(We could have rendezvoused—
Jist to chat.) Never mind places! Think of the months!
Of course, the idea of a rendezvous or clandestine gathering is explained by the multifacetedness ( multifacedness) of Hilke, who is present for the author in everyone and in everything. And of course it is Tsvetaeva herself who hears mesta ("places") in mesyatsakh ("months"). But the ver- nacularity of this idiom—"chatting" at a clandestine gathering—and "Think of the months!" shouted out by one of "the unwashed" impart to the physiognomy of the heroine a somewhat more common expression than envisaged by the genre of the poem. Tsvetaeva does this not for democratic reasons, not to enlarge her audience (she never committed that sin), or for the purpose of camouflage—to protect herself from inordinately nosy specialists in dirty linen. She resorts to these "speech masks" solely out of chastity, a chastity that is not so much personal as professionaclass="underline" poetic. She simply tries to lower—and not elevate—the effect created by the expression of strong sentiments, the effect of an avowal. After all, it should not be forgotten that she is addressing someone "also a poet." That's why she resorts to montage—to listing the characteristic elements that make up the background of the standard love scene—which we learn about only from the last line of that list:
. . . Never mind places! Think of the months! And weeks! And rainy suburbs Without people! And mornings! And everything
altogether Not yet launched into by nightingales!
Whereupon, however, having already marked by means of these nightingales (inevitable attributes of the standard lyric love poem) the nature of the scene and the space at any point of which this scene could have taken place but didn't, she subjects to doubt the quality of her own eyesight and, consequently, her whole interpretation of space:
Probably I see poorly, being in a pit,
Probably ymi see better, being above . . .
Still audible here is a pang—self-reproach for the imprecision of her glance? of the heart's churning? of the word in her letter? But her probable aberration and his seraphic keensightedness are equated by a line that is staggering precisely for its banality—yet another instance of her "wail of women in all times":
Nothing ever worked out between us.
What makes this wail all the more heartrending is the role of avowal fulfilled by it. It is not merely a "yes" disguised as a "no" by circumstances or by the posturing of the heroine; this is a "no" that overtakes and cancels any possibility of "yes," and therefore the "yes" craving to be pronounced clings to the very denial as the only available form of existence. In other words, "Nothing ever worked out between us" formulates the theme through its denial, and the semantic stress falls on "ever worked out." But no wail is ever the last one; and, most likely, it is precisely because the poem (as well as the situation described in it) ends dramaturgically here that Tsvetaeva, being true to herself, shifts the center of gravity from "ever worked out" to "nothing." For "nothing" defines her and her addressee to a greater degree than anything that might have ever "worked out":
So much, so purely and simply Nothing, that suits our capacity and size To such a T—there's no need to enumerate it. Nothing except—don't expect anything out of The ordinary . . .
"So much, so purely and simply" is read, at first glance, as something that emotionally develops the preceding line —"Nothing ever worked out between us," for, indeed, the un- or extra-eventful character of the relations between these two poets borders on virginity. In reality, however, this "purely" and especially "simply" relates to "nothing," and the naivete of these two adverbs, in narrowing the grammatical role of the word they modify to a noun, only increases the vacuum created by means of "nothing." For nothing is a nonsubstantive, and it is precisely in this function that it interests Tsvetaeva here—in the function that suits both of them, her and her hero, so well, in "capacity and size"; i.e., the function that arises as nichevo ("nothing," "not-having," "absence") changes into nichto ("nothing," "nonbeing," "death"). This nichevo is absolute, defies description, is not convertible—into any realia whatsoever, into any concretum at all. It is that degree of not-having and not-possessing wherein envy is roused by what
.. . even a prisoner on death row in chains Endowed with memory has: those lips!
It is quite likely that such a heightened interest in nichevo was motivated by an unconscious translation of the entire construction into German (where "nothing" is much more active grammaticaUy). Most likely, however, it illustrates the author's desire to rid the construction "Nothing ever worked out between us" of its flavor of cliche. Or—to enhance that flavor, to expand the cliche to the proportions of the truth it contains. In any case, the element in this phrase of domesticating the situation is considerably reduced as a result of that concern, and the reader suspects that the entire sentence, and perhaps the whole poem, has been written for the opportunity of uttering this simple formula: "between us . . ."
The remaining fifty-eight lines of the poem are a long postscript, an afterword dictated by the energy of the accelerated verse mass—i.e., by the remaining language, by time that continues beyond the poem. Constantly acting by ear, Tsvetaeva twice tries to end "Novogodnee" with the semblance of a final chord. First, in
From the least built-up outskirt— Happy new place, Rainer, world, Rainer! Happy furthermost cape of provability— Happy new eye, Rainer, ear, Rainer!
—where the very name of the poet plays a purely musical role (which, first and foremost, is played by any name, after all), as though it were heard for the first time and is therefore repeated. Or repeated because it is uttered for the last time. But the excessive exclamatory character of the stanza is too contingent on the meter to bring about a resolution; instead, the stanza requires harmonic, if not didactic, development. And Tsvetaeva initiates one more attempt by changing the meter in order to break free from the metrical inertia:
Everything was an obstacle For you: passion and friend. Ilappy new sound, Echo! Happy new echo, Sound!