling the story of" the sculpture, and so becoming a storyteller, as well as a story (work of art) itself. Virtually any type of artistic media may be the actor of, or subject of ekphrasis. One may not always be able, for example, to make an accurate sculpture of a book to retell the story in an authentic way; yet if it's the spirit of the book that we are more concerned about, it certainly can be conveyed by virtually any medium – which in itself is challenging and interesting – and thereby enhance the artistic impact of the original book through synergy." dictionary.com

[Virgil]

Coming from someone who may be naive, JBI is just wrong. He may speculate all he wants on what the weeping orchard symbolizes, but there is no suggestion in the text of this poem of anything other than an internal feeling. Why the internal feeling? I defy anyone to quote from anywhere in this poem anything that would suggest his nation or his society or the world in general. It may be that a cross textual assumption can be made but this poem as it stands does not suggest anything JBI thinks it does.

[JBI]

....

You forget the heavy context of this poem - it is the summer of 1917, in three months the Soviet Union will be born, and Russia is currently engaged heavily in a prolonged, violent war. There is smell of revolution in the air, there is context, Pasternak is in love with a girl - what moment then, is Pasternak trying to create?

It's terrible: dripping and listening
If it's as much alone as ever -
Crumpling a lacy branch at the window -
Or if there's an eavesdropper.

The key word that creates the stanza is "terrible" - it is so heavily subjective that it cannot be ignored - and therefore forms the tone of the poem; what is terrible? who is terrible, what state is terrible?

The answer is followed on the same line - "Dripping and listening." Dripping here implies a gradual, slow paced anticipation, a slow, almost painful procession, and listening - as if in anticipation, awaiting something. Of course, it can be assumed Pasternak is addressing the Weeping garden here, but then we must question what is dripping, what is so terrible, what is listening, and why is the garden "as much alone as ever", or if Pasternak is suggesting something, "[there is] and eavesdropper [present]". The eavesdropper here implies a sense of change, especially when we consider a "Crumpling [of] a lacy branch at the window", a disturbance, an answer, a sound.

But Audibly the porous earth
Is choling with so much growth
And in the distance, as in August,
Midnight ripens with the harvest.

The problem here is the inversion of growth and fecundity to a negative image - the earth here is "audibly""choking", is bursting "with so much growth" out of its pores, a strange term surely, providing an image of a plant pore, one which is used for gas exchange, taking in Carbon Dioxide, and releasing Oxygen, but is set off with a sense of choking, as if the emotion, the tears, the state of the Orchard is too full of emotion, has to much going on, or has too dreary a growth, a disease, almost fungus like.

Again though, Pasternak switches his focus:

No sound. And no one hiding.
Having made sure it's on its own
It returns to its old game - sliding
from gable to gutter and down/

The reference to the gable brings back the image of the window, and the slow drip of the weather, or perhaps, if we take it further, the Garden's weeping, making its way off the rof, and "to [the] gutter and down." The speaker senses no sound outside of the sound of the orchard, he is here distinguishing from the sound of the "porous earth" to the sound of the human, the sound of the exterior, of what is not part of the Garden. The poem here is suggesting an abandonment, an emptiness, a return to routine, to anticipation.

But the speaker finally takes a direct stand:

I'll raise it to my lips and listen
If I'm as much alone as ever -
Ready to sob if I have to -
Or if there's an eavesdropper.

The poet now is willing to engage - to listen within the coldness, the dripping stillness, to the orchard, despite being alone in doing so. He is "ready to sob if [he] has to -" ready to engage in the notion of the weeping orchard, to listen to the orchard, as it functions, and to pity, or connect with it, or gain feeling, or sympathize with it - to feel, and perhaps empathize with it.
"Or if there's an eavesdropper." again the return to the sense of loneliness and helplessness within the poet - he is still looking for something else within the Garden, someone else who is listening, someone to relate to, to connect to, to see what he sees - to recognize the weeping of the orchard, to listen to it.

But all is quiet. Not a leaf stirs.
Nothing anywhere to be seen,
Except the gulps and splashing galoshes
and sighs and tears in between.

The curious image here is the gulps (plural) and splashing galoshes (plural). I think, if we are at least going to humor the idea of the garden as symbol, we must take into account the fact that the galoshes seem to be out of place with a purely image-rendering, the galoshes take the poem to the level of symbol, because they challenge the poem itself, and pour onto it a subjectivity.

Whose galoshes can the speaker possibly be referring to? Whose gulps? whose sighs? and whose tears? They are other people, who seem outside, while inside of the garden. The galoshes splashing imply that the speaker is the only one listening, as the rest of the passers by are merely that, passers by, consumed by the acts of gulping and splashing in the tear-soaked (metaphorically of course) ground, within the sighs and tears, seeming to emanate from both garden and passerby, but no one is eavesdropping, no one is paying attention, no one, but the speaker, the poet, and that seems to be the fundamental part of the poem, which creates the, I would argue, necessity to view the garden symbolically. The poem can no longer be just about him viewing something, a specific moment, the subjectivity and the calculative ending I would argue won't allow that. Those galoshes and sighs need to belong to someone. It is then that the Garden is transformed, into a state of being, or even a state, or a life, or a condition. The poem is ambiguous, and invites the reader in, but it hardly is about a moment, because of the sense of perpetual within the poem. The constant references to routine suggest that the poet is referring to something continuous, something which, though anticipating change, has been going on for a long time.

Yes, there are many ways to read this poem, and many possible meanings, given the nature and vagueness, and ambiguity, but I think the sense of the state of the garden needs to be treated as referring to something, needs to be read as a symbol, to what, I can only guess, as I have done before - I would, for instance, draw a mention towards the fact that the poet specifies the month as August, implying perhaps a decline of the old, a time for harvest, a time for the beginning of death, in keeping with Frye's structuralist notions, but also on a darker level, a sense that this has been going on, and carried out to maturity, and that summer is fading away.

What is going through the 27 year old poet's mind? Who can say, I think the fact that there is such a wide trace, from title to end, is what makes the poem somewhat special, being that it invites speculation, but still, as just a moment, I can't agree with that sort of reading, I think it ignores the metaphoric subjectivity within the poem, call that arrogance, or whatever, I still cannot budge from my viewing of the garden as symbol.

[stlukesguild]

I do agree that considering the situation of Russia in 1917 (and also taking into account some more explicit references to the Revolution in other poems in My Sister-Life) it is a distinct probability that the poet was intending a sense of loss... a sense of returning to a once fruitful place that has grown ill... diseased. Of course I question whether he began with the "larger" idea of conveying a sense of loss as a result of the current political turmoil... or rather, he merely responded to an actual experience of stimuli with a sense of loss. In other words... did he intend that the work be "symbolic"... a symbol of something larger, or is that but a result of his response to the subject/orchard? Was the orchard invented as a symbol... or was it a real place that he felt driven to write about? I might note that Maxim Gorky criticized Pasternak for being too elusive and obscure and not immediately comprehensible. I am made to think of some of the poems by Rimbaud or Paul Valery (the classic French Symbolists) in which there is no immediately clear literal or symbolic meaning. Rather, the work seems to function almost abstractly... conveying a mood or atmosphere through accumulated images.

[Virgil]

Like I said, that's all specualtion. I can read almost anything into it. My translator doesn't use the word "galoshes." Here's how he translates the last stanza:

Silence. No breath of leaf, nothing
in the dark but this weird
gulping, and flapping of slippers,
and sighs, broken by tears.

versus the translation from your teext:

But all is quiet. Not a leaf stirs.
Nothing anywhere to be seen,
Except the gulps and splashing galoshes
and sighs and tears in between.

The galoshes makes it more striking I admit but nonetheless I can't draw any solid conclusions from either.

By the way, I'm glad you quoted me. I thought for a while there that my emotions would go unnoticed.

[JBI]

Not wanting to change the subject...but one term that comes up with Pasternak, both poetry and prose, is ekphrasis (and Stlukes may correct me) where the poet makes more of a unit the joining of poem and painting (or image). In this limited example, I think there is something to it. You might even add sound to the collage. "Ekphrasis has been considered generally to be a rhetorical device in which one medium of art tries to relate to another medium by defining and describing its essence and form, and in doing so, relate more directly to the audience, through its illuminative liveliness. A descriptive work of prose or poetry, a film, or even a photograph may thus highlight through its rhetorical vividness what is happening, or what is shown in, say, any of the visual arts, and in doing so, may enhance the original art and so take on a life of its own through its brilliant description. One example is a painting of a sculpture: the painting is "telling the story of" the sculpture, and so becoming a storyteller, as well as a story (work of art) itself. Virtually any type of artistic media may be the actor of, or subject of ekphrasis. One may not always be able, for example, to make an accurate sculpture of a book to retell the story in an authentic way; yet if it's the spirit of the book that we are more concerned about, it certainly can be conveyed by virtually any medium – which in itself is challenging and interesting – and thereby enhance the artistic impact of the original book through synergy." dictionary.com

I don't think Ekphrasis is really applicable here, though it is very interesting in terms of comparison. The problem I think, is that this Orchard is either real or immagined, and not an exterior item, like Keats's Urn, or Mussorgsky Pictures. The images function on nature, or perhaps the unnatural, instead of images of images, or a picture of a weeping orchard.

[Virgil]

In fact it doesn't even make sense. If Pasternak wishes for an image associating with the war, why not boots out right. One translator translated it as galoshes and one slippers, so obviously the actual Russian is not boots, but something less.