Interview with Tatyana Voltskaya
“Poetry has a high voice.
But this voice is impersonal.”
(Tatyana Voltskaya)
Does poetry have a gender?
I think there are two ways questions like that can be answered. First of all, though, a warning light immediately goes up! All these divisions are good for the bathhouse, and, as we know from ethnography, not for all bathhouses either. In the vast majority of cases, the division of art and literature according to gender, age and so forth is simply a camouflage for the only real division, i.e. between bad and good writing. And by the way – why aren’t these fashionable gender distinctions applied to painting or the theatre arts? As soon as it’s a question of literature, inevitably there’s talk of anthologies of women’s poetry or prose.
How about the second way?
I’m reminded of the words of Samuil Lur’e – about how prose and poetry (in the highest sense, of course) have a voice, that of prose being male and that of poetry female, in that it is high pitched: “The higher the poetry, the higher pitched the voice.” These remarks about the essence of poetry and prose, its intonation, seem to me true, profound. From this point of view, discussions about female and male poetry seem patently absurd. Although obviously it doesn’t follow that only women should occupy themselves with poetry. In the final count, a tenor also has a high voice, doesn’t he?
And a soprano?
Exactly. Between tenor and soprano, there’s a gap into which talk of
female and male poetry might fit.
Are there any particular characteristics attributable to male and female poetry?
As for characteristics, these come from ways of understanding the world which is different as between men and women. I think the male vision shows a tendency to grasp the world as a whole, to fathom out its structure, whereas the female vision is inward, including sensitivity to the actual texture of things; on the other hand, it has some difficulty dealing with abstractions. When I read Rein’s or Gorbovsky’s poetry, it never occurs to me that a woman might have written it. But when I read Kushner, I’m not so sure. And here’s something . . . During the period of Soviet poetry, that is at the time of its general decline, it was the female poets who seemed more worthwhile. Maybe because, under any regime, response to textures (to a leaf, a sleeve cuff, a child’s cry, the clang of a streetcar) is truer than the general view of things. There’s less room
for lying. As always, material reality comes to the aid of women. For that reason, during Soviet times – naturally, I’m not thinking of the poetic heights occupied by the likes of a Brodsky – as well as now, female poetry, in my view, has been stronger than male.
Does poetry have secondary sexual characteristics, and if so, what?
I’ve already answered that question, at least in part, when I spoke about male and female poetry. I’m afraid I can’t be any more helpful. If one ignores grammar and specific themes (“My darling, what have I done to you?”), I have to confess that I personally am hardly able to distinguish, from a gender point of view, between the poetry, let’s say, of Svetlana Kekova and Bakhyt Kenzheev, or Yury Kolker and Irina Znamenskaya. It is quite possible that there is a clue to these differences in nature, but I’m not aware of it. With some obvious exceptions, of course, such as Kipling or the aforementioned Rein. Nevertheless, at the very highest level, poetry is simply an elevated voice, and this voice is impersonal; that’s the main thing about it, whether it’s male or female.
Can one call your poetry female?
I don’t know. It’s not up to me to say – especially in view of what’s
already been said. Although I do have some thoughts on the subject. I suppose it was not for nothing God, in creating human beings, “created he them male and female”. He must have had something in mind. Not that I presume to peer into the Almighty’s mind! I’m simply assuming that there was some intention behind it all – it wasn’t just for the sake of propagation, but also for that of voice, intonation, with which to praise Creation. And if the intention was to make me a woman, I’d be the last one to oppose or disguise it – in the way I dress, behave, write poetry. But I see no particular reason to keep harping on it either. Sometimes I imagine that all poets, earlier ones, contemporaries, future ones, belong to a celestial choir. We’ve no idea even who the soloists are. And in a situation like that, you’d better know exactly what your place is, that’s all.
OK. Which poets, in your opinion, coud be said to embody Russian female poetry?
I don’t know. The obvious answer, of course, is that the most female
poetry is Akhmatova’s, and the most male Tsvetaeva’s. But looked at from the point of view I’ve been putting forward, it might be the other way round. Tsvetaeva’s voice, whether you like it or not, seems to me the highest (among women, of course) – an agonizingly tense falsetto. It’s true that it’s often hysteria accounts for a poet attaining such heights, but that’s another matter.
What about your relationship to the gender? Don’t you think it’s just a load of nonsense?
Nonsense, no. But sometimes the theme does seem to me absurd or just trendy, a trinket the scholarly world deploys with shamanistic zeal. Why? That’s another story.
And what about the fall of Communism?
There are two sides to the collapse of the Soviet regime, as far as poetry is concerned. Firstly, as with literature in general, poetry stopped performing functions not germane to it. As a result, it lost its artificial multi-million readership, which used to fill stadiums for performances given by sixty-year-old poets. Actually, I believe that interest in poetry as such is unchanged – the situation has simply been normalised. Second, in lyric writing, as in all literature, everything now is possible. If editors before had deleted the words “God” and “soul”, if the work of those who did not wish to sing the praises of communism was halfcontemptuously labelled “quiet lyric poetry”, now all poetry in effect has turned into “quiet lyric poetry”. No better or worse for that, though. I think that the poetry of women writers was as liberated by all this as was men’s poetry. But I have already described how women, in Soviet times, were evidently less damaged – for that reason, the shock was less severe. After Perestroika, many venerable Soviet poets literally took to raising strawberries or chickens; that sort of thing didn’t happen in the
case of women poets. It was considerably easier for those who wrote on religio-mystical themes – in Soviet times such writing was unacceptable in any shape or form and was confined to the underground. Still, I don’t think it matters so much what one can or cannot do; what matters is the degree of talent and what one does with that talent. Of the many kinds of so-called love poetry(particularly with regard to women’s poetry) I now get the feeling that, yes, we were able to look into the kitchen sink and sometimes everything there was clearly visible, but that doesn’t make for art. Freedom, as we know very well, is not simply a gift; it’s a burden as well.
[Translated by Daniel Weissbort]
Translated by Daniel Weissbort
Page(s) 241-244
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