In Mythification of Reality Bruno Schulz illustrates contemporary cul-ture’s position with respect to the idea of Myth and the related concept of
“Word” (Słowo). In the first part of this short yet dense essay he explains
9 As noted by M. Rice in The Aesthetic Views of Valerij Brjusov, “The Slavic and East Eu-ropean Journal”, Spring 1973, Vol. 17, No. 1: “for Brjusov Symbolism was Mallarmeism”.
10 V. Brjusov, Zdravogo Smysla Tartarary. Dialog o futurizme, “Russkaja Mysl” 1914, No. 3 [online], http://dugward.ru/library/brusov/brusov_zdravogo_smysla.html [accessed:
04.2015].
11 Ibidem.
that in the Beginning of human culture, there was a universal whole, floodlit by the Primeval Word, which was able to give meaning to real-ity. The world of the Beginning thus coincides with the world of myth.
From Brjusov’s point of view, the Beginning corresponds to a world of Gods, to the reign of Paganism. Indeed, Brjusov was essentially anti-Christian throughout his life, and all of his Roman works are devoted to singing the praise of the last gasps of Paganism. Both Altar’ pobedy and Jupiter Poveržennyj have as their main theme the contrast between the new Christian order and the old Pagan faith. This contrast is not only a matter of religion but also has political meaning.12 Pagan Rome was the World’s Capital, the Eternal City, the primary point of reference for Western cultural space, and, after this space underwent Christianisation, Rome became an empty and meaningless city.
We can say that for Marija, a primitive era of universality and whole-ness coincides with everything prior to the coming of the Goths. Since she lacks strong historical understanding and past centuries blur in her mind, the boundary between a mythical and beautiful past and the decadent present can only be defined by her own birth. In her fuzzy vision of the past the key role is played by Pagan religion. Here Brjusov – unlike his contemporary Dmitrij Merežkovskij,13 whose historical novels are similarly
12 N.A. Meščerjakova, Oppozicija jazyčestvo/christianstvo v antičnych romanach V. Brjusova, Petrozavodsk 2011, p. 277.
13 While Ivanov was indubitably Christian, Merežkovskij is not so easy to label. His phi-losophy longs for a reconciliation of every kind of dualism: “Christianity and paganism, Westernism and Slavophilism, spirit and flesh, Russia and Europe, God-man and Man-god, Christ and Antichrist” (B. Rosenthal, op. cit., p. 35). The Roman Pantheon, that was a pagan temple before its transformation into a Christian church, was the poetical symbol of the resolution of these dichotomies. Merežkovskij counterposes to the Nietzsche’s idea of a New Christianity: the Übermensch is Christ, and he will come again to establish his Third Testament, the zavet. Thus he believed that salvation lays in the future and he devel-oped an apocalyptic view that also had a political component, a “political myth [that] was a religious revolution [and] would culminate in a religious society” (B. Rosenthal, op.cit., p. 41). Speaking of the revolution, he constructs a messianism whose heart is located in the Russian land. After the failed revolution of 1905, Merežkovksij reconsidered his ideas, stat-ing that his previous syncretic view was a heresy. In the years that followed, his philosophy underwent many ambiguous transformations, swinging between anarchy and fascination for European totalitarianisms, and concluding in a new amalgam of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox traditions, in which any pagan elements were excluded.
set in Ancient Rome, but might be said to aspire to a synthesis of Pagan and Christian beliefs – fills his work with criticisms of the Christian world.
He depicts the triumph of General Narses at St. Peter’s as a monstrous and carnivalesque event, in a sharp contrast with Marija’s silent walk along the beautiful Appian Way. Another vivid opposition described by Brjusov is the one between Marija’s mother, a woman of Christian faith, and her father Rufus, a calligrapher who is linked to the ancient world of legends and myths. While Marija’s pious mother is able only to say her prayers lying in bed, whispering feeble words to the Holy Virgin, Rufus’s grand speeches about Roman myths offer powerful flashes of insight into the realm of dreams and visions. The references throughout the povest’ to the “glorious” poet Rutiulius also points to the appeal of Paganism for Brjusov: considered to be the last of the pagan poets, Ru-tiulius refused to accept the new cult of Christianity his entire life and was the author of a work entitled De reditu suo, concerning the decay of Rome ravaged by Barbarian populations. Ultimately, Brjusov presents in this povest’ a scenario of religious persecution that overturns histori-cal fact: it is the pagan Marija who has to hide underground, crawling through the pre-Christian catacombs of the Domus Aurea, while Christian power rules above.
c
ontemporaryfragmentationAfter outlining his idea of a primordial universal unity, Schulz moves to the contemporary world. In his view, we all live in a reality made up of fragments that derive from ancient mythology. Our own words have thus lost their original power and have become mere scraps of a prior existence. When we use them, we are no longer conscious that they are pieces of a primitive whole. With these words as our bricks, Schulz writes:
“we are building our house – like barbarians – with the debris of statues of the gods”.14 As Nicola Ferrari has similarly argued in the context of
14 B. Schulz, Mythification of Reality, “Studio” 1936, No. 3–4 [online], http://humweb.ucsc.
edu/gweltaz/courses/gospels/john/notes/schultz.html [accessed: 04.2015].
postmodern rewritings of classical myth, “the past has lost its organic unity [its extensive scope]. Our oversized past is formed by a myriad of splinters.”15 This postmodern process of fragmentation – like the modern-ist variant – can be narrativized in various ways, but derives its principle poetic force from the Romantic fascination for the fragment form. In Reja Sil’vija the concept of fragments is not only a structural principle, but can also be linked with two fundamental themes: the topos of ruins, a constant presence in the text, and the figure of the Barbarian – both of which link Brjusov’s approach to a mythological past with that of Schulz.
The space in which Marija’s story unfolds is itself fragmented,16 finding its realization in the ruins that are the remains of Rome’s glorious past.
Brjusov wants to underline the uncertain political and cultural mood of the sixth century here, and he manages to do so by presenting us with a situ-ation when fate is not yet certain and by playing with the concepts of the fragment and the whole. It is obvious that Rome is no longer the universal cradle of Western culture, but it is still valuable and not everything has been lost; at every step Marija is overcome by some bit of debris from the past. The prefix polu (“semi” or “partly”) recurs frequently: the statues are полуразбитые, partly destroyed; the old wall is полуразрушенной, partly ruined; the city itself is полупокинутый, semi-abandoned; its Latin inscriptions полустертые, partly erased. Even Marija is not an example of pure lunacy, but полубезумная, semi-mad. Marija’s education is also fragmented: Rufus has only taught her to read – in Latin and Greek – be-fore leaving her to her own destiny without instructing her further. And although she has read all her father’s books, she often misunderstands their content. When Marija finds herself in front of a statue, she lacks knowledge to interpret it properly. She thus relies on a particular element of her personality, namely her imagination, to decipher her surroundings, a topic to which we will return.
15 N. Ferrari, Una casa colma di echi, Roma 2011, pp. 84–85.
16 A very similar approach to space is used by Andrej Belyj in his novel Petersburg (1913).
The city is a sick and deathly labyrinth formed by fragments, splinters, geometrical forms and, as in Brjusov’s povest’, threatened by barbarians.
Brjusov’s povest’ is also linked to Schulz’s essay by the figure of the Barbarian, an outsider who comes to destroy Occidental culture, an endur-ing motif in the Western imaginary. In the words of a scholar:
The fear of being overrun and destroyed by barbarian hordes is as old as the history of civilized culture itself. Images of desertification – of gardens ransacked by nomads and of decrepit palaces in which goatherds tend their flocks – have haunted the literature of decadence from antiquity to Edward Gibbon, Oswald Spengler, and Gottfried Benn.17
For Schulz, it is clear that we are all barbarians, since we are no longer living in the mythical past. Our barbarism is not a matter of culture or race but simply of time. In Brjusov this idea becomes more complicated, acquiring some characteristics that are typical of a modernist perspective on reality. Indeed, he describes the figure of barbarians in an ambiguous and open-ended way. Today, as in sixth century Rome, Brjusov suggests, it is very difficult to understand who the barbarians really are, thus hinting at a resemblance between past and present. In Ferrari’s words:
It is no longer possible to establish differences between Barbarians and Romans. They are neither enemies nor friends, we can no longer consider Barbarians as others.18
Similarly, in Brjusov’s povest’ the category of Barbarian is particu-larly fluid. To begin with, Barbarians are not racially pure, but they are a mixture of numerous elements. General Narses’s army is described as разноплеменный, or hybrid: it is composed of Greeks, Huns, Persians, Herulis, and Gepids, and thus a mixture of Germanic and Oriental populations. The members of the army “sang war songs in a flurry of different languages, and their voices melded together in a wild and thunderous cry.”19
17 W. Schivelbusch, The Culture of Defeat: On National Trauma, Mourning, and Recovery, New York 2003, p. 19.
18 N. Ferrari, op. cit., p. 83.
19 V. Brjusov, Reja Sil’vija [online], http://az.lib.ru/b/brjusow_w_j/text_0140.shtml [ac-cessed: 04.2015].
The state of universal wholeness being no longer attainable, the com-ing together of disparate parts represents not joyful synthesis of peoples but a scary fragmentation of reality. At the same time, the young Goth Teodatus is not described in a negative way, but as if he belonged to the other Roman side, as if he were allied with the non-barbarian people.
The distinctions between barbaric and non barbaric characters seem to be defined by personal characteristics rather than ethnic identity. Both Marija who is fascinated by the mythical past and Teodatus who loves Rome and its ruins are definitely non-barbaric. Nor can Rufus be seen as a Barbarian, since he is the guardian of ancient Roman culture. We can therefore say that to the category of Barbarian belong all those who do not grasp the beauty of Antiquity. Those who understand such beauty are “Romans”, a designation that is thus less a matter of ethnicity than of sense of love for the past and, more precisely, for the mythical world. To be truly Roman, you must want to live within the forms of ancient mythology.