..smart cats wash their faces, but they don't call anyone to their world.

B. Chichibabin

An ordinary domestic cat is one of the most mysterious terrestrial creatures. Let us recall the numerous Russian proverbs, sayings, riddles: Why is the cat smooth? - Ate and on its side; The cat knows whose meat it ate; The cat is proud and will not leave the oven; The cat sleeps, but sees mice; The cat has claws in mittens; Plays like a cat with a mouse; Is lascivious like a cat; Is tenacious like a cat; A white cat climbs in the window (light). And the lullabies and rhymes familiar to us from childhood: "The Cat, the gray cat", "The Cat's House"; and Pushkin's cat is a scientist who walks around the chain in a circle!

The oldest literary genre in which cats have long "settled" is a fable, starting with Aesop ("The Cat and the Mice") and Phaedra ("The Rooster and the carrier cats). In Russia, fables have gained popularity since the second half of the XVIII century. Fable cats represented such human vices as cunning, greed, and guile: "Ferocious is that tormenting cat!" (A. Sumarokov. "Cat and Mouse"), "under the guise of meekness, he is our enemy" (I. Dmitriev. "Rooster, Cat and Mouse"), "Cats and everything are smart, but only hypocritical" (A. Izmailov. "Black Cat"), "What is painful to the mind, you don't need to know" (V. Zhukovsky. "The Cat and the Mirror"), "I always prefer well-known enemies to Friends who are masters of scratching" (V. Pushkin. "The Cat and the Pug"), "Thin songs to the Nightingale In the Cat's claws" and "And Vaska listens and eats" (I. Krylov. "The Cat and the Nightingale" and "The Cat and the Cook"). Perhaps the first appearance of a non-allegorical cat is found in the "Caricature" (1791) by I. Dmitriev: "Everything is quiet! Only a skinny cat meows on the roof." Pushkin let cats in friendly messages: "Purring, a proud old cat sleeps in a cell "("Message to Galich"), in satirical and humorous poems and poems "Hussar", "Shadow of Fonvizin", "House in Kolomna" and in Yuletide divination in "Eugene Onegin": "Dearest cat to the heart of virgins".

After Pushkin, who "introduced images of animals in everyday life into Russian poetry", " the everyday genre becomes predominant in animalistic poetry "(Epstein I. N. " Nature, the world, the secret place of the universe...". The system of landscape images in Russian poetry.,

page 16

1990. p. 96). But the cat remains a rare visitor throughout the 19th century, appearing mainly in poems dedicated to children.: "The cat sings, squinting its eyes"; "Know, yesterday the cat washed its nose for a reason" (A. Fet), "The middle son teased the cat" (N. Nekrasov), " Mom! do you see that black cat squinting at us with evil eyes?" (N. Ogarev); sometimes in an ironic context: "And the wild cat, meowing, wanders, the enemy of the Talmud and Kabbalah" (A. K. Tolstoy), "...the cries of cats and the romp of mice Are ready to welcome as the voices of nature" (K. Sluchevsky) and very rarely in the lyrics. For example, in A. Maikov, the hero recalls the past and imagines that the cat lying under the images sees the shadows of the departed, when he "leads with yellow eyes through a dark room, purring," ("Dreams"), and S. Nadson describes the owner's cat, "an old friend of the family": "he will lie down on the floor." sofa and squints, falling asleep, his pupils burning " ("Everything came true...").

Perhaps, only in one, Fetovsky, poem the cat acts not as an episodic character, but as an object of lyrical outpourings: "Don't grumble, my cat-purr, In a motionless half-dream: Without you, it's dark and wild In our direction."

In the poetry of the Silver Age, the animalistic theme is expanded and deepened - fascination with wild and exotic animals, interest in some mysterious beginning in animals and "animal" - in man.

A new animalism appeared at the beginning of the XX century and in the drawing of cats. First of all, they note both the connection with wild relatives - "the profile of a wild cat, a predatory and cheeky creature" (Sologub); the kitten "rushed like a young tiger cub" (Yesenin), and the similarity with people. At the smudged cat Block, a man gawks, sympathizing with the hero who has lost his heart: "Do you think he is also a witness? So he will answer you! In the same gulba His virtue!" ("When accidentally on Sunday..."). Tsvetaeva is also thinking about feline mental abilities: "What did the Siberian Cat understand, purring for a long time?" ("Under the caress of a plush blanket...").

In addition, some incomprehensible, magical power is revealed in cats: "In her blood is the wandering hop of passion"," In her pupils is an unknowable charm, In them are phosphorus and circles of otherworldly spheres... " (Balmont. "My animals"). By the way, the French poet Charles Baudelaire, who addressed three poems to them in the "Flowers of Evil" ("Cats", "Cat", "Cat"), saw cats exactly like the ancient sphinxes or prophetic idols. Balmont, admiring the feline grace and charm, directly refers to the " tragic Baudelaire "and" terrible Edgar "(E. Poe), his" two brothers in the abyss of the world", in love with majestic cats.

If Balmont emphasized the cat's closeness to the witch, then V. Ivanov calls his cat a "sorcerer" and compares it to Memnon (son of Eos, the goddess of the dawn) and also admires his eyes: "Two sous-

page 17

two dark obelisks that cut through the gold of the flaming disk" ("The Cat is a Sorcerer"). But the sweet enchantments he conjures turn out to be a ghostly dream, and when he wakes up, instead of a "friend of peaceful bliss", he wakes up with a"hot eye furnace". F. Sologub's" frightened undead " will pretend to be a cat, "a green eye will flash, a quick nail will scratch" - and a gray melancholy will fall ("Do not touch in the dark").

Mysticism also emanates from the Bunin cat, which comes at night to the dilapidated house where the old man-deceased once lay under the images: "The cat comes and shines with its eyes. The corner flickers with images in the darkness. The wind blows through the furnaces" ("Cats"). This mystical image associated with death (in the first printed edition there was a litter "From the cycle "Death"), echoes Gogol's gray cat, which foreshadowed death in "Old World Landowners". The same theme will be developed in Shengeli's old age: "This is death coming, apparently-A muddy cat on dog's legs." It was most likely imagined by the lyrical "I", and I recalled family legends in which" with all the dying "a dark ghost appeared:" Maybe this is our ancient totem, the Blessed Savior from rats. If so, let's get the Missing Friend back as soon as possible! Kitty-kitty!". And the image of the Mandelstam cat living with Kashchei "not for the game" is not just fantastic, but phantasmagoric: "That one has in the pupils of the burning ones The Treasure of a closed mountain, And in the pupils of those chilling, Pleading, begging, Globular sparks are feasts" ("That's why all failures...").

Rannaya Tsvetaeva's cats are intelligent and spiritual. They are independent of the person and resemble Kipling's heroine, who walks by herself. The refrain is repeated three times in the poem "Cats" : "There is no shame in a cat's heart!"," There is no slavery in a cat's heart","There is no love in a cat's heart!". According to young Marina, cats leave us when we are in trouble; it is useless to teach them a domestic role - "they run away from the slave's share"; no matter how much you spoil them, they prefer freedom and are indifferent to their owners. And two or three years later, the matured Tsvetaeva, already married and gave birth to a daughter, wrote a lullaby for... kitten "Dogs are released from the chain". How much tenderness and affection in the author's voice! "Sleep, my dear little one, sleep, my cute Kitten!", " Sleep, my cat's dove, My red and white one!", " You are my whole joy...", " I clung to my muzzle...". And at the end a prayer to God, as if we are talking about our own child"May the Lord and all the saints preserve you!"

Such careful, loving treatment of the kitten unexpectedly brings the young Tsvetaeva closer to the New Peasant poets: "kitty-pooh honey", "purr will be a pancake" (N. Klyuev); "A kitten purrs on the couch, looking at me indifferently" (S. Yesenin). Klyuev is generally characterized by the cult of the cat as a domestic spirit, the guardian of a peasant hut: "A pole for a cat is like a barn for a priest - The cat's path will not stall to it", " My corner is quiet and the bed is hot, Old

page 18

Vaska made fun of the brownie." Unlike Tsvetaev's cats, which are alienated from people, Klyuev's cats (and he preferred cats) are involved in human life: one tells us a fairy tale about Lel, the other cries, having lost his mistress and "comprehending death with an animal mind." Who knows, maybe a cat can prevent the hour of death? "I would meow viciously and fluff up my tail, I would sharpen my claws to the death of a wagtail" ("A pole for a cat...").

And Yesenin has both cats, and cats, and kittens, and they are inherent not only in generic properties, but also in individual characteristics. Here is a deaf cat listening to the owner's conversation, hanging an "important chapter" from the bed, it looks like a black owl and, it seems, shows Dula with its paw ("Snowstorm").

In the poetry of the Silver Age, along with traditional and banal analogies such as "the cat's gait", "the maiden is like a cat", "green eyes are the eyes of a cat", there are original likenesses: "I hear your cat's step, the ghost of treason!" (Kuzmin), songs - "pathetic kittens born blind" (Aseev)"conscience is a crafty kitten" (Khodasevich), and S. Cherny's cat resembles a "fat muff with the eyes of a mermaid" - a paradoxical combination of the living, real and fantastic in one image. The comparison of I. Severyanin is less peculiar: "In my face, like a red cat, a Chicken (reka-L. B.) snorted about something evil" (I recall Lermontov's " And the Terek, jumping like a lioness..."). Esenin's comparisons of natural phenomena with cats are unusual: "dawn on the roof, like a kitten, washes his mouth with his paw", "the sun, like a cat, pulls the ball to itself".

Sasha Cherny was truly a real "cat lover". Cats accompanied the poet throughout his work, inhabiting and inhabiting satirical, lyrical and children's poems, and everywhere their behavior is humanized and causes a smile: "Distant screams of flirting cats" (1911), " The cat languidly bypasses paths and hummocks And sniffs every flower "(1920), " On the Forum of Trajan Walk sluggishly cats "(1928), " Kitten screams, begs: "Take it!" Well, I understand, don't let her cry"" (1928), "From the balcony the cat squints with contempt..." (1930). And here's a whole humorous scene:

Yesterday my cat took a look at the calendar

And the tail of the pipe raised instantly,

Then he took a piss on the stairs, just like in the old days,

And he screamed warm and bacchanalian:

"Spring marriage! Civil marriage!

Hurry up, cats, to the attic..."

("The Awakening of Spring").

S. Cherny laughs at both people and cats. The Siamese cat, like her disappointed and angry owner, "according to the logic of the ladies, the smoky lilac eye sparkled with irritation "("Mistake"). = -

page 19

the Greek hero spied how "a pockmarked kitten sucks a bitch", and with a beaming face makes this fact as "a valuable contribution to science" ("Koumiss verses"). And another hero was touched by the behavior of a handsome cat who jumped on his lap, probably realizing how lonely he was, but it turned out that he was attracted by the fat lying in his pocket - "no more illusions" ("Sensitive soul"). The chimney sweep is followed by a crowd of cats in a "greedy crowd "(Lermontov's allusion). Why? "I treated one little cat, but she blurted it out to everyone "("Chimney Sweep"). Cats that are closely watched by the author become active participants in the action: "And Liza's cat, sneaking up behind her, Goes around and sniffs the floor, And suddenly, arching its neck mockingly, Sits down on the table in front of us" ("My Novel"), "My beloved, my polite cat In despair pulls the ground with its paw" ("Mistral"). In "Nocturnal Lamentations", the poet, talking with his cat, warns him:

Happy you are, you thoughtless grumbler,

Your tiny world is cozy:

At night-jungle corridor,

During the day - a fluffy bed.

Never near Lukomorye

Don't spin around, fat man., -

These fairy tales and ballads

They won't do you any good...

Suddenly you wake up: the wilderness and the cold,

The chain around my neck is getting shorter,

And a dog ring around it...

A little stumble - and kaput.

If S. Cherny modernized Pushkin's cat, N. Gumilev imagined himself as the Marquis de Carabas, and his clever, kind cat not only feeds its owner, but is ready to challenge the world for him, without losing its feline habits: "it purrs, burying its wet nose in my hand", "with a white and chiseled paw, angry, he combs out fleas "("The Marquis de Carabas").

V. Khodasevich turned to Hoffmann's cat Murr, who "was so wise in fun and funny in wisdom," and now is " across the fiery river, where Catullus is with a sparrow and Derzhavin is with a swallow." And the author also dreams of getting into those gardens where " beloved shadows enjoy the well-deserved rest of poets and animals forever "("In Memory of Murra the Cat"). Pozdnyaya I. remembered the "scientist's cat". Odoevtseva in the collection "The Golden Chain". He learned the "laws of poetry", purrs Iambics, "understood parapsychics" and ran away to Lukomorye. And the young E. Bagritsky likened himself to the famous cat: "Spinning like a wise cat under an oak tree, I dragged the chain over the stones."

The tradition of reviving old literary characters is continued by subsequent generations of Russian poets: "News about the Cat in the CA-

page 20

pogakh" (N. Matveeva)," and even Bulgakov's cat " (E. V. Shishkin). Evtushenko), "when you were left with only your lips, like that cat" (I. Brodsky) - this refers to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire cat from Alice in Wonderland.

The animalistic theme in Soviet poetry was "biologized" in the 1920s and 1930s, and then sociologized (see Epstein M. N. Decree, Op. 113-119). In the first case, the emphasis was placed on the behavior of animals, in the second-on their usefulness to humans. Thus, in E. Bagritsky, cats either hunt for food: "... a cat purrs, Licking its lips, cautiously sneaking Under chairs to a place Where a piece of Beef covered with light fat lies unnoticed" ("Til Ulenspiegel"), or indulge in" love":" Now on slippery roofs, Cat dates begin "("Til Ulenspiegel").Tavern").

N. Aseev creates a whole fairy-tale poem "Teh-Teshka", clearly intended for children's reading, about a kitten with a detailed (in 8 parts) description of its growth, development and pranks: he sharpened his claws on furniture, bit his soles, climbed on fur coats on a hanger, dragged toothbrushes. A year later, he will "surpass the cats of scientists; he will tell fairy tales" and sing songs on the roof.

A fairy - tale spirit - this time Perrovian-blows from N. Tikhonov's "Fishing Cat Lane" about a smart cat who caught grub for the owner, "pinned fish on a gray claw", and the legend of the "farmhand with a cat's head" lives in Paris. K. Nekrasova's" The Tale of the Cat and the Hedgehog " tells about a proud and belligerent cat who became bored and stopped purring when a hedgehog was brought into the house, but, listening to it rustling in the box, probably realized that he was "not alone on earth." O. Suleimenov's humorous fairy tale "Gray Miss" shows cats in the perception of mice and includes a verbal and sound game: the mouse-mother blames herself for giving birth to a mouse, "where there is no life from cats", where "cats, arsenic and mousetraps" are waiting for him, and in order to become powerful and learned, it is necessary to develop "thinking and muscles" - "Let the cats hide when they hear:" My mouse went hunting for cats!"". And Voznesensky makes the "arthropod cat", who "pulled his head terribly into his shoulders, as if into a black pipe", broadcast about the" lost fate " of the poet ("A Joking Sketch").

In the animalistic poetry of the last third of the 20th century, cats are increasingly established as special beings, with their own inner world, with a sense of self-esteem and amazing sensitivity and insight: "Cats know their own value, Walk as if they remember their former greatness..." (L. Martynov. "Cats"); " He sees things that are somehow imaginary as a texture. In the stillness of the nights - from the side-he sees my dreams " (N. Matveeva. "Cat's sensitivity").

Noteworthy is the" Song about the Black Cat "by B. Okudzhava, in which an extraordinary cat is bred: he does not sing or cry, does not demand or ask for anything, but is silent and "hides a mockery in his mustache". People are afraid

page 21

this neighbor: "the dirty floor will touch you with its claws, it will scratch your throat", "everyone takes it out for themselves and says thank you", and they feel some mysterious influence on their own lives: "That's why, of course, the house in which we live is not fun."

The "ecological ethics" of our time requires people to be aware of their relationship with nature and to be able to put themselves in the shoes of others. A homeless human soul cries, and with it "cats cry, they ask to go home, but there is no home, the house has been robbed by someone" (B. Chichibabin). As M. Epstein notes (Edict op. p. 122), " the current level of development of civilization has revealed in animals, first of all, a striking vulnerability, lack of adaptation." And in the cat, the person now sees the victim, guessing in it and his own fate. D. Bykov thinks about this, building his "Fairy Tale" on the parallelism of the cat and human worlds. The lyrical hero presents himself as "a cat taught by the new order, in the cold of all vacant lots, beaten, scared, in a dusty front door, huddled by the batteries." And a hopelessly philosophical ending about earthly existence and God's providence:

...At night, all cats are especially sirens.

All the lights were knocked out.

The one who once kicked me out of my apartment

forefathers on vacant lots,

Where they were twisted by the sorrow of the earth

our withered mouths, -

Still, he will come back for me sooner than you, my dear.

The moneybox of metamorphoses and transformations is increasingly enriched, mainly in the form of comparative turns, in which the cat tribe takes part. Here and "phosphoric cat", and "Memphis black cat "with" moon-hungry Egyptian eyes, the creature is a deity "(I. Lisnyanskaya), and "brave cat", "safer than the cook, the boatswain sullen", and "black fireworks" cats on the roofs (N. Matveeva), and "cat-meow catches a fly-tsokotukhu " (V. Sosnora), and "gundosye cats" scream like chimeras, and their "Mephistopheles laughter" sounds "cranked and hoarse viola" (A. Tarkovsky).

However, the group of cats is much more numerous, acting not as an object, but as an image of comparison, and it is found that the whole world is similar to them. Earth-old woman became "a cheerful and clean kitten" (N. Aseev); "the world falls like a cat, immediately on all four paws" (V. Nabokov); waves, "blind cats, twinkling near the sides, raged merrily" (N. Zabolotsky); " like a cat, every time life I managed to wriggle out" (K. Vanshenkin); " A man does not love a woman. Like a cat to a bird, he doesn't understand it." (I. Selvinsky); the city, "basking like a cat" (D. Bykov); snowfall - "a cat in downy boots" (A. Mezhirov); a bouquet of rosehips ," like a cat in a bag, squeezed into a vase " (A. Kush-

page 22

ner); "thin moon climbed onto the barn roof as a kitten" (Yu. Goncharov); "I took a warm loaf in my hands, like a kitten" (Yu. Kuznetsov); "rhymes were thrown under the wheels by cats" and "cat bushes are arched" (B. Slutsky); "the cat's game of duplicity" (M. Lukonin); "You cunningly chew a hole in the cat's bag of space" (I. Brodsky); "desperation string, like a cat, exhausted, the tenacious spirit ulcerates, where chayanya are dead "(Y. Moritz).

Andrey Voznesensky's cat metaphors and comparisons are particularly inventive: "A cat as evil as a wasp / will not fly to heaven", "A cat with its intellect has already, / Know, stamped children into the light, / bending its ears at the corners / to them, like a candy stacker"; " My cat, like a radio receiver, / green eye catches the world", "Like black cats, / squeal on mobile, / raising their tails".

Cats played a special role in the life and work of Joseph Brodsky, who loved them and communicated with them as with friends or relatives. According to E. Rein, "the cat is Brodsky's totem". It is interesting that A. A. Akhmatova called him" one and a half cats", comparing him with the familiar cat Gluck, who exceeded the usual size. And the poet himself in one interview likened himself to a cat who does not care whether the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Pamyat Society exist; the US president is indifferent: "How am I worse than this cat?". In his poems, cats constantly live near and together with people who sometimes hug them, then scratch them, then themselves resemble a "baked kotofey". Cats live everywhere - in rooms, in basements, on the streets:" in the dark, the cat breathed with a rumble"," it lay darkly under the lamp"," the cat's eyes glittered from under the table"," a gray witch purrs at the feet"," cats sleep in basements, their ears stick out", "in the dark, the cat is sleeping". At noon, the cats look under the benches to see if the shadows are black." But in exile, although Brodsky's favorite cat, Mississippi, lived with him, the poet did not dedicate poems to him and mentioned cats only in memories of the past, as in a terrible lullaby of his mother: "This is a cat, this is a mouse. This is a camp, this is a tower. This is the time that quietly kills mom and dad " ("Performance"); or: "Now in your eyes of the barn cat, / who kept the grain from spoilage and damage, / you can read the sadness that was dormant when the Pharaoh's axe was chasing me" ("Letter to the Oasis").

So, the images of cats are filled in Russian poetry with a diverse meaning: it is the personification of comfort, warmth and peace of the home, the embodiment of charming playfulness, the mysterious infernality, the wisdom, the cunning, the homelessness of a living being. Cats make us think about ourselves. As B. Chichibabin said, " Under the cry of a cat, I think: who are we? So unkind and so ungrateful."

Safed, Israel

Permanent link to this publication: