Vera Mercurieva Poetess Country: Uzbekistan

Biography of Vera Merkuryeva

Vera Merkuryeva was a poet who defied all odds and preserved her dignity even in the most unimaginable conditions. She is considered one of the most improbable phenomena in Russian poetry. Interestingly, she was buried next to another unlikely woman, Cherubina de Gabryak (Elizaveta Dmitrieva), in Tashkent. The exact location of their graves remains unknown, perhaps covered by a teahouse where people enjoy their meals. In Tashkent, a city that provided refuge to many Russian writers during the war, Merkuryeva stood in lines with Anna Akhmatova to get ration cards. They had briefly crossed paths before. After their meeting in Moscow in 1936, Merkuryeva wrote, "Life is not complete for those who have not seen her face...I have never had with anyone the same as I have with her: total recognition, complete renunciation of myself – there is no me, only her. If we had met 20 years ago, it would have been, most likely, 'friendship till death.' But now, it's my adoration and her rejection." In Tashkent, they met with even greater warmth, as Merkuryeva wrote, "She came to us...as always, unexpected and surprising...She was here for a short time, as always, and left, covering her head with black lace. She left behind, as always, an incredible, implausible mark – the only real thing – my Tashkent torment justified by her."
The current compiler of a mocking book about Akhmatova fails to understand that the improbability of a poet's existence, along with the entire intelligentsia, in the circumstances imposed by the time, is one of the few real characteristics that have preserved the spirit of Russia. However, if Akhmatova's story had remained the only one, it would not have survived. There were other people who also seemed improbable. They were united by the impossibility of betraying with their conduct what their culture had taught them. The word "dishonorable" was unattainable for them. The surviving scrupulousness of individual beings seemed incredible amidst the mass loss of moral fastidiousness. In their eyes, the first reality was reflected alongside the second – the mythical Kitezh, which could be discerned through the non-Soviet smoothness of movements amidst general disarray, the lack of elbowing others, and the inability to say "excuse me" instead of "excuse us." In 1939, Merkuryeva wrote to Marina Tsvetaeva, unsure if she had been forgotten, but an immediate response arrived: "...I remember your poems – not by the lines, but by the intonation – it seems like incantations. EG told me that you are a witch and that he definitely could have loved you... We are all old – because we were born earlier! – and yet, in conversation with the young, we are younger than them – with some indestructible youth! – because the old world ended with our youth – it was broken off." And then another letter came, and another: "My life is very bad. My non-life... With each change of place, I gradually lose the sense of reality: I am becoming smaller and smaller, like those flocks of birds that leave a few feathers on each fence..." Merkuryeva and her friends, the Kochetkovs, brought Tsvetaeva to Starki, near Moscow, for two weeks when the war had already begun. Tsvetaeva "was not herself, and there was something ominous about her," wrote Merkuryeva from the evacuation. Vera Merkuryeva's poetry is like a pearl, lying on the muddy seabed amidst the wreckage of ships and tin cans, of rare and enchantingly irregular shape. Mikhail Gasparov, who now also seems like one of the tribe of the improbable, gave a brilliant formula for Merkuryeva's poetry: "Poems are written like a diary, and this diary is a school of irresponsibility."
Vera Merkuryeva's parents divorced early on. Her mother settled with her children in Vladikavkaz. She wore a black headscarf and strict, almost monastic attire. She had a beautiful folk language combined with a high style. Her peasant roots sprouted in her daughter's poetry, although not immediately. In her childhood, Vera rarely wrote poems about her childhood. Her first poem at the age of 14 was titled, "When the unbearable slander of people torments you..." In reality, there were no real dramas, but she seemed to invite them. Her poems were sent to Yakov Polonsky, who responded with advice and blessings. Then came the fascination with the symbolists. And in the end, she reached the lines about inevitable fate: "This fate is beyond my strength – To be a beggar, redundant, and alone. But you desired it. So be it, Your will forever over me." But even in fate, if expressed with aphoristic power, there is not complete hopelessness, because in the power of bitter words, there is ecstasy with the strength of a gift, and that can pull one out of the darkest abysses. True gift is never darkness because even in it, a hidden source of light is concealed. "And again, distinctly and powerfully, The testament of consciousness sounds: With you together – life is dreadful. With you apart – there is no life." I fear that many women will sigh sadly, feeling that these lines are about them. However, if there is no life when one is apart from someone, life is not so dreadful that it should be exchanged for an empty "apartness." The poem "Soul Warmer" was written when such deep abysses of history opened up beneath our feet that personal dramas seemed smaller, and it was necessary to cling to something warm and soul-warming for salvation. These are also "everyone's" poems. However, life turned here not towards darkness but towards a shining side: "Warm by the stove. The unified scent Of flowers and light cigarettes. And the old cat with soft paws Buries its freezing nose in fur. / And mother in old warm slippers Walks – muttering to herself: – Everything is junk, everything is rubbish, Just like us, just like us. / Look, my daughter is sleeping from youth, So modest, not stepping over the threshold, – But it's warm and funny to me, and in my dreams Not a groom, not a pie." These poems are so full-blooded and fresh, like freshly baked bread breathing on all sides, like a child's rosy cheek, like a cloud covered in dewy lilac, poking at the window, demanding to be opened with all its shimmering stars. These poems resemble what it would be like if Leo Tolstoy decided to write poems from Natasha Rostova's perspective as she finally returns to life after the death of Prince Andrei. Merkuryeva's friend, Yevgeny Arkhipov, remembers her at her sister's grave: "Her amber eyes, glowing in the sun's rays, like two starry fires, followed the departed... Wide open, they were internally closed by some vow she had taken upon herself, like an ascetic renunciation... as if her gaze was turned towards two worlds." She herself was like Mother Earth, one side eclipsed, the other glowing. Vyacheslav Ivanov's archive contains a remarkable letter from Merkuryeva with his rare annotations. Thus, a dialogue emerged, unfortunately inconceivable in modern hurried correspondence: "...do my poems have any value beyond conditional aesthetics, something of a general nature – in terms of content? Is there something in them besides the musings of an immortal English schoolboy on the topic 'the world is vast, and I am small'? Annotation: 'However, with an addition: 'but I am the world.' – 'I don't believe in myself, and rightly so: I know myself.' Annotation: 'Believe not in yourself but in what you know about yourself.'" In the whole world, television is currently witnessing a triumphant de-intellectualization. Serious conversations have almost disappeared, replaced by nauseating entertainment. There is a cowardly avoidance of questions, even those posed to oneself, and there is no attempt to understand them. During discussions, opponents have no intention of seeking the truth; they simply want to outdo each other in ratings. How distant and unimaginable is the reciprocal confessionality of two writers like Vera Merkuryeva and Vyacheslav Ivanov in our present time. Merkuryeva anticipated what would happen to us: "Let us sing that the ruling paw is right, Having overthrown crowns today, But tomorrow – tears will fall On the folds of Pushkin's pages." But she did not anticipate her own spiritual strength, believing that she would inevitably become a victim of history: "The wheel of the urban machine, Half-worn while moving, – I will not stick my nose out into the world, I will disappear – a broken wheel. Invisible – I will vanish." Sickeningly plausible conveyor belt people lose – their truths ultimately turn out to be lies. And those lies, for which the tribe of the improbable was reproached, turn out to be truths in the end. Or – they will turn out to be.