MARIA RUBINS

DIALOGUES ACROSS CULTURES:  ADAPTATIONS OF CHINESE VERSE BY JUDITH GAUTIER AND NIKOLAI GUMILEV

THIS PAPER ADDRESSES his paper a complicated process of cultural transmission, focusing on the peculiar way in which Russian Modernism took Oriental motifs as one of its identifying features, but presented Asia largely through the medium of Western European interpretations. The leader of the early-twentieth-century Russian Acmeist group of poets, Nikolai Gumilev, is a case in point, as his 1918 collection The Porcelain Pavilion contained versified adaptations of French translations from Chinese classical poetry. Gumilev’s immediate source was The Book of Jade, published in 1867 by Judith Gautier, an accomplished Sinologist and fiction writer close to Parnassian circles. 

French art of the middle of the nineteenth century was marked by an intense creative exploration of the Far East, and the "chinoiserie" style also became pervasive in literature. This style survived to the turn of the twentieth century, when stylization of the East became part of the Art Nouveau aesthetic program. Art Nouveau came to Russia from the West, notably from France, a country with which Russian artists traditionally maintained close ties. It was only natural that they should turn to the medium of French culture in their assimilation of the Oriental themes promoted by Art Nouveau. Gumilev was no exception, as he traveled to France in 1917 to discover the beauty and aesthetic potential of Chinese verse through Gautier’s translations.

Judith Gautier, who was fluent in Chinese, carefully rendered a number of Tang Dynasty texts in rhythmic prose, aiming primarily to introduce Chinese verse, still a largely unexplored area at the time, to the French reading audience. Gumilev, who did not know Chinese, used Gautier’s The Book of Jade as a mere starting point for his collection, creating essentially an independent work of literature. Although the theme, plot, and mood of each piece are conserved, the structure of Gumilev’s book, the use of versification in lieu of rhythmic prose, and the emphasis on metapoetic content all betray the Russian poet’s original agenda.

This article systematically analyzes why classical Chinese poetry became a vehicle for the expression of Gautier’s and Gumilev’s aesthetic sensibilities, as well as how the ideals of art for art’s sake, the careful crafting of verse, and leisurely creativity, so prominent in Chinese texts, reflect the Russian poet’s apolitical stance with respect to the turmoil of revolutionary Russia. With respect to Gumilev’s dialectic as a poet, The Porcelain Pavilion appears well integrated into the restrained, philosophical, and introspective verse of his later period, including his stylizations of medieval Persian masters. Ultimately, the comparative study of translations by Gautier and Gumilev illustrates yet another form of Modernist cultural exchange between Russia and the West.