The Garden by Bella Akhmadulina

First published: 1990

Type of work: Poetry

Form and Content

Bella Akhmadulina began publishing poetry at the end of the 1950’s. After the publication of her first collection, Struna (1962; the string), she became a prominent figure in the new generation of Russian poets during the “thaw” period following Joseph Stalin’s death. Her poetry also brought expulsion from the Union of Soviet Writers for her “dangerous unconcern” with social questions of the day. Each new collection solidified her position as a leading member among the promising young poets that included Yevgeny Yevtushenko, Andrei Voznesensky, and Robert Rozhdestvensky, among others.

Born in Moscow of mixed Russian-Italian-Tartar origins, Akhmadulina approached poetry in an uncertain fashion, “frail and infantile,” as her former husband Yevtushenko put it. At that time, poetry was for her more a matter of personal confession than a matter of a strong social or philosophical statement. As she matured, she was able to leave her cocoon and to assume the role of a voice of conscience that has been traditional in Russian literature. Her inner makeup, however, prevented her from becoming a social bard in the mold of Yevtushenko and Voznesensky, although her concern for the burning issues of the day is no less strong or sincere.

In the following decades, several themes crystallized in her poetry. Throughout her career, she has been searching for her poetic self. A set of thirteen poems under the title “A Fairy Tale About Rain” expresses this quest. The rain, as a life-sustaining substance, is the metaphor for the poetic inspiration accompanying her everywhere, including on a visit to people steeped in a vulgar, materialistic world. Soaked with rain, she feels apologetic for soiling the exquisite furniture (“I’ve been wallowing about, like a pig in the mud. . . . I’m lost in foggy bubbles. . . . t’was Rain that led me into trouble”). As the party progresses and the philistines and snobs pester her with asinine questions—“Is your husband really rich?” and “Who gives presents to the ones/ God has endowed? And how would it be done?”—the visitor, the lyric persona, loses her temper and answers caustically, all the time watching the rain, which had camped outside. When, finally, the rain comes to her rescue and floods everything inside the house, the poet walks away happily, convinced that the two worlds will never mix and that the enmity between them will always exist. Through this self-realization, the poet finds her rightful place, learning to bear her alienation as the price for being different. A similar theme of alienation is depicted in “Fever,” where creativity is presented as illness incomprehensible to, and feared by, mere mortals.

Self-realization leads to a constant search for beauty as the prerequisite for a poet’s vocation. Akhmadulina finds it in an artist’s studio (“Features of an Artist’s Studio”), where “the house, like a lost balloon, / flutters over Boredom Valley”; in the evoking of the artist Raphael (“Raphael’s Day”), recollecting her Italian ancestors; in the noble role of Vladimir Vysotsky’s theater (“Theater”); in the slender cheetahs embracing in a zoo as a symbol of mindless imprisonment of natural beauty (“Two Cheetahs”); or in the wondrous beauty of the flowers and bees upon them while the poet is writing a poem (“The Secret”). For Akhmadulina, beauty is everywhere.

The discovery of beauty is one role of a poet. It is no wonder that she likens the work of a poet to a garden; yet all the beauty of a garden is useless unless a poet gives expression to beauty through words (“The Garden”). The poet is a magician opening hidden worlds (“Poetry Magic”) but is less important than the discovery itself, being only “a Simple Simon” bidding the command from “the conductor somewhere up in heaven.” Akhmadulina sums up the relationship between a poet and a poem in this way: “All life and death has been played out in/ the magic theater of a poem.”

Love is an inescapable theme in a sensitive young poet such as Akhmadulina. There are many poems in which love is either a central theme or a by-product of other emotions. As in many other poems, she is serious and whimsical at the same time. In “A Summer-House Love Story,” a real-life triangle at a dacha is skillfully replaced by that of Akhmadulina, Alexander Pushkin, and his lover. In other love poems (“Don’t Spend a Lot of Time on Me,” “Hey, Kid!,” “Parting”), she is again both serious and playful, as if reminding herself and others that, though blissful, love is transient and that likewise love pain is not the end of the world. Much more important to her is the other kind of love, agape. Compassion is a much more sublime feeling for her. Recollecting the inhumanity committed upon children in “Saint Bartholomew’s Day,” she concludes that “a child born amidst a massacre/ must be willfully immoral.” If we cannot feel sorry for “just thirty thousand Huguenots,” both the hangman and his victim will end up on the gallows. In “An Owl’s Death,” the interdependence of all human beings is again emphasized, because the lack of compassion for an ugly child killed by her brother provokes fear that “I will some day be killed.” In “The Hospital Christmas Tree,” human suffering is again the source of love and compassion; the Virgin’s child, symbolized by a Christmas tree, is the last hope, if everything else fails.

There are several poems dedicated to other Russian poets. Pushkin is extolled in the prose piece “An Eternal Presence,” Mikhail Lermontov in “Longing for Lermontov,” Anna Akhmatova in “I envy the way she was young,” Osip Mandelstam in “Back in the days when any villain would do,” and Marina Tsvetaeva in “I Swear” and “Return to Tarusa.” All these poems show Akhmadulina’s reverence for her fellow poets and her kinship with them.

Most of Akhmadulina’s poems are in the form of traditional rhymed quatrains in the Russian iambic tetrameter. There are variations in meter, as well as in poem length. She prefers end-rhyme, with some initial and internal rhymes. Sometimes she uses assonance instead of exact rhyme, and there are occasional extreme alliterations. She also employs archaisms, neologisms, and linguistic innovations. By and large, she steers a middle course between experimental and traditional prosody. Her formalistic achievements are considerable.

Context

Bella Akhmadulina belongs to a prominent group of women writers in Russian literature of the twentieth century, securing the legitimate place of women in that literature. Considering the fact that there were relatively few women writers in all the preceding centuries, the progress is considerable, especially after the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. In the beginning, Akhmadulina was only one member of a group of poets—on equal footing, to be sure—but after having established herself, she came to enjoy an independent status.

Her strongly independent spirit has made her respected among her peers from the outset. Her independence is reflected not only in poetic matters but also in her social status. While she has not been prominently involved in the dissident movement in her country, the strength of her character and her achievements have garnered her high esteem, making her a role model for younger Russian women writers. The issues present in her poetry are not revolutionary, but she has shown a remarkable aplomb in voicing them. Perhaps the fact that she has not been very vocal has made her position all the more effective. Her unobtrusive preoccupation with moral issues has enhanced Akhmadulina’s status as one of the most respected spokespersons of the new spirit in Russian literature.

Bibliography

Brown, Deming. “The Younger Generation of Poets.” In Soviet Russian Literature Since Stalin. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1978. A brief treatment of Akhmadulina’s poetry, together with other poets of her generation such as Yevgeny Yevtushenko and Andrei Voznesensky.

Feinstein, Elaine. “Poetry and Conscience: Russian Women Poets of the Twentieth Century.” In Women Writing and Writing About Women, edited by Mary Jacobus. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 1979. Akhmadulina is appraised, along with other Russian woman poets. Examines her contribution and establishes her place in relationship to her contemporaries.

Ketchian, Sonia I. The Poetic Craft of Bella Akhmadulina. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993. This book-length survey of Akhmadulina’s poetry, the first in English, traces in clear and concise terms her development, influences, and contribution to Russian literature, focusing on the main characteristics and formal aspects of her verses.

Rydel, Christine. “A Bibliography of Works by and About Bella Akhmadulina.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 1 (1971): 434-441. A thorough, unannotated bibliography of books, poems in periodicals and anthologies, translations of and by Akhmadulina, and critical articles in English, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, and Slovak.

Rydel, Christine. “The Metaphysical World of Bella Akhmadulina.” Russian Literature Triquarterly 1 (1971): 326-341. A pithy discussion of Akhmadulina’s poetry through 1970, establishing its main features and exploring the relationship between the personal and the impersonal nature of her art.