On the Russian bezmernost’ of Tsvetaeva and Transmarine bezbrezhnost’
of Balmont

Bezmernost’ (literally ‘mesurelessness’) is one of Marina Tsvetaeva’s
most favorite words, which turned into her steady characteristic, despite
the fact that it appears only once in her original poetry (cf. the cycle «Poets»,
1923). It is important to point out the correlation of this term with the concept
of bezbrezhnost’ (‘coastlessness’) emblematic for Konstantin Balmont (see collection
«V bezbrezhnosti», 1895). Balmont uses the words bezbrezhnost’ abundantly,
and for Tsvetaeva, her bezmernost’ was a kind of Balmontism. Undoubtedly, Tsvetaeva and Balmont had much in common, including the
imagery of the «sea» and «elements». Tsvetaeva learned from Balmont to write
poetry and compose books. She carefully worked through three-volume collection
of Balmont (1908–1909), acquired in the period of compiling the book
«Vecherniy albom» (1910). The compositional «rhythm» of the book is identical
to the rhythm of Balmont’s book «Under the Northern Sky» and corresponds
to the principle of «trefoils» by Innokenty Annensky (this form was taken from
Balmont’s cycle «Trefoil», as Roman Timenchik noted). However, approximately
since 1913 Balmont lost leading positions in Russian poetry, and
Tsvetaeva gradually reoriented to other samples, although later, for example,
in the famous «Who is made of stone, who is made of clay...» (1920), she revealed
her kinship with her former idol, but did not want it to be obvious.
In the translation of Baudelaire’s «Le Voyage», the word bezmernost’ was
included in the phrase bezmernost’ morei («immensity of the seas»). For
Tsvetaeva, Balmont is related to the «sea» (he is an «overseas visitor»), and the
sea was the semantic component of her own name Marina. But Balmont is
«global», no «Russian» author, as Tsvetaeva defines herself (cf. «The Hero of
Labor», 1925). However, Tsvetaeva contradicts herself here. Young Tsvetaeva
was a gallomaniac. In the poem «Motherland» (1932) she calls her homeland
«Faraway» (concept semantically close to the concept of bezmernost’). Both for
Balmont and for Tsvetaeva, the ideas of «width» and «infinity» as «Russian»
properties are relevant (cf. A. D. Shmelev’s article «The breadth of the Russian
soul»).
More generally, the orientation towards immensity / boundlessness is associated
with general and international attitudes of a romantic type of culture and
aesthetics (or the Baroque type according to Heinrich Wölfflin, see his Renaissance
und Barock and Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe). However, Balmont
prefers bezbrezhnost’ – the idea of infinity in the horizontal plane (while in reality
he uses this word everywhere, and everything gives a shade of «horizontality
»). For Tsvetaeva, the vertical organization of space is more typical, and its
«immensity» often implies excessive density or height.