Nikolai Klyuev,
1884-1937
Nikolai Klyuev is
one of the most
interesting,
contradictory, and
complex figures of
the Modernist
period
Left – with his close
friend Nikolai
Arkhipov in Vytegra,
early 1920s; right,
around 1930
Klyuev was born
and grew up near
the southern end of
Lake Onega in
northern Russia, in
the area around the
small town of
Vytegra. The area,
relatively remote
from major urban
centers, is culturally
a border area
between
traditionally Slavic
and Finno-Ugric
territories. Klyuev
lived in villages
where both
Orthodoxy and the
Old Belief were
practiced.
He was probably born in the village of Koshtugi, on
the rivers Megra and Kimreka, and he was
certainly baptized there in 1884.
Онежское озеро
Koshtugi
Koshtugi is only some 60 km from Vytegra, but poor roads can make that a long
journey even today
The village is very
picturesque, but its
population is now small
and declining, as is the
case in many Russian
villages.
In the late nineteenth
century, however, it was
thriving, with a
population of over 1,000.
Details of the village from a local tourist brochure
The church where the future poet was baptized was closed
in the Soviet era, and used as a barn. It has now been
reconsecrated, but is in serious disrepair. On the left, the
church in 1994, on the right, in 2003.
Koshtugi in July, 2003. The village has a school with about
twenty pupils, but most year-round inhabitants are elderly. The
population now is smaller than the number of kostuzhane who
died at the front in the Second World War.
Klyuev’s father, a former
soldier (pictured with the
future poet, left), was a
village constable at the
time of Nikolai’s birth.
Later, the family moved to
the village of
Zhelvachevo (below,
photographed in 1994).
In Zhelvachevo, Klyuev’s
father was the landlord of a
government wine store.
Zhelvachevo is a derevnya, forming part of the larger selo of
Makachevo, north of Vytegra
Покупатели – типичные
жители этой, к сожалению
умирающей, деревни.
On the site where the family house stood, a memorial plaque has been installed (left); the
village is on a bend in the river Andoma (top right); it consists now of only a few houses
(bottom right).
Here are two of the three last full-time residents of Zhelvachevo
(the other houses are used as dachi in the summer).
In this house (left) Klyuev probably
began to write. From here, he
initiated a correspondence with
Aleksandr Blok, the leading
Symbolist poet. In the 1960s the
house was moved to Makachevo, to
serve as a school. For a long time it
stood empty; as of 2003 it was
serving as the village library. A
plaque commemorates its role in the
author’s life.
Memorialization
Even the language of the
two plaques is telling. The
plaque on the house, put up
in the Soviet period, calls
Klyuev a “Russian Soviet
poet” – a contentious and
ideological qualification,
especially ironic, given that
he died a victim of Soviet
repression. The plaque on
the site where the house
once stood, installed in the
1990s, merely states “Here
in the village of
Zhelvachevo stood the
house where in the years
1895-1915 lived N. A.
Klyuev”.
Until the Soviet period, Makachevo had
two churches (a summer and a winter
church). Now almost nothing is left of
either. A cross marks the approximate
spot of burial of Klyuev’s parents in the
remnants of the church yard. The two
churches were destroyed in the 1960s.
Memorialization
Under the aegis of the Vytegra Museum, the
presumed site of burial of Klyuev’s parents is
maintained as a memorial. In 2003 the cross was
replaced with a shrine resembling the original,
discovered on a photograph of the 1910s.
Participants of the annual Klyuev symposium in
Vytegra always visit the site.
Vytegra
Klyuev moved
between the
Vytegra area
and St
Petersburg in
the 1910s as his
reputation
grew. He lived
in Vytegra for
the early Soviet
years
Zhelvachevo
Cross at Makachevo
Klyuev country
Rubtsovo – last village in the
area where the poet lived.
Koshtugi in October 2002
Vytegra
Tudozero
Vytegra in October 1994
After the early 1920s Klyuev never
returned to his native region, living
first in Petrograd/Leningrad, then
Moscow. He remained faithful to his
early identification with the peasantry
and Old Russian culture (see his urban
room, top left). He was also deeply
attached to the memory of the young
Sergei Esenin (bottom left, with
Klyuev). But the great love of his later
life was the young artist Anatolii YarKravchenko (above), with whom he
lived in Leningrad at the end of the
1920s.
Klyuev in Leningrad
The apartment so
carefully decorated
in peasant style was
at the back of this
grand building at 45
Bol’shaya morskaya
street (the house is
the former
Meshchersky palace,
in the very center of
the city).
Although Klyuev had greeted
the Bolshevik coup with
enthusiasm, he soon began to
depict it as part of the
process which was
destroying his mythologized
Russian peasant culture, and
to define his own role and
situation in clear opposition
to it (often by the use of a
series of historical
and cultural allusions, as in
this poem of 1921/1922).
От иконы Бориса и Глеба,
От стригольничьего Шестокрыла
Моя песенная потреба,
Стихов валунная сила.
From the icon of Boris and Gleb
From the Strigol´nik Six Wings
Comes my song sacrifice,
The boulder power of my verse.
Кости мои от Маргарита,
Кровь от костра Аввакума.
Узорнее аксамита
Моя золотая дума:
My bones are from Chrysostom’s Pearl,
My blood from Avvakum’s fire.
More elaborate than ancient velvet
Is my golden thought:
Чтобы Русь как серьга повисла
В моем цареградском ухе...
Притекают отары-числа
К пастуху — дырявой разрухе.
May old Russia hang like an ear-ring
In my Constantinopolitan ear…
Flocks of days gather round their
Shepherd — tattered destruction.
И разруха пасет отары
Татарским лихим кнутом,
Оттого на Руси пожары
И заплакан родимый дом.
....
And destruction tends the herds
With a wild Tatar whip,
Hence old Russia burns
And the family home is mourned.
….
И желанна великая треба,
Чтоб во прахе бериллы и шелк
Пред иконой Бориса и Глеба
Окаянный поверг Святополк!
A great rite is needed,
That before the icon of Boris and Gleb
In ashes, beryls and silk
Be laid down by cursed Svyatopolk!
The last poem from his collection L’vinyi khleb (Lion’s Bread),
composed in Vytegra in the immediate post-revolutionary years is
typical in its ambiguities
Поле усеянное костями.
Черепами с беззубой зевотой,
И над ним, гремящий маховиками,
Безыменный и безликий кто-то.
Кружусь вороном над страшным полем,
Узнаю чужих и милых скелеты,
И в железных тучах демонов с дрекольем,
Провожающих в тартар серные кареты.
Вот шестерня битюгов крылатых,
Запряженных в кузов, где Есенина поэмы.
Господи, ужели и в рязанских хатах
Променяли на манишку ржаные эдемы!
И нет Ярославны поплакать зигзицей,
Прекрасной Евпраксии низринуться с чадом...
Я – ворон, кружусь над великой гробницей,
Где челюсть осла с Менделеевым рядом.
Мои граи почитают за песни народа, -Он был в миллионах годин и столетий...
На камне могильном старуха свобода
Из саванов вяжет кромешные сети.
Над мертвою степью безликое что-то
Родило безумие, тьму, пустоту...
Глядь, в черепе утлом осиные соты,
И кости ветвятся, как верба в цвету.
Светила слезятся запястьем перловым,
Ручей норовит облозаться с лозой,
И Бог зеленеет побегом ветловым
Под новою твердью, над красной землей.
A field sown with bones,
With skulls in toothless grins,
And over it, rattling flywheels,
A nameless, faceless someone.
I circle like a crow above the fearful field,
I recognize the skeletons of strangers and friends,
And, in iron clouds, the demons with stakes,
Accompanying to Tartarus the sulphur chariots.
Here's a team of six winged cart-horses,
Harnessed to a cart containing Esenin's epics.
Lord, have they, even in the peasant huts of Ryazan',
Swapped their rye paradises for city shirt fronts!
There's no Yaroslavna to sing like a cuckoo,
Nor fair Evpraksiya to fall with her child...
A crow, I am circling above the great coffin,
Where donkey jaws lie beside Mendeleev.
My caws will be taken for songs of the people,
Existing for millions of years and of centuries...
The old woman freedom, sat on her grave stone,
Is knitting from shrouds her dark nets.
Above the dead steppe a faceless something
Gave birth to insanity, darkness, a void...
Look, wasp honeycombs are in the frail skull,
The bones are now sprouting like willows in flower.
The stars weep tears of pearl bracelets,
The stream is attempting to kiss the vine,
And God becomes verdant in rushing of willows
Beneath a new firmament, above a red land.
By the end of the 1920s, Klyuev was very much persona non grata in Soviet literature. Labeled a
“kulak poet”, he was repeatedly attacked, and very rarely published. He continued to write very
actively however, composing a series of striking long poems, and a considerable body of lyric
works. Some of the these texts were published in the west in the 1950s and 1960s, others were
published for the first time only in the 1980s and 1990s.
In 1934 he was arrested in
Moscow, and exiled to Siberia.
He lived in Tomsk until 1937,
when he was arrested, convicted
of participating in a monarchist
plot, and shot. Top left – the part
of Tomsk where he lived. Top
right, a house where he rented
accommodation. Far left, cells in
the NKVD building where he
was interrogated. Left,
presumed site of his execution .
Klyuev’s last known poem, written in Tomsk in 1937
Есть две страны; одна -- Больница,
Другая -- Кладбище, меж них
Печальных сосен вереница,
Угрюмых пихт и верб седых!
Вот почему в кувшине розы,
И сам ты – мальчик в синем льне!..
Скрипят житейские обозы
В далекой бренной стороне.
There are two countries – one the Hospital,
The other – Cemetery, between them
Runs a row of sad fir trees,
Gloomy pines, and gray willows!
That’s why there are roses in the pitcher,
And you are a boy in blue flax!…
Life’s carts rattle by
In a distant, mortal land.
Блуждая пасмурной опушкой,
Я обронил свою клюку
И заунывною кукушкой
Стучусь в окно к гробовщику:
К ним нет возвратного проселка,
Там мрак, изгнание, Нарым.
Не бойся савана и волка, -За ними с лютней серафим!»
Wandering in the shadowy glade,
I dropped my walking stick
And like a dreary cuckoo
Knock at the gravedigger’s window:
No way leads back to them,
There all is darkness, exile, Siberia.
Don’t’ fear the shroud and the wolf,
After them comes a seraph with a lute.”
"Ку-ку! Откройте двери, люди!"
"Будь проклят, полуночный пес!
Кому ты в глиняном сосуде
Несешь зарю апрельских роз?!
«Приди, дитя мое, приди!» -Запела лютня неземная,
И сердце птичкой из груди
Перепорхнуло в кущи рая.
“Cuckoo! People, open up the door!”
“Be damned, midnight cur!
To whom are you carrying a clay bowl
With the dawn of April roses?!
Весна погибла, в космы сосен
Вплетает вьюга седину..."
Но, слыша скрежет ткацких кросен,
Тянусь к зловещему окну.
И первой песенкой моей,
Где брачной чашею лилея,
Была «Люблю тебя, Расея,
Страна грачиных озимей!»
Spring has perished, and into the pines’ mane
The snow storm weaves gray hair…”
But, hearing the rattle of a weaver’s loom,
I lean towards the sinister window.
“Come, my child, come!”
Sang the unearthly lute,
And my heart sprang like a bird
From my chest into the groves of
heaven.
И вижу: тетушка Могила
Ткет желтый саван, и челнок,
Мелькая птицей чернокрылой,
Рождает ткань, как мерность строк.
И ангел вторил: «Буди, буди!
Благословен родной овсень!
Его, как розаны в сосуде,
Блюдет Христос на Оный День!»
And see: old aunt Tomb
Weaving a yellow shroud, and the shuttle,
Flashing like a black-winged bird,
Gives birth to fabric, like the rhythm of verse.
В вершинах пляска ветродуев,
Под хрип волчицыной трубы.
Читаю нити: "Н. А. Клюев,Певец олонецкой избы!"
In the heights above the winds dance
To the wheezing of the she-wolf chimney.
I read the words sewn in the shroud: “N. A. Klyuev,
The singer of the Olonian peasant house!”
Я умер! Господи, ужели?!
Но где же койка, добрый врач?
И слышу: «В розовом апреле
Оборван твой пердсмертный плач!
I’ve died? Lord, surely not?!
But where’s the sick bed, good doctor?
And I hear, “In rosy April
Your last lamentation was cut off!
And my first song,
When the lily was a wedding chalice,
Was “I love you, simple Russia,
Country of rook-covered winter crops!”
And the angel answered, “Be it so, be it
so!
Blessed is the native rite of spring!
It, like roses in the vessel,
Is watched by Christ for Judgment Day!”
The question of memorialization, like the question of memory, is a
pressing and complex one for contemporary Russia
Various forms of
memorialization in
Klyuev’s petit pays,
where an annual
symposium is devoted
to him.
The Vytegra Klyuev museum
Among the poet’s belongings on
display is his traveling samovar
Autograph in the Klyuev
Museum, Vytegra
Михаилу Ручьеву с
пожеланием весны и
малиновой юности
Н. Клюев 1923
To Mikhail Ruch’ev with best
wishes for spring and a
raspberry youth
N. Klyuev 1923
Note the highly stylised hand, and
equally ornamental form of the
inscription itself
The local museum organizes the annual
Klyuev symposium, attended by scholars
from round the country and beyond. At
first, these events were politically
difficult. Now they present financial
challenges because of lack of funds.
Local publications have also been
devoted to the poet. Some are for the
visitor, some for the scholarly reader.
The brochure prepared in the early 1980s
for the very first Klyuev symposium (top
right) was never distributed. The
Museum Director, Tamara Makarova,
was told to pulp it because the
biographical note concluded with the line
“his life broke off tragically in 1937”.
In Tomsk memorialization is more
complex, because this was the site
of Klyuev’s exile and execution
(and the place of exile and death for
many more thousands).
Nonetheless, plaques record two of
his places of residence.
The geographical and ideological diversity of
Klyuev publications are well indicated by the
books on this page, all published since 1990
Among the most exciting discoveries of
recent years were two fragmentary
recordings of the poet reading his verse

Many memoirists
speak of the powerful
impression created by
the poet when he
read his poetry.
The last lines of Derevnya (The village,
1926), read by Klyuev in the recording
[…Душа – степной жеребенок]
Копытом бьет о грудину, -Дескать, выпусти на долину,
К резедовым лугам, водопою…
Мы не знаем ныне покою, -Маета-змея одолела
Без сохи, без милого дела,
Без сусальной в углу Пирогощей…
Ты, Рассея, -- лихая теща!...
Только будут, будут стократы
На Дону вишневые хаты,
По Сибири лодки из кедра,
Олончане песнями щедры,
Только б месяц, рядясь в дымы,
На реке бродил по налимы,
Да черемуху в белой шали
Вечера, как девку, ласкали!
[The soul – a foal from the steppes]
Beats its hoof against the chest, -As if to say, let me out to the valley,
To the mignonette meadows, to the water…
Nowadays we know no peace, -The anxiety-snake has conquered
Without plough, without favorite task,
Without gold-leaf icon in the corner…
You, Russia, are a fierce mother-in-law!...
Only there will be, will be a hundredfold
Cherry-wood huts on the Don,
Boats of cedar in Siberia,
Olonian men generous in song,
So long as the moon, dressed in smoke,
Wanders the river for burbot,
And the evenings caress like a girl
The bird cherry in its white shawl!
Klyuev’s “Kto za chto…” (1928), which he
reads in the recently discovered recording
Кто за что, а я за двоперстье,
За байку над липовой зыбкой…
Измерено ли русское безвестье
Пушкинской золотою рыбкой?
Изловлены ль все павлины,
Финисты, струфокамилы
В кедровых потемках овина,
В цветике у маминой могилы?
Choose what you will, but I am for the Old Believer cross,
For a tale told over a lime-wood cradle…
Was the Russian mystery measured
By Pushkin’s Golden Fish?
Have all the peacocks been caught,
The falcons and ostriches of tales
In the cedar darkness of the barn,
In the flower at mother’s grave?
Погляди на золотые сосны,
На холмы – праматерние груди!
Хорошо под гомон сенокосный
Побродить по Припяти, по Чуди, --
Look at the golden pines,
At the hills – foremothers’ breasts!
It’s fine wandering to the sound
Of haymaking by Pripyat’ and Lake Chud’, --
Окунать усы в квасные жбаны
С голубой татарскою поливой,
Слушать ласточек и ранним-рано
Пересуды пчел над старой сливой:
Dipping whiskers into kvass jugs
With a blue Tatar glaze,
Listening to swallows and first thing
The quarreling of bees above the old plum tree.
«Мол, кряжисты парни на Волыни,
Как березки девушки на Вятке…»
На певущем огненном павлине
К нам приедут сказки и загадки.
Сядет Суздаль за лазорь и вапу,
Разузорит Вологда коклюшки…
Кто за что, а я за цап-царапу,
За котягу в дедовской избушке.
“So the lads of Volynia are strong,
Like birches are the girls on the Vyatka…”
On a singing fiery peacock
Tales and riddles will ride to us.
Suzdal’ will sit at its blue and its icon paint,
Vologda will decorate its lace bobbins…
Choose what you like, but I am for a scratching pouncer,
For a big fat cat in the old man’s hut.
But the future is far from clear –
how will the 21st century read this
intriguing and contradictory poet?
School children in the village school at Devyatiny, near
Vytegra, read Klyuev’s works during a school jubilee,
October, 2002 (left), and at an evening devoted to the poet’s
verse during the 2003 Klyuev symposium (right).