But the shift from pentameter to trimeter and from rhymed couplets to alternating rhyme, and, what is more, from feminine to masculine in even lines, creates a perhaps desirable but excessively obvious sensation of abruptness, harshness. This harshness and a concomitant superficial aphoristic quality create the impression that the author is in charge of the situation—which in no way corresponds to reality. The rhythmical contrast of this stanza is so sharp that it not so much performs the role designed for it by the author—to complete the poem—as reminds one of the poem's interrupted music. As if driven back by this stanza, "Novogodnee" slows down for a while and then, like a flood sweeping away an unstable dam or a theme interrupted by a cadence, it returns in its full sonority. And indeed, in the opening lines of the concluding part of the poem, immediately following this stanza, the voice of the poet resounds with a startling ring of emancipation; the lyricism of these lines is pure lyricism, not bound either by thematic development (since thematically this passage is an echo of previous ones) or even by considerations about the addressee himself. It is a voice disengaging itself from the poem, nearly detaching itself from the text:
How many times on a classroom chair: What are the mountains there? What are the rivers?
Are they lovely, those landscapes without tourists?
Am I right, Raiiwr—paradise is mountainous, Stormy!' Not the one of widows' aspirations— There's M>t jtst one paradise, right? Above it there
must be another Paradise? In terraces? I'm judging by the Tatras— Paradise cannot but be An amphitheater. (And the curtain's been
lowered on someone . . .) Am I right, Rainer, God is a growing Baobab? Not a Golden Louis— There's not just one God, right? Above him there
must be yet another God?
This is again the voice of adolescence, of shedding scales, "at thirteen, in Novodevichy"—or, more precisely, the memory of them through the dulling prism of maturity. That note did not sound in either The Magic Lantern or Evening Album', except forthose poems that talk of separation and in which one can hear—immediately!—the future Tsvetaeva, as though "And passion for breakups entices" were said about her. "How many times on a classroom chair" is, as it were, a recognition of the realized prophecy contained in the helplessness of the tragic notes of her first books, where the diarylike sentimentality and banality are justified if only because they spared her future of their presence. Particularly as this adolescent wit ("What are the mountains there?," "landscapes without tourists," etc.)—
· Ecening Album ( 1910) and Tlie Magic Lantern (1912): Tsvetaeva's first two collections of verse.
irony in general—becomes in her maturity the only possible form of connecting words, when the subject is the "next world" as the destination of a great and beloved poet: when the subject is concrete death.
For all its harshness (better stilclass="underline" youthful cruelty), this irony is nowhere near possessing youthful logic. "Not the one of widows' aspirations— / There's not just one paradise, right? ..."—inquires a voice that, for all its fragility, allows the possibility of another point of view: churchgoing, old- womanish, widows'. Having chosen the word "widows'," most likely un- or subconsciously, Tsvetaeva immediately realizes the possible associations it has for herself and at once cuts them away, shifting to an almost sardonic tone: "Above it there must be another/Paradise? In terraces? I'm judging by the Tatras . . ." And now, when it would seem that open derision is inevitable, we suddenly hear this grandiose statement fusing all of Alighieri's efforts into a single phrase:
Paradise cannot but be
An amphitheater . . .
The Czech Tatras, which in Bellevue Tsvetaeva had every reason to recall fondly, gave rise to the ironic "In terraces?" but also demanded a rhyme. · This is a typical example of the organizing role of language in relation to experience: a role that essentially enlightens. Undoubtedly the idea of paradise as a theater had arisen earlier in the poem ("Leaning one's elbows on the edge of the loge"), but there it was presented in an individual and, therefore, tragic key. Pre-
· Tatram: amfiteatrom ("Tatras": amphitheater).
pared with an ironic intonation, however, "amphitheater" neutralizes any emotional coloring and imparts to the image a gigantic, mass (extra-individual) scale. At issue here is no longer Rilke, or even paradise. For "amphitheater," along with its modern, strictly technical meaning, calls forth, above all, associations of antiquity and, in a sense, timelessness.
Apprehensive not so much of the excessively powerful impact that this line might have, as of the author's hubris fed by lucky strikes like this, Tsvetaeva deliberately casts her accomplishment into the banality of the mock-important ("And the curtain's been lowered on someone . . ." )—reducing "amphitheater" to "theater." In other words, banality here is used as one of the means in her arsenal that provide the echo of the youthful sentimentality of her early poems requisite for continuing discourse in the key established in "How many times on a classroom chair . . ." :
Am I right, Rainer, God is a growing
Baobab? Not a Golden Louis—
There's Mt just one God, right? Above him there
must be yet amther God?
"Am I right, Rainer . . . ?" is repeated as a refrain, for— she thought that way, as a child, at least; but, in addition, because the repetition of the phrase is the product of despair. And the more obvious the naivete ("God is a growing I Baobab?") of the question, the more palpable—as is often the case with children's Why?'s—the proximity of the hysterics beginning to boil up in the throat of the speaker. At the same time, the subject in question is not atheism or religious quests but the previously mentioned poetic version of eternal life that has more in common with cosmogony than with standard theology. And Tsvetaeva asks Rilke all these questions not at all in expectation of an answer but in order to "set forth a program" (and the less complicated the terminology the better). Moreover, the answer is kno^ to her—if only because the constant possibility, even inevitability, of the subsequent question is also known to her.
The true mover of speech, let us repeat, is the language itself, that is, the liberated verse-mass milling the theme and almost literally splashing up when it hits a rhyme or an image. The only question Tsvetaeva asks here in earnest, i.e., whose answer is not kno^ to her, is the one that follows "Above him there must be another I God?":
How is writing going in the new place?
Actually, this is not so much a question as an indication —like musical notation—of quarter notes and flats of lyricism, an insertion of them into a purely speculative space devoid of musical lineation: into a supravocal existence. The unbearableness and unpronounceableness of this height manifests itself in the already repeated use of the slightly sarcastic "in the new place," in the redonning of the interviewer's mask. The answer, however, surpasses the question in its very timbre alone and comes so very close to the essence of the matter—
Then again, if you are, verse is: for you yourself are
Verse!
—that her voice, threatening to crack, requires immediate lowering. This lowering is accomplished in the following line, by means that are so familiar, however, that the effect is diametrically opposite to the one intended; what was intended was irony, what resulted was tragedy: