MAX VOLOSHIN’S PORTIA: A HOMAGE TO SHAKESPEARE? - Наукові конференції
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Рік заснування видання - 2014

MAX VOLOSHIN’S PORTIA: A HOMAGE TO SHAKESPEARE?

26.06.2024 20:59

[8. Філологічні науки]

Автор: Claudia A. Ustyuzhyna, MD, Independent scholar; Igor В. Ustyuzhyn, PhD, V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University


ORCID: 0000-0001-5168-9344 Igor В. Ustyuzhyn

I only say, suppose this supposition:

Lord Byron, Don Juan, I:85 [2, p. 79]

If your Hart is ecstatic and trembling…

Maximilian Voloshin, If your heart

is ecstatic and trembling.

Living in Paris, Maximilian Kirienko-Voloshin (1877-1932, one of the most talented and the least honoured in his Motherland Ukrainians ever [*1] ) made good friends with several truly remarkable ladies: Elizaveta Kruglikova, Aleksandra Gol’dshtein, Maria Tsetlin, Maria Vorob’eva-Stebel’skaya (a.k.a. Marevna), Maria  Shkapskaya. Among them was Elizabeth Violet Hart (1878-1950) who came to Paris from Britain to study at Academie  Colarossi and Ecole  des  Beaux-Arts [4, p. 233]. We did not have access to her letters to Voloshin (there are 85 of them, all in French [8, p. 488]), but the two poems he surely dedicated to her [*2] and Evgenia Gertsyk’s (1878-1944) memoirs leave little room for doubt that Voloshin and Hart were not only lovers, but, first of all, true friends. 

According to Evgenia Gertsyk, “one day in the middle of the summer Voloshin appeared accompanied by a short girl, brunette with gray-blue eyes [*3]. It was Irish Violet, with whom he became close in the art studios of Paris. He animatedly depicted the scene of her arrival: there had been a heavy downpour, a mountain stream that had fallen down and divided the Koktebel beach in two... Violet and he stood on both sides of it, exchanging gestures and helpless words; finally she took off her shoes and, lifting up her dress, courageously rushed into the stream. Luckily, he got her out.  “And my first gesture of hospitality was to biblically bring a bowl of water and wash her feet.” Violet's eyes quietly shone, guessing what he was talking about. We switched to French and English, but even then she did not say much. Her presence did not interrupt our endless conversations, only we began to walk more, vying with each other in an effort to enchant the foreigner with our country. She nodded her head in admiration; having Spanish  <…> espadrilles on, ran over the rocks like a goat, and, sitting on some ledge above the steep, reverently listened to Voloshin’s French that was flowing fluently, but with funny errors in the article. This quiet Violet <…> married a Russian, an engineer [*4], and, I remember, on the eve of the wedding, squeezing my sister’s hands in excitement, she said to her: Max est un dieu [*5]. In our memory, Violet was the first in a row of those many girls and women who were friends with Voloshin, and whose lives he burst into with such generosity: unravelling long-standing psychological knots, prophesying good luck for them, nurturing the smallest shoots of creativity” [5, pp. 80-82].




If Hart was the first to see Max as a divine being, it is reasonable to assume that she also was the first to translate some of Voloshin’s poetry or prose into English soon after she had mastered Russian. 




Unfortunately, we do not have access to Hart’s translations (if there were any).  What we do have is the superb A Book of Homage to Shakespeare with Voloshin’s Portia in the original and in Oxford professor Nevill Forbes’ almost flawless word-for-word prose translation [9, p. 517]. 

As we know from I[srael] G[ollanz]‘s Preface, delegates nominated by many British and foreign institutions gathered together (arguably in London) in July 1914 and declared that the Tercentenary of the death of William Shakespeare (1564-1616) should be commemorated in a manner worthy of the veneration in which the memory of Shakespeare is held by the English-speaking peoples and the world at large. But in a month World War I broke out. Nevertheless, it was recognized that the Shakespeare Tercentenary should not be allowed to pass unobserved, and, as a  result, just in time for the Tercentenary (late April 1916) there came A Book of Homage to Shakespeare whose workmanship speaks for itself [7, p. x].  

Vladimir Kupchenko, one of the best experts on Voloshin, claims that in February 1916 Winifred Stephens (c. 1880-1944) and Israel Gollanz (1864-1930), the editor himself, almost simultaneously asked Voloshin to contribute to the book by sending them a piece of his poetry or prose by 20 March [8, p. 390]. It was short notice taking into consideration that Voloshin was probably very busy then having to write articles for Birzhevye Vedomosti and polishing his own excellent book on Vasily Surikov for Iosif Knebel’s publishing house [8, p. 389; 10]. On the other hand, to miss the opportunity to pay homage to Shakespeare in England, together with Amari, Konstantin Bal’mont, Henri Bergson, Rudyard  Kipling, Henri de Regnier, Maurice Maeterlinck, Romain  Rolland, M. H. Spielmann, Rabindranath  Tagore, Evelyn  Underhill and Emile  Verhaeren (to name only a few) was not an option. Luckily, Voloshin had a beautiful unpublished (and still untitled!) poem in store that he had written between December 1912 and 1 Feb. 1913 [8,  pp. 309, 312]. So, all he had to do in February 1916 to meet the requirements from London was to make up the title thus dedicating the poem to Portia, the protagonist of Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. 




As a result, the poem first appeared in print in England, as Portia:

                          PORTIA

In the amber drowsiness of noontide minutes

There pass by women [*6] that resemble thee … 

In my agitated soul there sing triumphantly 

The fanfares of Tiepolo and the flutes of Giorgione.

And I dream a gorgeous dream, of laurels and acanthus

On marble terraces, of watery arcades 

And walled parks filled with odorous hedges

Of bitter box-trees and ivy garlands.

Replacing silence with the gay hubbub of the feast,

Thou passest by, laughing, midst plumes and swords,

Midst the faces sadly-wise and the flashing words

Of Velasquez’ jesters and of Shakespeare’s fools.

But I no longer see them: thy wearied face alone

Shines at me at the background of the Renaissance – 

On the dim gold of Spain’s majolica,

On the blue green of Persia’s pottery. 

(Translated by Nevill Forbes) [9, 517].

Vladimir Kupchenko argues that Voloshin started working on this poem in December 1913 [8, p. 309]. If Kupchenko is right, we must admit that by that time our genius had already lost or sacrificed at least four “Renaissance” ‘zhen’ he had been in love with: Margarita Sabashnikova (to Viacheslav Ivanov, 1907 and to Rudolf Steiner, 1912 [*7]), Violet Hart (to Vladimir Polunin, 1908), Elizaveta Dmitrieva (to Vsevolod Vasiliev, 1911) and Marina Tsvetaeva (to Sergei Efron, 1912). There is little doubt that “in the amber drowsiness of noontime minutes” Voloshin was dreaming of one of them. 

Was not she Elizabeth Violet Polunin, nee Hart?

Notes

[*1] Suffice it to say that Andrei Belyi referred to Voloshin as “a brilliant essayist, maybe even of Oscar Wilde’s calibre” [8, p. 128]. Cf. “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.” Mt. 13:57, KJV.

[*2] “If your heart is ecstatic and trembling,” June 1905; “Where are you, Violet dear?” May 1912.

[*3] Soon after Voloshin broke up with his wife, Margarita Sabashnikova (or was it vice versa ?), Hart came from Britain to visit him in the Crimea. Then Voloshin and Hart spent three days at Adelaida and Evgenia Gertsyk’s house in Sudak (July 1907 [8, p. 187]).

[*4] Gertsyk, probably, made a / another mistake here. It was Elizaveta Dmitrieva who married the engineer Vsevolod Vasil’ev [8, p. 442]. On Hart’s husband, Vladimir Polunin, see [1].

[*5] Max is a god, French.

[*6] Voloshin’s “zheny” here could mean both “women” and “wives.” The translator had to choose and, naturally, chose “women.” The second meaning, unfortunately, got lost in translation. 

[*7] In her letter to Aleksandra Petrova (16 April, 1912), Sabashnikova confessed that celebrating “Easter with Steiner had been the most important event” in her life (quoted in: [8, p. 296].

Bibliography

1. Ben  Uri.  Vladimir  Polunin,  Designer.  Electronic resource: www.buru.org.uk/contributor/vladimir-polunin. Accessed 24 June, 2024.

2. Lord Byron. Don Juan in: Selected Poems of Lord Byron. N.p.: Wordsworth Poetry Library, 2006. PP. 51-555.

3. Davydov, Zakhar, Kupchenko, Vladimir. Krym Maksimiliana Voloshina [Maximilian Voloshin’s Crimea]. Kiev: Mystetstvo, 1994.

4. Dunford, Penny. Polunin, Elizabeth V., nee Hart in: Dunford, Penny. A Biographical Dictionary of Women Artists in Europe and America since 1850. New York, London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1990. PP.233-234.

5. Gertsyk, Evgenia. Vospominaniya [Memoirs]. Paris: YMCA, 1973.

6. Gollancz, Israel, ed. A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1916.

7. I[srael] G[ollanz]. Preface in: Gollancz, Israel, ed. A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1916. PP. VII-X.

8. Kupchenko, Vladimir. Trudy i Dni Maksimiliana Voloshina. 1877 – 1916 [Maksimilian Voloshin’s labours and days.  1877-1916]. Sankt-Peterburg: Aleteia, 2002. 

9. Voloshin, Maximilian. Portia in: Gollancz, Israel, ed. A Book of Homage to Shakespeare. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1916. PP. 516-517.

10. Voloshin, Maksimilian. Surikov. Koktebel: Dom-muzey M.A. Voloshina, n.d.



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