The American poet Frost is probably a picky person in everything, but once he said this: "The reader can conclude that he has read a good poem the moment it hits his heart. Eternally wounded - he can never heal that wound. That is to say, the eternity of poetry, like the eternity of love, can be felt in an instant, without waiting for the test of time. Really good poetry is... A poem that we know as soon as we see it that we will never forget it.”
Obviously, Frost is not talking about "readers" but some unforgettable experience in his own life. When I look back on my knowledge of Tsvetaeva, the first thing that comes to my mind is this quote from the elder Frost. In fact, how can we have any profound understanding of this witch-like, mercury-like and active Russian poetess! What we have is just the experience of being "seized" for a moment. I admit, I am such a deeply enchanted person.
It was exactly ten years ago in London. I went to the Thames South Bank Literary and Art Center to listen to a poetry recital. After the performance, my heart seemed to still be surging, so I stepped into the evening breeze When I was walking on the Thames Bridge, I couldn't help but open the program book of the poetry festival under the street lamp. Unexpectedly, I only read the first two sentences of the poem, and I was shocked: "I will be late for the wedding we have made." Yes;/
When I arrive, my hair will turn gray..." Whose poem is this? I asked in the dark, how could an Englishman write such a poem?
Looking at the author again, it turned out to be Tsvetaeva! This painful genius can no longer come to England to read her poems. She has long since rested somewhere in remote and desolate Russia. At this time, I learned that the opening of the poetry festival was a special performance commemorating the centenary of her birth, and I missed it! Fortunately, the poet's poems are still "waiting" for me to read without forgetting everything; "living, lasting like clay", I read, and I experienced the trembling and trembling that I had never experienced after reading poetry for many years. I didn't dare to look down (looking down, the last sentence was "Above the sky is my funeral"); finally I closed the book and, like a weak man, walked onto the huge Thames River with the lights flickering under the night sky. Iron Bridge...
From then on, I learned what the power of poetry is, what a fatal blow to the soul or a profound arrival is. Just like a person who knows that he has been poisoned but does not want to pull out the poisonous thorn, I live in a foreign country with this kind of poem. I gained a more inner strength to overcome external pain and chaos. Now think about it, how nostalgic those days are! In the fog of London, it was Russia's sad and holy muse that came to me.
Such a stage of life has passed like this. Now, even if I don't lament the passage of time, I have to marvel at the material role that "natural laws" play in ourselves. It seems that in the blink of an eye, it is time to reach a certain compromise with this secular and physical world, as the old Du Fu said, "the old poems become blurred" and "the new ones stop the wine glass." It's time. Besides, for a person like me, who has read poetry all his life, what else can be exciting? What else could stir my blood again? We ourselves have long been "insensitive".
However, it is also in this situation that someone you have long forgotten comes to you. I think everyone already knows who he is talking about here. It seems that her appearance once is not enough, she will appear again. About half a year ago, I occasionally opened a magazine, and there happened to be a song "Psyche" by Tsvetaeva. I didn't pay much attention to it at first, but then, it seemed like an inexplicable force pulled me. , as if the dead were suddenly resurrected, and "all the past" came back:
You are wearing - my sweetheart - tattered clothes,
They were once delicate skin.
Everything is worn, everything is torn to pieces,
Only two wings remain.
Put yourself on your glory,
Forgive me, save me, but
those poor, dusty rags—
Take them to the sacristy of the church.
It is poems like this that make me "stay". This time, although not as intense as last time, it may be more profound: it not only made me feel the texture and brilliance of a language again, and the meaning of love, sacrifice, suffering and dedication, but importantly, it filled my heart ashamed. At that moment, I understood why the Irish poet Seamus Heine said that Russian poets like Mandelstam and Tsvetaeva constituted a "judgment seat" on the landscape of modern poetry in the twentieth century. Yes, I can only feel ashamed when faced with such a simple, scarred, extremely sad and inoffensive poem. It forced me to face my own heart again. It made me realize that people like me are meant to be with something, to be "dependent" on it. As people say, it doesn't matter whether you love it or not.
This is the Tsvetaeva in my mind. I have done some research on another Russian female poet Akhmatova. If her poems are "historical" (especially her middle and late poems), Tsvetaeva's poems are "mythological" . To describe such a poetry we need another language, which seems to have been lost today.
We live in such an era where things are getting worse and worse, and we are getting further and further away from our origins.
However, literature and poetry carry memories. Tsvetaeva's poems moved and amazed me, not only because she wrote about the suffering and longing of the Russian soul, but also because through her unique passion, inspiration and language, she powerfully resurrected the poetry that seems to be better than all languages. An older and more mysterious power. This cannot but be said to be a miracle of modern poetry. Yes, it makes me realize again today the power that comes from the origin of poetry. Where does this power lie? It is certainly not in the current bustle of mistaking the instinct of desire for the instinct of art, nor perhaps in our own tact or eloquence. Yet this power does exist. It has been touched again and again by humans, but has been forgotten again and again. All this, as Tsvetaeva’s friend and contemporary poet Mangerstam wrote long ago:
Perhaps the whisper already existed before the mouth,
Leaves were swirling long before trees existed, and the objects to which we devote our experience were formed long before that time.