To the Historiosophical Searches of the Late Gumilev: the Conflict of the Old and New World Order in the "Zvezdnyi uzhas" ["Star Horror"]

Pavlova Tatiana ORCID: 0000-0003-3927-3498 PhD in Philology Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Communication Technologies, National Research Technological University "MISIS" 119049, Russia, Moskow, Leninskiy pr., 4,b.1 pavlova-sizykh@yandex.ru Other publications by this author     Kikhnei Lyubov' Gennad'evna ORCID: 0000-0003-0342-7125 Doctor of Philology Professor, Department of History of Journalism and Literature, A.S. Griboyedov Moscow University 111024, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Shosse Entuziastov, 21 lgkihney@yandex.ru

Kuptsova Mariya Yur'evna Postgraduate student, Department of History of Journalism and Literature, Moscow State University named after A.S. Griboyedov 111024, Russia, g. Moscow, ul. Shosse Entuziastov, 21 delkup@gmail.com

1. Introduction

N.S. Gumilev's poem "Star Horror", created in 1920 and closing his last collection of poems "Pillar of Fire", caused an ambiguous reaction of contemporaries – from condemnation ^{[23, p. 52]} to admiration and acceptance ^{[3, p. 323]}. The common point of interpretation of "Star Horror" for most contemporaries and those who analyzed the poem later was the idea of conflict as a key moment in the interpretation of the work. Thus, Y.N. Verkhovsky points out that "Her theme is about chaos and space. Chaos, previously "stirring" at the bottom of the soul, now appears as a world-cosmos. Overcoming the chaotic principle in the very perception of the world as a cosmos is what lies in the spirit under this poem, as its foundation, as an animating principle in the pathos of aspiration that permeates the poem" ^{[9, p. 528]}. In the same vein, the poem was considered by D.S. Mirsky ^{[1, p. 487]}. I.E. Vinokurova in the article "Gumilev and Mandelstam. Comments on the dialogue" indicates the juxtaposition of the old and the new in the "Star Horror". She sees the poem as a "prophecy about the fate of Russia", and, mentioning the reminiscences of this text in Mandelstam, interprets the main conflict of the "Star Horror" as a reaction of acmeism ("horror") to symbolism ("stars") ^{[10, pp. 296-297]}. It should be noted that with the great interest of researchers in the late work of N.S. Gumilev in recent years (see ^{[19],[29],[30],[31]}), " Star Horror" remains little studied in the context of the historical background and the planned revolution in Russian literature in the 1920s which predetermined its development for the next decades (see ^[11]), as well as in the context of a multi-layered and polysemantic conflict of the historical epoch.

In the interpretation of a number of researchers ^[14], "Star Horror" is an opposition of the imaginary and the real, appearance and reality – ancient people discover the astral world for themselves, learn a previously unknown reality. Also in the analysis of the "Star Horror" eschatological motives are distinguished ^[17] and the representation of the Aeonic time, which is the most important concept of Acmeism ^[18].

According to our hypothesis, the interpretation of the poem should refer to the attribution of the tribe in which the events described in the text take place. This will clarify the interpretation of the poem and clarify the meanings embedded in it by the author.

When studying the text of the poem , the following methods were used:

1.      Comparative method: the motives highlighted in the poem are compared with the key motives of N.S. Gumilev's early and late creativity.

2. Cultural and historical method: attribution of the word "zend" used by N.S. Gumilev is considered with the involvement of information from the poet's biography, in particular, his knowledge in the field of linguistics, as well as comments on the manuscript written by his son's hand.

3.      Comparative-comparative method: various versions of the reading of the conflict of the poem, presented in the interpretations of domestic and foreign researchers, are compared and classified.

2. Identification of the tribe in the poem "Star Horror" as a conflictogenic factor

The first readers, knowing about N.S. Gumilev's fascination with the theme of Africa, mistakenly interpreted "Star Horror" as an "African poem". This was facilitated by the publication almost simultaneously with the "Star Horror" of the collection of poems "Tent", the first edition of which was published in 1921. The "Tent" is dedicated to various African countries and tribes, which partly misled readers. Thus, V. Eberman considered the mention in the text of the poem "winds from the mountains of Iran on the Euphrates" to be an error of the author, and called the poem itself an "African Negro poem" ^{[33, p. 325]}.

"Star Horror" is certainly not a "Negro" poem and the mention of Iran and the Euphrates in it is not accidental. In addition to these two toponyms, the text of the poem mentions a specific people three times – the Zends, with whom the tribe obviously conflicts. At first, this word sounds when younger members of the tribe calm down an anxious old man:

Nothing bad happened,

The sheep have not eaten enough milkweed,

The rain of the sacred fire did not pour,

Neither the shaggy lion nor the cruel Zend

They did not approach our tent.

^{[12, c. 107]}

Further, the mention of the Zends is contained in the vision of a Garaya woman looking at the sky:

Father, get up quickly,

See, the zenda with mistletoe branches

Reed baskets are being dragged,

They are going to trade, not to fight.

^{[12, c. 110]}

And finally, a little girl Garra mentions the Zends, after which the whole tribe lies down and begins to look at the sky and sing:

It's just golden fingers

They show us to the plain,

And on the sea and on the Zend mountains.

^{[12, c. 112]}

From these mentions, it can be concluded that the inhabitants of this tribe live on the border with the territory of certain Zends (the mountains belonging to the Zends are within sight), and are at enmity with them.

The word "Zend" is not a designation of the people, but this word is traditionally called one of the ancient languages of the Indo–European family - the ancient Persian language, in which the text of the comments on the "Avesta" is written. The full version of the "Avesta" together with the comments was called "Zendavesta" - cf., for example, in the dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron: "Zendavesta is a sacred book of ancient Iranians and modern Parsis (see). It first became known to European scientists only in the second half of the last century" ^{[6, p. 545]}. The name "Zend" as a designation of an ancient language is used, for example, in the book by Franz Bopp "Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Armenian, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Old Slavonic, Gothic and German languages" - a fundamental work on comparative historical linguistics. In Bopp's works, ideas about the kinship of Indo–European languages were laid down, and the word "Zend" was used as a designation of ancient Persian. N.S. Gumilev undoubtedly knew about this: his son L.N. Gumilev attributed in a copy of the edition of "Star Horror" next to the word "Zend": "Zend is an ancient Persian word, literally "comment" (liked dad)" ^{[3, p. 326]}. The content of this note suggests that Gumilev learned about the true meaning of this word after writing the poem, and at the time of the creation of the text, the word "Zend" was perceived by him as the name of the people.

This interpretation is also supported by the fact that Gumilev attended the course of introduction to linguistics during his studies at St. Petersburg University. E. Vagin in the materials for the biography of the poet publishes the "Matrix of the student of the Faculty of History and Philology of St. Petersburg University N. S. Gumilev" ^[8], from which it appears that the teacher of the discipline "Introduction to Linguistics" was I.A. Baudouin de Courtenay - the largest scientist, theorist and practitioner of comparative historical linguistics. Baudouin de Courtenay himself, as a student, took courses in Sanskrit and Zend from K.A. Kossovich and unequivocally mentioned this ancient language during the teaching of the discipline "Introduction to Linguistics". It seems to us that N.S. Gumilev initially understood the word "zend" as the name of the nation, and later, perhaps directly from his son, learned that this word means "comment". In any case, the mention of the Zends refers the place of action to a certain region and a certain time and gives specific information about the tribe that is mentioned in the text.

3. The implication of the conflict with the Zends in the "Star Horror" in the context of the collection "Pillar of Fire"

The mention of a specific people with whom this tribe is at enmity activates a number of implicit meanings. First of all, if you know that the Zends are ancient Persians, then the "Star Horror" forms a semantic unity with the poems "Imitation of Persian" and "Persian Miniature" included in the "Pillar of Fire". The text of the "Persian Miniature" emphasizes the theme of the sky and looking up – exactly what the representatives of the tribe from the "Star Horror" are afraid of:

And the sky is like turquoise,

And the prince, who raised barely

Almond-shaped eyes

On the rise of the girlish swing.

^{[12, c. 70]}

In "Imitation of Persian" there is an implicit reference to Zoroastrianism, developed in more detail in "Drunken Dervish". E.P. Chudinova explains this point in the article "On Orientalism of Nikolai Gumilev": "In the slums – the ruins of old buildings – there were drinking establishments. The owners of the zucchini were Zoroastrian magicians. Speaking of the "temple of magicians", which calls the Rinds, Gafiz invites merry revelers to hurry to the pub for a night of revelry. But at the same time, the "temple of magicians" has a second meaning. Ghafiz's worldview also includes pre-Muslim elements. Traces of interest in them we find in Gumilev's early work, for example in the poem "The Song of Zarathustra" (collection "The Way of Conquistadors", 1905). Therefore, the "temple of magicians" can also be read in the literal sense: according to the concept of Hafiz, the poet is inspired by God, illuminated by the fire of mystical insight. "I have lost my senses in the rays of that nature!" exclaims Hafiz, echoing Pushkin ("The Prophet") through the centuries. In the light of the poet's Hafiz concept, the fact that Gumilev's hero "loved the cupbearer" also has two meanings. Wine drinking can be both a revelry and a sacrament. The poet-prophet is Hafiz's lyrical hero, the reveller-rind" ^{[32, p. 11]}. The dervish poet spends his time in a Zoroastrian tavern, and the lyrical hero of "Imitation of the Persian" also stays there:

Because you're always at home,

I don't leave the pub.

^{[12, c. 76]}

The development of the Zoroastrian theme is also present in the "Star Horror", which was not previously considered in the context of the Persian theme. The text of the poem contains references to the key rites of Zoroastrianism: the worship of light and the maintenance of sacred fire. The tribe is afraid of the dark, waiting for sunlight, and the sacred fire never goes out on a special stone:

They put the girl on a stone,

A flat black stone on which

The sacred fire was still burning,

It went out during the commotion.

Put and bowed their faces,

They were waiting for her to die, and you can

It will be time for everyone to go to sleep before the sun.

^{[12, c. 111]}

However, the shrines of the Zoroastrians included the starry sky, which causes fear in the heroes of the poem. The religion of the tribe, perhaps, is one of the branches of Zoroastrianism, close, for example, to Manichaeism, in which the opposition of light and darkness was postulated. Accordingly, the discovery of bright lights in the starry sky correlates with the transition from a false, heretical teaching to the true faith.

At the same time, the heroes of "Star Horror" quote the Old Testament – the refrain "fear, the loop and the pit" goes back to the books of the prophet Isaiah ^{[3, p. 326]}, which makes it possible to interpret their faith as Jewish as well. M. Boyce notes that the Jews treated the Persian king Cyrus with great reverence and in the period after their release by Cyrus from Babylonian captivity was significantly influenced by Zoroastrianism: "after this event, the Jews began to sympathize with the Persians, and this made them more susceptible to the influence of Zoroastrianism. Cyrus became famous as the "second Isaiah" (the nameless prophet of the period of exile) as the Messiah, that is, as one who acts on behalf of Yahweh and at his command..." ^{[5, p. 208]}. A possible attitude to the Jewish religion is also indicated by the mention that it is necessary to sacrifice a "heifer":

...The one in the sky,

God or the beast, he truly wants a sacrifice.

We need to bring him a heifer

Immaculate, the maiden,

To which the man has hitherto

I have never looked with lust.

^{[12, c. 111]}

The offering of a human sacrifice, a native granddaughter, refers both to the sacrifice of Abraham and to the sacrifice of a calf by the high priest – the granddaughter is called "heifer" in the text. The metamorphosis that occurred with the tribe in this context can be interpreted as a transition from Judaism to Zoroastrianism, and the main conflict in the implication of the text is the opposition of the two largest religions. An additional reference to Zoroastrianism is the fact that after the madness Garaya sees a three-headed dragon correlating with one of the symbols of evil in the Avesta:

Dahaku –

Three-spiked, six-eyed,

Insidious, kryvodushny,

Fiend of devas, evil,

Powerful, strong,

It is made by Anhra-Manyu

To be the Strongest in a Lie

To the death of the whole world,

All righteous beings ^{[2, p. 180]}

N.S. Gumilev's fascination with Zoroastrianism is traced in relation to early poems from the collections "The Way of Conquistadors" and "Romantic Flowers": "The Song of Zarathustra", "The Spell", etc. ^{[21, p. 95]}. S.V. Pushkareva points to the connection of the title of the book "Pillar of Fire", which is completed by "Star Horror", with numerous religious traditions, including Zoroastrian: "The title of the collection goes back to many sources: Zoroastrianism, Sufism, the Bible, the Orthodox patristic tradition, Hinduism, Heraclitus, hermetic teachings, the works of Russian religious philosophers. The Arabic term "pillar of poetry" is associated with the spiritual basis of poetic creativity, with its cosmic origin. The pillar of fire represents the Presence of God in the sacred tradition, biblical and Hindu" ^{[24, p. 186]}. Mentioning the connection of the "Star Horror" with Zoroastrianism, S.V. Pushkareva does not disclose this point, limiting herself only to mentioning the importance of the image of fire. The key meaning of the image of fire, the "fiery path" from the "Lost Tram", in the collection "Pillar of Fire" is noted by E.Y. Kulikova ^{[22, p. 60]}, Yu.V. Zobnin ^[13].

In the studies devoted to the occult and religious searches of N.S. Gumilev throughout his creative career (^{[4],[25],[28]}) there is no mention of the connection of the poem "Star Horror" with various versions and branches of Zoroastrianism. Meanwhile, this aspect allows us to expand the understanding of the key conflict of the poem and consider the opposition of the real and imaginary in the life of the tribe in the context of interaction with the neighboring people.

4. The conflict with the Zend in opposition to the true and imaginary

Initially, the reader learns from the text of the "Star Horror" that the tribe is at enmity with the Zend people. In Garaya's vision–until the moment she goes crazy–the Zends appear friendly. Real enmity is opposed to imaginary friendship, which is of some interest in the context of the realities of revolutionary Russia. After the events of 1917, Russia was forced to make concessions to the powers with which it was in conflict during the First World War – on March 3, 1918, the Brest Peace Treaty was signed, which caused a negative reaction from many Russian citizens. V. Kazakov points to the sharp rejection of these events by Gumilev, a participant in the war: "In April 1917, a message came from the headquarters of the regiment about awarding Ensign Gumilev with the Order of St. Stanislaus of the 3rd degree with swords and a bow, but the poet did not have time to receive it.

The front and the army were falling apart. He also took the Bolsheviks' coming to power negatively. He was especially indignant about the Brest Peace" ^[15].

In the "Star Horror", the hostile people (Zenda) appear friendly, going "to trade, not to fight" in the vision of a madwoman. The tribe moves to a new world order, collapses the foundations of its religion, members of the tribe massively abandon the foundations of their ancestors – this almost literally repeats the events that took place in Soviet Russia. These events are accompanied by the belief of a woman who has gone mad in the friendliness of a hostile people – almost in the same way as the transition to a new government and a new state structure in Russia is accompanied by a truce with yesterday's enemies. The picture when the whole tribe sings is described by Gumilev in a dual way: singing people are compared not only with sublime larks, but also with more prosaic frogs. The picture of mass singing refers to the accepted practice of choral singing at general meetings of the Bolsheviks, ridiculed by M.A. Bulgakov in the story "The Heart of a Dog" in 1925 ^{[7, p. 142]}.

Thus, in "Star Horror", in addition to the obvious juxtaposition of the old and new world order, there is a condemnation of the accompanying events – fictional friendship with enemies. The new world order is actively welcomed by the young representatives of the tribe, and the old man at the end of the poem mourns the old days, and his crying is also ambivalent – he longs for the days when people looked at the real, close, and were not carried away by the stars:

He mourned his fall

From the steep, bumps on your knees,

Garr and his widow, and time

The former, when people were watching

To the plain where their herd grazed,

On the water where their sail ran,

On the grass where their children played,

And not in the black sky, where they shine

Inaccessible alien stars.

^{[12, c. 113]}

This ambivalence of the conflict is revealed in the plot of the lyric-epic poem. As I.V. Silantyev notes, in poetry, the plot is "a dynamic paradigm of lyrical events seen in their semantic co– and opposites, taken both individually and collectively" ^{[27, p. 12]}. Consider the resolution of the conflict in the plot of the poem.

5. Ambivalence of the conflict and the plot of "Star Horror"

The plot of the poem "Star Horror" also shows a kind of resolution of the "eternal" conflict of generations, "fathers" and "children". Let's pay attention to the fact that it is the representatives of the older generation who die in the text – Gar, "the eldest son with a gray beard", is clearly no longer a young man, like his wife Garaya. The acceptance of a new, positive impression of the starry sky, previously not perceived by the tribe, begins with representatives of the younger generation – a child, a girl Garra. After her, the whole tribe accepts the new one, starting with the youth – Mella is mentioned, who "was eighteen springs", Aha, who has a fiance Urr – these are clearly representatives of the younger generation. The plot, as A.G. Kovalenko notes ^[20], reflects the conflict and is its resolution.

Interestingly, Gar and Garaya, who suffered from looking at the sky, are at the same time the first brave people who decided to look up and find out exactly what is happening in the sky. They are "children" in relation to the old man, from whose nightmare the plot began, and at the same time they are "fathers" in relation to the young representatives of the tribe who have adopted a new one. On the example of a family – grandfather, son and granddaughter – the conflict of generations is shown, resolved as the Hegelian triad "thesis – antithesis – synthesis". The old man is horrified by the very fact that he turned his face to the sky, and does not even report whether he saw anything there. His son and daughter-in-law boldly take the initiative and look to the sky, which ends badly for both of them. The granddaughter looks at the sky against her will, she is forced, but in the end she interprets what she saw positively, setting a new behavioral paradigm for the whole tribe.

If we project these events onto the history of Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century, then the generation of "grandfathers" - elderly people born and raised under the Russian Empire – negatively perceives all the processes and transformations taking place in society and mourns the old days. The generation of "fathers" - people who have reached middle age by the time of the revolution and Civil War – mostly dies and/or loses their minds, unable to withstand large-scale changes in society. It is significant that the man in the poem dies in silence, and the woman before madness experiences a brief period of euphoria. The child becomes the first messenger of acceptance, approval of changes, and the whole tribe believes in little Garra – they are not scared off by Gar's death, Garaya's madness and the old man's lamentations. The reading of the actual conflict through the historical context is, in principle, characteristic of the creative pursuits of the 1920s – 1930s and finds expression, for example, in the work of Anna Akhmatova ^[16].

6. Conclusion

Like many of N.S. Gumilev's later poetic texts, the poem "Star Horror" is polysemantic, and it contains a multiplicity of interpretations. The text of the poem is based on the external and internal conflict of the tribe: enmity with another people (Zenda) and enmity within the tribe: conservatism, ancestral traditions are opposed by the new, evaluated ambivalently. The poem ends with an open finale, which does not allow us to unequivocally judge whether the tribe has returned to the old world order or devoted itself to a new religion. The plot is the unfolding of the antinomic conflict of the old and new world order, projected on the social upheavals and transformations of the late 1910s – early 1920s.

At the same time, the mention of a specific people in the text allows you to reveal the encrypted religious and mystical meanings of the text. "Star Horror" is embedded in the "Persian paradigm" of N.S. Gumilev's late work, and the events described in it relate to the peoples of Mesopotamia. "Star Horror" correlates with the poems included in the collection "Pillar of Fire", where Persia is explicitly mentioned – "Persian miniature" and "Imitation of Persian". Also in the context of implicit references to Zoroastrianism, "Star Horror" is associated with the poem "Drunken Dervish". In the "Star Horror" Zoroastrianism is opposed to Judaism and, possibly, Manichaeism, and in the "Drunken Dervish" - Sufism.

The specifics of the conflict sphere of the poem "Star Horror" lies in the polyvalent interpretation embedded in the text: the external and internal conflict is projected onto the conflict of modern Gumilev Russia, which is also experiencing conflict both with external enemies and internally, between representatives of various political movements and different generations. This conflict is connected with the psychology of perception and destruction of socio-cultural patterns in an era of change. Gumilev leaves the "open ending": "Star Horror" can be read both from the point of view of the older generation, adhering to old values, and from the point of view of the younger generation, striving for a new one. A third reading is also possible, from the point of view of an outsider waiting for further developments. The author does not unequivocally indicate either a preference for the position of "conservatives" or a preference for the position of "supporters of the new" - the religious and mystical background of the conflict indicates its reproducibility, repeatability in the history of mankind.