The only "reality" important to our understanding of "Novogodnee" is the already mentioned correspondence between Tsvetaeva and Rilke that began in 1926 and was broken off in the same year by Rilke's death (from leukemia, in a Swiss sanatorium). Three of Tsvetaeva's letters to Rilke have come down to us (it is possible that there were only three in all, considering the length and intensity of their contents). "Novogodnee," therefore, should be regarded as the fourth, and, in any case, the last—though the first sent to the next world instead of Switzerland:
The first letter to you in the new . ..
Place . ..
Being a letter, "Novogodnee" naturally contains various references to the contents of previous letters (both Tsve- taeva's to Rilke and Rilke's to Tsvetaeva), on which it seems injudicious to dwell without adducing the letters themselves. Furthermore, these references, allusions, and paraphrases in "Novogodnee" more likely serve the aims of the poem itself rather than the aims of a continuing correspondence, since one of the correspondents is dead. The only thing in this correspondence that might be thought to have a direct bearing on the poetics of "Novogodnee" was Rilke's "Elegy" dedicated to Tsvetaeva, which he sent to her on June 8, 1926 (from all evidence, immediately after he finished writing it). But except for two or three places (one of which we have already cited at the beginning of this essay) that strike the reader of "Novogodnee" as echoing a few lines (the third, twentieth, and forty-fifth) of "Elegy," the similarity between these poems is insignificant, if, of course, we leave aside the common spiritual vector of both authors.
And, finally, one can infer from this correspondence that, all during the time it went on, Tsvetaeva and Boris Pasternak (on whose initiative it began) made various plans to visit Rilke. At first they intended to do this together; later on, when Pasternak's chances of taking part in this trip began to shrink, Tsvetaeva planned to go by herself. In a certain sense, "Novogodnee" is the continuation of her plans for this meeting; it is a search for the addressee— though now in pure space, an appointment for a rendezvous we know where. A continuation—if only because the poem is written in private: like a letter. It may also be that "Bellevues and Belvederes of ours," apart from everything else, for all its bitterness and unbearableness, is merely a return address inserted out of inertia—or in blind, senseless hope of an impossible reply.
Whatever the author's feelings may have been that gave rise to this line, Tsvetaeva immediately repudiates it and, as though ashamed of its pettiness, ascribes the emergence of it (and those feelings) to the approaching New Year:
I lose track. Particulars. Noise. Hustle. The New Year's at hand.
And after this, having allowed the poem to warant its title, she continues, giving rein to caesura and swinging her trochee, like a pendulum or a drooping head, from side to side:
. . . za chto? S kern choknus' cherez stol? Chern? Vmesto peny—vaty klok. Zachem? Nu, b'yot. A pri chom ya tut?
.. .To what, whom shall I clink glasses? What with? Wads of cotton For the foam. What for? Yes, chimes. But what's in this for me ... P
The babel of question marks and the trisyllabic clausula that turns the broken rhyme with "vaty" ("cotton") into the coalescent mumble "aprichomyatut" ("butwhat'sinthis- forrne") create the impression of control being lost, reins slackened, of a transition from organized speech to unconscious lamentation. And although a line lower (but a note higher) Tsvetaeva seems to have a sudden recollection, to restore a likeness of meaning to her words, all of her subsequent discourse is already overpowered by the a priori music of a lamentation, which, while not stifling the meaning of the utterance, does subordinate it to its own dynamics:
What am I to do in this night's triumph With this inner rhyme of Rainer's dying? That is, if you, such an eye, are dimming, Life's not life and death's not death. The meaning Vanishes. When weshall meet, Tll grasp it. There is neither, but a third, some aspect Which is new (and, having spread straw even, What a lark then for the 'twenty-seven, Coming, and for the departing 'twenty- Six—to start with youand to be ending With you). 'Cross this table's boundless island I shall clink my glass to yours with a silent Clink...
(Translated by Joseph Brodsky)
The couplet that opens this excerpt is phenomenal and even in the Tsvetaeva corpus nearly stands alone. It is probably not so much a question of the assonance Rainer— umer ("Rainer's dying") per se heard by an ear accustomed to the utterance of this name because of the proximity of the lips—her o^—that have uttered this name (and precisely by a Russian ear), as of the fractionalized, discrete dactylism of vnutrenneyu ("inner"). The palpability of each vowel in this adjective underscores both the inexorability of the statement and the physiologically internal nature of the word itself. It is no longer a question of internal rhyme but of internal comprehension, of conscious (because of the meaning) and un(supra)conscious (because of the phonetics) spelling/ spilling out of everything to the end, to the acoustic limit of the word.
It is important to take notice of both the internal position of vnutrenneyu within the line ( S etoi vnutrenneyu rifmoi: Rainer—umer: "With this inner rhyme of Rainer's dying") and the organizing-subordinating role of the line's five "r's," reinforcing the sensation of internal rhyme, for rather than being taken from the Russian alphabet they seem to derive from the name "Rainer." (It is quite possible that more than a minimal role in the organization of this line —as well as in Tsvetaeva's perception of that poet on the whole—was played by his full name, Rainer Maria Rilke, in which, apart from four "r's," the Russian ear detects all three Russian grammatical genders: masculine, feminine, and neuter. In other words, there is already a definite metaphysical element contained in the very name. For that matter, something that has certainly been drawn from the name and subsequently used for the purposes of the poem is the first syllable of the name "Rainer."* In connection with which Tsvetaeva's ear may be accused of naivete with no more justification than may folklore. Precisely the inertia of folklore, the unconscious imitation of it, is what has prompted subsequent phrases such as takoe oko smerklos' ("you, such an eye, are dimming") and znachit—t'mitsya ("the meaning vanishes"). This also applies in part to solomoy zasteliv ("spreading straw"), not only in the sense of a custom but also in regard to the very nature of the traditional rhyme solomu—sedmomu (or shestomu) ("straw— seven [or sixth]"); this also applies to "I shall clink my glass to yours with silent I Clinking' and partly to kabatskim