“The Great Heart of Proud Shulamith”: Adelina Adalis’s Feverish Truthfulness

The roster of Odessa’s “Poets’ Collective,” which effloresced during the lean final years of the Russian Civil War (1920-1922), was heavy on men — Eduard Bagritsky, Anatoly Fioletov, Yuri Olesha, Osip Kolychev, Georgy Shengeli, Valentin Katayev, etc. But it also featured at least four highly original women authors: Vera Inber, Zinaida Shishova, Nina Gernet, and Adelina Adalis (1900-1969).

Adelina Adalis in 1919.

A great deal can be said about the last of these, the striking Adalis, who was born in St. Petersburg but spent her formative years — from 1902 through 1920 — in Odessa. After her move to Moscow, she fell under the spell of Valery Bryusov (1873-1924), the decadent impresario of Russian Symbolism, who dedicated a number of poems to her. Unlike his less fortunate muses, she was able to establish her own reputation as a poet, novelist, and translator. Both Marina Tsvetaeva and Osip Mandelstam valued her work, and at one point Mandelstam even deemed her to be Tsvetaeva’s superior.

In 1922, Mandelstam saw in her verse a “muscular strength and truth,” and in reviewing her first collection of poems in 1934, he vividly described their impact: “Adalis writes easily, feverishly, as if with a pencil on postcards, starting on one and continuing on another.” There was indeed a feverish truthfulness in her verse, as well as in her personal conduct. Yevgeny Yevtushenko tells a moving story about the 1958 session of the Soviet Writers’ Union at which Pasternak was expelled from the organization for having published Doctor Zhivago abroad. When the man leading the meeting asked whether anyone wished to abstain from the vote, a woman’s voice from the back of the hall responded: “I abstain and I demand that you write that down.” His face twitching, the man declared: “The decision is unanimous. Meeting adjourned.” But again the voice piped up: “No, write down that I abstained.” The objection, says Yevtushenko, was “drowned out by the slamming of chairs and the sound of feet marching away.” The woman behind the voice was Adalis.

I feel Adalis’s truthfulness also comes through in the poem below, in which she captures with unflinching accuracy the misery of an old Jewish man in a Leningrad tenement, yet also glimpses in this misery the great dignity of his people’s tradition. The Shulamith mentioned at the end is, of course, the Shulammite of the Song of Songs — a symbol of grace and beauty. The name is rendered as “Sulamif’‘” in Russian, and I have chosen the spelling “Shulamith” under the influence of John Felstiner’s brilliant translation of Paul Celan’s “Death Fugue.”

A pair of spattered, torn galoshes,
an old hood, creased and brown with grime,
even his lips are worn and ashy:
a greying frock coat’s tattered hem.

Not for love’s torment — hungry, eager,
which forges miracles and joys —
do I now kiss his stiff, cold fingers
and try to dry his tearful eyes.

Wise Solomon passed down no powers;
his Song was not composed for him.
Down to this moldy floor, like flowers,
descends the Bible’s ancient dream.

And I behold: up a steep staircase —
which reeks of cats, soup, human filth —
he carries, like old, yellowed sedges,
the great heart of proud Shulamith.

1927

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Забрызганные, рваные галоши,
Коричневые складки башлыка,
И даже рот мучительно изношен,
Как полы серенького сюртука.

Не для любовной, ненасытной муки,
Кующей радостные чудеса,
Целую отмороженные руки,
Слезящиеся трогаю глаза.

Не для него слагалась Песня Песней,
Но дал ему премудрость Соломон.
И вот на этот пол, покрытый плесенью,
Цветами падает библейский сон.

И вижу я: по лестнице высокой,
Пропахшей щами, кошками, людьми,
Проносит он желтеющей осокой —
Большое сердце гордой Суламифь.

1927