Zinaida Hippius (also rendered as Gippius: 1869-1945) was the leading religious poet in Russia of her time, but it was not conventional faith by any means.
She drew from Vladimir Solovyev (1853-1900) the concept of a universal love that binds together
the earthly and divine. Her poems commonly dramatize the struggle for moral and religious enlightenment, against ennui, and against self-love and pride.
Hippius was born in a rural area of Tula, and mostly educated at home. In 1889 she married Dmitry Merezhovsky, and lived in St. Peterburg, where the two founded a
Sunday salon for like-minded writers. They were later joined by the literary critic Dmitry Filosofov, with whom they formed a ménage a trois. Zinaida herself wrote in the masculine gender,
and flaunted a bohemian dandyism in clothes and attitudes. Disappointed by the 1905 Revolution, the couple moved to Paris. They supported the earlier 1917 Revolution, but
not the Communist one, returning to France, where they lived for the remainder of their lives.
Symbolist poems often defy extended rational explanation, as can translations of this work of Zinaida Hippus. The imagery can also be conventionally 'decadent', deriving from Baudelaire and other French poets. 'The Flowers of Night' is an early piece, written in 1894,
and has many affinities with our own Nineties poets, though it is not particularly so here, where somelogic can be traced through, indeed should be traced through. Zinaida herself wrote in the masculine gender,
and flaunted a bohemian dandyism in clothes and attitudes.
Hippius was well known in Russia before the Revolution, but much less so the later years, though the Bolsheviks allowed the publication of her last two collections: 'Last Poems' (1918) and 'A Diary, 1911-1921' (1929). She also wrote short stories, plays and novels, but these haven't lasted.
Many of Hippius' póems deal with death, as a philosophical issue and as a source of neuroses. Typically, the poems are short, use a basic vocabulary, and are earnest in attack,
sometimes bordering on a faint lecturing tone.
Свобода
Я не могу покоряться людям.
Можно ли рабства хотеть?
Целую жизнь мы друг друга судим, —
Чтобы затем — умереть.
Я не могу покоряться Богу,
Если я Бога люблю.
Он указал мне мою дорогу,
Как от нее отступлю?
Я разрываю людские сети —
Счастье, унынье и сон.
Мы не рабы, — но мы Божьи дети,
Дети свободны, как Он.
Только взываю, именем Сына,
К Богу, Творцу Бытия:
Отче, вовек да будут едино
Воля Твоя и моя!
1904
The poem is written in alternating tetrameters and trimeters rhymed AbAb etc., close to the Dactylic (- u u) but with an impaired rhythm, i.e. the dolnik, that Hippius liked:
Я не могу́ покоря́ться лю́дям. – u u – u u – u - u 4A
Мо́жно ли ра́бства хоте́ть? - u u – u u - 3b
Це́лую жизнь мы друг дру́га су́дим, — - u u – u u – u – u 4A
Что́бы зате́м — умере́ть. - u u – u u – 3b
Я не могу́ покоря́ться Бо́гу, - u u – u u – u – u 4C
Е́сли я Бо́га люблю́. - u u – u u - 3d
Он указа́л мне мою́ доро́гу, - u u – u u – u – u 4C
Как от неё отступлю́? - u u – u u - 3d
A TTS Audio Recording of the poem:
Ruverses have two versions. One is by Boris Dralyuk, which is quiet and faithful
to the Russian. I give his first two stanzas:
I can’t submit myself to man.
Who’d choose to be a slave?
We judge each other all life long —
and then? A lonely grave.
I can’t submit myself to God,
because I love Him so.
For God has set me on this road —
where else am I to go?
The second, freer but more attempting to make sense of the the thought, is by Yevgeny Bonver. I give his last two stanzas:
I break all nets by which people are drawn —
Dreams, deepest sadness and bliss.
We are not slaves, we are children His own,
Children are free as He is.
I pray my God, who produced all the living,
Using the name of His Son:
Father, let our unambiguous willing
Ever be righteous and one!
I'd make two suggestions. First is that extra syllables of the dolnik swell the stanza from 4 3 4 3 to 5 4 5 4. The second is to adopt Bonver's freer
approach and try to fathom Hippius' meaning. Russian Symbolism takes liberties with sense, but is not wholly irrational. A first draft is:
I can’t submit to other people’s wrong:
how could I want their slavery?
If people judging lasts our whole lives long
an end to it is death’s decree.
I can’t submit to God’s great towering wrath
if love of Him should guide my feet,
for He who put me on this needful path
would never sanction my retreat.
I am the breaker of all that holds us in
through happiness, despondency and sleep.
But we are not slaves but of His shape and kin:
like him, are free to love or weep.
I call out in the name of His most holy son,
of all creation, of things divine.
Entail, dear Lord, they be forever one,
that Your dread will be also mine.
This, I think, is the logic that Hippius is arguing, though the rendering certainly enlarges the rather plain original. My 'I can’t submit to God’s great towering wrath' is simply
'I cannot submit to God' in the Russian, for example. My 'like him, are free to love or weep' is even further from the literal ('Children are free, like Him') but of course
I am finding a rhyme for 'holds us in', which is simply 'net' in the original. We should correct and polish a little:
I can’t submit to other people’s wrong:
how could I want their slavery?
If judging people lasts our whole lives long
it only ends in death’s decree.
I can’t submit to God’s judgemental wrath
if love of Him should guide my feet,
for He who put me on this needful path
would never sanction my retreat.
I am the breaker of all that holds us in
through happiness, despondency and sleep.
But we are not slaves but younger kith and kin,
and may, like him, both love and weep.
I call out in the name of His most holy son,
of all creation, things divine.
May they be, dear Lord, be forever one:
Thy will be also mine.
1. Mirsky, D.S. Contemporary Russian Literature (Knopf 1926) 192-96.
2. Bristol, E., A History of Russian Poetry (1991, O.U.P.) 181-83.
3. Анализ стихотворения З. Гиппиус «Нелюбовь» (Analysis of Z. Gippius' poem "Dislike") General account
of Symbolist poetry in Russian.
Russian poem translations on this site: listing.
