Tom Dolack
note: all Russian quotes have been removed
Schiller and the Poetics of Pavlova’s Twofold Life

    The cards seem stacked against Cecily, the hero of Karolina Pavlova’s novel Äâîéíàÿ æèçíü (A Twofold Life). She inhabits a world where lies, euphemisms and make-up cover a world of insincerity, cruelty and inane social convention. Her innate talents and natural spirit are stunted and twisted into an unnatural shape until they no longer bear any resemblance to anything good or healthy. Her mother lies to her, her best friend uses her as a pawn to trap a husband, and she is in general buffeted by the winds of social caprice. She gets engaged to a man who, it is made clear, will betray her and is only marrying her for money that she does not actually have. Worst of all, Cecily has been so well  trained by her mother and society that she walks into this dismal future with a song in her heart and thinking her life is a dream.
    Cecily does have one thing going for her:  She has, for a while anyway, access to another world, which makes up the second half of the twofold life, to which she escapes at night in her dreams. This world is characterized by poetry. Whereas the social intrigues and vanity of the day are  told in regular prose, her dreams are in the form of poetry. In this world she is granted clairvoyance and can see through the dense fog of social convention. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) she forgets all that she has learned when she wakes up. The disembodied soul which speaks to her tells her:

And there my word will fall silent,
The trace of my love will disappear;
Among the talk of people,
You will remember me as empty ravings.

    Even in her dreams, she is not grateful for her special knowledge. She laments at the end of the seventh chapter  "You, sorrowfull force, are always turning my joy into a lie." This is completely understandable because the voice in essence is saying that her life will be empty and unhappy. The voice sees her life, present and future, for what it is and what it will be, and lifts the veil of her self-delusion.
    This, of course, brings up the question of why it would do this. Why is she given a glimpse of this other world, only to be thrown back, cruelly, into her quotidian life of venal cares and trite conversation, without even the consolation of the memory of this other world?  Cecily herself asks  “Why on earth couldn’t you my heart its short day of deception?”  The voice responds

So that you would glance in that direction,
Where eternity waits;
So you would understand something else,
Than this string of empty cares

So that the luminary of your soul
Does not burn out in the earthly darkness;
So that you do not commit
Sacrilage against yourself.

The implication seems to be that one glimpse of this poetic world, even one that will be forgotten, will suffice for a lifetime of sorrow and despair. Fleeting knowledge is better than ignorance.
This thought is uttered earlier, in the dream at the end of Chapter three where the voice says:


Then, in the distant desert
The Sun did not burn the palm for an entire age in vain,
When beneath it (the palm), tortured by heat,
Just one forehead was bowed,
When in the fruitless country of intense heat
One traveller, deprived of strength,
Blessed its shade.

The brief respite that Cecily gets during her sleeping hours makes up for the evanescence and immateriality of her dream world.
    Other than the fact that this other world cannot improve Cecily’s everyday life, we have other reasons to doubt its usefulness. The voice which speaks to her in her sleep appears to be that of a recently deceased gentleman. Some women speak of his death at the beginning of the novel. Cecily, not knowing who they are discussing, asks  “Who died?” These are, in fact, the first words that Cecily speaks in the book. This question is echoed at the end of the chapter, right before the first lines of verse: “How could this be?..who?...and where?” There is some room for ambiguity in this chapter, however, because Olga asks her friend shortly after the first question, “Who’s that, Cécile?” It turns out that it is a nameless poet who will later read at a soirée that Cecily  attends. This would seem to be appropriate as the nighttime voice is both nameless and a poet.
    As apropos as the second interpretation is, the former seems to work better, not only because in the first instance it is Cecily who asks the question, but because  she later tells Olga in Chapter 2 that  “I dreamed about person about whom it was said yesterday at our place that he had died that morning.” Another clue is what happens at the end of Chapter five. Here, before going to bed, Cecily remembers  “about that poor, only recently deceased woman who, just a few days ago, sat before her well-dressed at happy...” This woman loved her husband and was not loved in return, for which she is held up as a negative example to Cecily by her mother. The verses at the end of this chapter consist of two voices instead of the usual one. The two voices also discuss a recently deceased woman; the final lines of the chapter speak of how she was not to blame for being true to her heart. There is a change here. While the other chapters have two voices, Cecily’s and the voice of the dream, this chapter replaces Cecily with another woman’s voice, and they are clearly marked ïåðâûé ãîëîñ and âòîðîé ãîëîñ.The most reasonable explanation of this change is that one of them is that of the deceased woman speaking of herself in the third person, as of someone in another world, another life.
    It is disconcerting that this world of poetry is inhabited only by people who are either dead or unconscious. It does none of us any good if in order to reach the world of inspiration we have to fall asleep or die. Fortunately there are instances, albeit very few, where this other world spills over into this one. Cecily experiences this only twice in her waking moments. The first is after the poetry reading, right before she goes to sleep: "There unconsciously awakened in her a new and incomprehensible sympathy for this harmony of verse, for these resonant thoughts, for these improper delights, and such an unexpected sympathy almost scared her."
    The second is at the end of the novel when, right before she is to be married, she hums to herself two of the lines she had heard the night before:   "So go now according to your verdict,/Defenseless and alone..." Cecily, however, cannot remember where she heard them, and Olga’s reaction to them is  “What nonsense!” This does show, however that she has absorbed the final lesson of the voice –


Do not overstep your bounds and disturb the heavens
Strangle your dreams
And only your daily bread
Dare to ask from God.

    We must wonder at this point if the other world has given up on her, or whether it, knowing the futility of doing otherwise, has administered an anaesthetic to get her through the rest of her bleak life. There never seemed to be any hope of some sort of permanent enlightenment. It is clear from the start that society will win out over her. The forces are too strong, her fate is settled from the outset. All the voice can do is hope to light a candle in the  or “silent temple” deep within her.
Even if some miracle could be worked, it is clear that she would be shunned, much as Pavlova herself was. The only hope is to find an earthly object and to love the Eternal in that earthly form, much like the unfortunate woman who died loving, but unloved.

Glance around at what the world busies itself with!
Dedicating your whole life to a phantom,
Believe it; find yourself an idol!

And dress it up in your day-dreams,
And wait for happiness, obstinate child!
Whether bored or joking around it will answer
The ardour of your soul, the outpourings of your heart.

    Does this mean, however, that the divide between the world of poetry and our more prosaic one is, for all intents and purposes, unbridgeable? Surely Cecily seems to be a rather typical young woman of her age (in both meanings of the word), but there is a spark in her which separates her from her peers, and this is the reason why the voice speaks to her. Not only this, but if her experience is only marginally useful to herself, it is entirely useless to the rest of society.
    The only living, conscious mortal who has access to the higher world on an everyday, useful basis is the poet. Because of this, the nameless poet in Dvoinaya Zhizn' bears some examination. Superficially, the fact that he has no name is striking. Even Vera Vladimirovna, who invites him to read at her soirée does not know his name: "I think you're the one who knows that young man, what's his name?" It seems odd that this character, a seemingly minor one who does not even get a name, merits mention, if incidentally, in two consecutive chapters where he plays no discernible role. Even in the third chapter, where he plays an important part, we still do not find out his name. In fact he is upstaged at the party by a Spanish count with “wonderful eyes,” and even he gets a name later in the book.
    For the first third of the book, he is known simply as “the poet” or “the writer.” This, it seems, serves two functions. The first is to show how unimportant he is to society. To this society, this “ñâåò” or world (the world which is opposed to the dream-world) he is not an artist, or a clairvoyant. He is merely entertainment for a night, Vera’s ace in the hole for a successful gathering. It is clear that he is not used to the attentions of high society and he is uncomfortable.

He was so young and inexperienced that he read his verses in that aristocratic society with the same enthusiasm with which he read them in his own modest room, alone with himself; he was so tempered in the flame of poetry that he did not feel the worldly coldness which blew from all these people.

The second reason is that it raises the character from one personage in a novel to a much more universal plane, an everypoet, if you will. His anonymity before and his treatment by society is a commentary by Pavlova on the role of the arts in her society.
    As mentioned above, the poem which the young poet reads is important because it leads Cecily to her only waking moment of inspiration. But it is very interesting, and important, in its own right. What he reads is his own translation of Friedrich von Schiller’s “Das Lied von der Glocke,” “The Lay of the Bell.” The poem intertwines two stories – the casting of a bell, and a man’s life. The bell rings at his birth, at his wedding, signals the fire when his house begins to burn, and finally tolls the death of his wife. The connection is captured in the Latin tag to the poem “Vivos voco mortuos plango fulgura frango” - “I summon the living, I mourn the dead, I crash like lightening.” The bell signals the epochs of a man’s life: birth, marriage and death.
Schiller was one of the most influential poets in 19th century Russian literature. His poetry was much in the air during this period and many imbibed this Romantic atmosphere from their youth. His poetry was readily available in the Russian translations of Vasily Andreevich Zhukovsky. Pavlova, however, knew his works quite well in the original. She translated his “Wallensteins Tod” “The Death of Wallenstein” and part of his “Demetrius” - Schiller’s version of the story of Dmitrii the Pretender - into Russian. She also translated “Die Jungfrau von Orleans” into French.
    But we must wonder, as we should every time an author cites another work, why does he read this poem? First of all, Pavlova is certainly capable of writing a poem for him to read herself. This of course could be done, and done effectively, but quoting another poem has several advantages. All literary allusions carry their own baggage. It allows things to be said without saying them directly. Secondly, in the case of a translation such as this one, alterations can be made from the original which can be meaningful and speak for the author. Finally the act of selection has its own significance.
    This brings us to the next question:  Why this poem and not another one? One reason is the bell’s (and “The Bell”’s) association with a higher life. The bell rings to usher people into and out of this life. It is also given a privileged, almost holy role:
Hoch über’m niedern Erdenleben
Soll sie im blauem Himmelszelt
Die Nachbarin des Donners schweben
Und grenzen an die Sternenwelt,
Soll eine Stimme sein von oben,
Wie der Gestirne helle Schar,
Die ihren Schöpfer wandelnd loben (67-68)

    High above lowly Earth’s life
    May it [the bell] float in the blue firmament
    Like thunder’s neighbor
    And border on the starry world,
    May it be a voice from above
    Like the bright band of stars
    Who praise their changing creator

Schiller’s “Bell” thus makes an excellent limen between the two worlds. Also, as a man-made object, and one requiring consummate craft and artisanship at that, it makes an excellent symbol for poetry itself.
    The poem, like the bell, stands between worlds and can shuttle between them. For this reason we should not be surprised when the poet’s reading ushers in Cecily’s first moment of conscious inspiration. It is also appropriate that, whortly before the mention of the deceased dream-man we read a reference to   “ a large bronze clock which just struck half paast ten.” The hour is struck, just like the bell. Similarly, just before her first dream Cecily’s clock strikes half past twelve.
    Another reason is the parallels that exist between the poem and the novel. For instance the confrontation between dream and reality. Before the man’s wedding we read “Der Wahn ist kurz, die Reu’ ist lang (59),” “Delusion is short, remorse is long.” Then the poet laments
Ach! Des Lebens schönste Feier
Endigt auch den Lebensmai,
Mit dem Gürtel, mit dem Schleier
Reißt der schöne Wahn entzwei (59.)

Oh! Life’s most beautiful celebration
Terminates life’s spring;
With the belt, with the veil,
The beautiful delusion is torn in two.

After the young couple is wed, the woman falls into the life of rearing children and domestic worries. It is clear that this is the life that Cecily has to look forward to as well. She does not even have a prospective fiancé yet, but anyone familiar with this poem should notice the foreshadowing.
We are also given a possible reason for the funerary tone of the other world. In order for the bell to be completed and raised to its honored place, we learn that “Muß die Form in Stücken gehen (66)” - that “The mould must be smashed to pieces.” Similarly, the body must be cast off before the soul can rise to the blauen Himmelszelt.
    As interesting as these connections are, they are all located in parts of the poem which we are not given. Pavlova only gives us 22 lines of the poem in the poet’s translation. The translation is, of course, actually done by Pavlova herself, who was a phenomenal linguist and translator of much repute. We can assume, given her prowess, that her translation from the German is reasonably good. Naturally translation, especially poetic translation, is an inexact science, an art in fact, and inaccuracies are to be expected, but it is safe to assume that any marked differences between her translation and the original German are on purpose and are thus important.
    The first such discrepancy is in the second line of the translation:   "And henseforth may such be its destiny." The German has “Und dies sei fortan ihr Beruf,/Wozu der Meister sie erschuf (67)” “And this will henceforth be its occupation for which the master created it.” The German holds a more Romantic idea – that the bell/poem is created by the artist to perform its special function. In the Russian, however, it is its “predestination.” The poem, by its very nature (emphasized by the use of takogo), straddles the two worlds. This rather Platonic view emphasizes the separation between the two worlds by removing the master (that is the poet) from the equation.
    A similar note is struck when Pavlova translates “Nur ewigen und ernsten Dingen/Sei ihr metallner Mund geweiht (68.)” as Where the Russian reads “with a bronze tongue, it speaks only of that which is holy and all-powerful” the German reads “it’s metal mouth/lips shall be consecrated only to that which is eternal and solemn.” Here again Pavlova’s translation is active where the original is passive. People must do the consecrating, whereas the bell can “ãëàñèòü” of its own accord. The transcendent object  in Pavlova’s world is autonomous and separate from the world of man.
    Again, two lines later, a more active role is played by the Russian bell. Schiller says “Dem Schicksal leihe sie die Zunge (68)” – “may it lend it’s tongue to fate” – where Pavlova writes  In the translation, the bell becomes the word of fate, like the voice in Cecily’s dreams which is clairvoyant and sets the tone for the rest of her life. Similarly, Pavlova translates “Begleite sie mit ihrem Schwunge/Des Lebens wechselvolles Spiel” as  Instead of “accompanying … life’s changing game” it “announces from a distance.” The bell is not a part of “the game of earthly existence.” Instead it is far away and has no contact with this plane of existence. It is separate and higher. Not only is the line  highly appropriate considering the narrator’s cynical view of society, but it is ironic since society reacts to inspiration with “boredom and joking.” Both worlds seem to regard the other with spite.
    The translation ends with these four rather depressing lines:

And, striking us fleetingly
With a powerful sound from on high,
May it teach that nothing is eternal,
that everything earthly will pass.

There are two alterations from the German here. The first is that the translation has the word/bell “striking fleetingly” and the original has “Klang im Ohr vergehet,” the “sound fades away in the ear”. The later has a greater emphasis on hearing, on the reception of the sound. The Russian doesn’t seem to get that far, possibly because it has further to travel. The second discrepancy is that Pavlova’s version has “from on high.” This, once again, emphasizes the gulf between the two worlds and the distance between the world of poetry and us.
    The poem ends on a downbeat. “So lehre sie, daß nichts bestehet,/Daß alles Irdische verhallt (68)” – “So may it teach that nothing persists, that everything earthly must die away.” This mournful tone fits very well in the novel and foreshadows the book’s depressing ending where, the voice leaves Cecily when she is about to marry a man who she thinks loves her, but only wants her (nonexistent) money and plans on deceiving her shortly after their wedding. She goes off to her fate  “defenseless and alone”.
    All of this, however, is not the most striking alteration to Schiller’s poem. Before the poem is read by the poet in the novel we are told “at last the final inspired words flew from his burning lips.” When the reading is over we are told  “the notebook fell from his hands -- he became silent”. We are told explicitly that these are his “last inspired words” and the notebook falling out of his hands signals the end of the poem. Yet there is still another stanza to the poem. The novel gives no hint of this whatsoever, and in fact seems to say the contrary - that the passage quoted is in fact the end of the poem.
    To figure out why Pavlova does this, we must look at the missing stanza.
    Jetzo mit der Kraft des Stranges
    Wiegt die Glock’ mir aus der Gruft,
    Daß sie in das Reich des Klanges
    Steige, in die Himmelsluft.
Ziehet, ziehet, hebt!
    Sie bewegt sich, schwebt.
    Freude dieser Stadt bedeute,
    Friede sei ihr erst Geläute (68.)

Now with the power of the rope
Lift the bell from its tomb,
That into the kingdom of sound,
Into the celestial air it will rise.
Pull, pull, heave!
It moves, it hangs.
May its first ringing mean joy
For this city, may it mean peace.

The first six lines tell of the bell’s being raised into the “Reich des Klanges” and “die Himmelsluft,” the kingdom of sound and the celestial air. There is an imperative, directed at the workers, but presumably also at the reader, to pull and heave, to bring the bell up to its exalted position.
    These lines do not seem problematic. In fact they would help emphasize the celestial position of art. Where there is a problem, at least as far as Pavlova’s text is concerned, is in the last two lines. “May its first ringing mean joy and peace to this town.” The bleak tone of the penultimate stanza is turned around in the final one. Instead of a rumination on the evanescence of life, the final note is one of peace and joy. It is easy to see how this does not fit into what Pavlova is doing in the novel. Even her nocturnal guest realizes that Cecily does not have many options open to her. She was blessed with a poetic soul, only to have it trampled by society. She was engaged to a shallow man of poor means due to the intrigues of her best friend and the ignorance of her mother. While she is elated with her fiancé, it is clear her dreams will be dashed shortly after her wedding day. The only light on the horizon is that she will soon have her own children to stunt and warp to society’s specifications. The depressing stanza is a much more appropriate one with which to end the poem.
    The reader does not have to be aware of the discrepancies of the translation (and, indeed, is likely not to) or of the missing stanza in order to get the point of the scene. The foreshadowing, especially for those rereading the novel, is clear, and even heavy-handed. Art, be it a bell, a poem, or a novel with verse, only reminds us of our mortality and the impossibility of happiness. Pavlova’s audience - her coterie of poets, writers and educated aristocrats of the áîëüøîé ñâåò, the grand monde- were likely to be familiar with the poem, be it in translation or in the original. Knowing the complete poem, preferably in the original, though not necessary, helps to underscore the bleakness of the poem. We can expect that the author will deny Cecily her happy ending the same way she does so for Schiller’s poem.  
    This pessimism is so pervasive that it seems to infect both the other world, as well as the narrator herself. At the end of Chapter 9, the celestial voice gives up on Cecily. He sends her to her fate, never to speak to her again. There is still one chapter in the book, though, so the narrator supplies the verse for the final chapter. It is clear by the gender agreement with the past-tense verbs in these stanzas  that the narrator is a woman. It seems that the narrator’s inspiration fades away after the marriage, just like Cecily’s. This can show solidarity with her protagonist, or be yet another indictment of the institution and the lack of opportunities for woman in society. Whatever the reason, these final ten stanzas are likely to be the narrator’s last.
    
This song is perhaps the last:
Dreams are carried away faster than years!
Is it for me to recognize the vain power of the world/society?
Is it for me to forget the service of beauty?

    Finally, after the reading is finished, the audience reacts with applause and praise (said in French). His translation is commended, and then a discussion ensues of how contemporary poetry should be useful to mankind. The poet is advised to write socially useful poetry. He is too abashed to reply.  “The poor young poet though that, perhaps, feeling and thinking, loving and praying were also somewhat useful for humanity. But he kept silent.” There is no room for doubt with which of the two ideas we are meant to sympathize.
    This passage seems to connect up with two other sections of the book. The first is at the end of Chapter two. The nightly visitor, speaking of the nighttime when he will come to visit her, he says "And, blazing with prayer,/The stars will stand before the creator." This in turn echoes two lines from the poet’s translation: “Like the circular dance of all the constellations;/May it glorify the creator of the universe.” The voice’s lines are said before the poet reads his, and the poet cannot know about what the voice has said to Cecily in her dream. There is thus a another connection between the other world and the poet.
    We can conclude that in this world where "all struggles, sacrifices and sufferings,/All affairs of the earth  are vanity!" the only hope is that inspiration and happiness lie somewhere with this higher world. The connection between the two worlds, seemingly the only one, is poetry. Hence the poet is the only member of society, and the only character in the novel, who can escape the vanity and evanescence of earthly existence. As the last lines of the book read: “Blessed is he who, arguing with the thunderstorm,/Can save one treasure for himself.”