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THE BOOK OF POEMS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY RUSSIAN LITERATURE: 

KHODASEVICH, GIPPIUS AND SHVARTS 

Sarah Clovis Bishop 

A DISSERTATION 

PRESENTED TO THE FACULTY 

OF PRINCETON UNIVERSITY 

IN CANDIDACY FOR THE DEGREE 

OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY 

RECOMMENDED FOR ACCEPTANCE 

BY THE DEPARTMENT OF 

SLAVIC LANGUAGES AND LITERATURES 

June 2004

UMI Number: 3119375 

Copyright 2004 by 

Bishop, Sarah Clovis 

All rights reserved. 

________________________________________________________ 

UMI Microform 3119375 

Copyright 2004 ProQuest Information and Learning Company. 

All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against 

unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. 

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© Copyright by Sarah Clovis Bishop, 2004. All rights reserved.

Abstract 

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Russian symbolists began to pay 

consistent and particular attention to the organization of their individual poems into 

integral collections. In this dissertation, I examine the organizing principles behind three 

post-symbolist books of poetry. 

My first two chapters deal with texts from the first half of the century: Vladislav 

Khodasevich’s Way of the Grain (1920; 1921; 1927) and Zinaida Gippius’s Radiances 

(1938). The third chapter addresses a more recent work: Elena Shvarts's The Works and 

Days of the Nun Lavinia (1987). In all three instances, the poets consciously and 

deliberately approach the construction of their books. Khodasevich rewrites his book 

twice, fundamentally changing it in the third edition. Gippius breaks away from her 

earlier chronologically organized “diaries” and creates a final summational book. Shvarts 

publishes the poems of a fictional character, thus creating a novel in verse, of sorts. 

In identifying the organizing principles underlying each of these individual books, 

I draw on previous scholarship on the Russian lyric cycle—a form often distinct from the 

book of poems but one that raises similar questions of composition and influence. The 

formal approaches proposed by Ronald Vroon, I.V. Fomenko, and M.N. Darvin to the 

poetic cycle can be applied to the book of poems as well: close attention to titles, 

subheadings and epigraphs; framing of opening and closing poems; repetition of key 

words, phrases and images; similarity or juxtaposition of formal features such as meter; 

marked non-chronological ordering of poems. 

iii

In my conclusion, I pose the question of tradition, juxtaposing Shvarts's 1987 

work to Khodasevich's and Gippius's in an attempt to describe how the conception of the 

book of poems has changed over the course of the century. 

iv

TABLE OF CONTENTS 

Abstract 

iii 

Acknowledgements 

vi 

Introduction: The Book of Poems 1 

Chapter One: Vladislav Khodasevich's Way of the Grain 7 

Chapter Two: Zinaida Gippius's Radiances 82 

Chapter Three: Elena Shvarts's Works and Days of the Nun Lavinia 140 

Conclusion 198 

Bibliography 204 

v

Acknowledgements 

When I arrived at Princeton, I never imagined that I would end up taking a formal 

approach to Russian poetry—I had no idea what such a thing was. I would like to thank 

the faculty of the Slavic Department for introducing me to many new ways of thinking. I 

am grateful to Olga Hasty for her wonderful classes on poetry, to Caryl Emerson for a 

humane (if painful, at the time) introduction to literary theory and its application to all 

types of literature, and to Charles Townsend for the maze of Czech grammar and the onestem 

verb system. Thanks also to Professors Ermolaev and Chances for their insight into 

Soviet and post-Soviet writing, and to Natasha Reed and David Freedel. I cannot 

imagine a more supportive environment in which to learn and write. 

Particular thanks, of course, go to my advisor, Michael Wachtel, for his generosity with 

both his ideas and time. Even when it took me months (sometimes approaching years) to 

send him new material, he would respond with thoughtful comments within days, if not 

hours. Such a combination of kindness, practicality and intelligence is rare—I feel very 

lucky to have benefited from it. 

I would also like to thank the community of Slavic graduate students at Princeton who 

challenged me intellectually and became great friends in the process. I am particularly 

grateful to Anne and Grady Caswell Klein, Julia Zarankin, Cole Crittenden, Sharon 

Lubkemann Allen, Brian Stimmler, Inna Mezhdibovskaya and Maryl and John Hallett. I 

owe my dissertation topic to my friend Mirande Bissell and my current job to Luda and 

Jim Lavine. Thank you! 

I have also been fortunate in my relationships outside of Princeton. At Wellesley, I 

would like to thank Tom Hodge, Adam Weiner and Alla Epsteyn for their support and 

patience with this project. Tom and Adam were kind enough to read and comment 

extensively on my Khodasevich chapter, and Alla was a great help in moments of 

linguistic crisis. I would also like to thank Jim Kodera for his insight into the Buddhist 

features of Shvarts's book. 

Thanks also to Stephanie Sandler who welcomed me into her seminar on contemporary 

Russian poetry at Harvard and aided me greatly in my study of Shvarts. Special thanks to 

Elena Shvarts, herself, who kindly answered questions about her work in several email 

correspondences. 

Finally, I would like to thank the home front. Immeasurable thanks to my parents who 

have supported me throughout all of my endeavors. I am very grateful for all of the 

opportunities they have given me. And, most importantly, thanks to my husband Eric 

who was truly there from start to finish (along with our faithful cat Rudy and a certain 

undercover agent). I couldn't have done it without him. 

vi

Introduction: The Book of Poems 

“You have a book in you,” said Charents, listening to M.’s 

poems about Armenia. (This was in Tiflis—in Erivan he would 

not have dared to come see us.) M. was very pleased by these 

words: “Perhaps he’s right—I may really have a book in me.” 

A few years later, at M.’s request, I took a sheaf of his Voronezh 

poems to Pasternak, who, after looking at them, suddenly spoke 

of the “miracle of a book in the making.” With him, he said, it 

had happened only once in his life, when he wrote “My Sister 

Life.” I told M. about this conversation and asked: “So a 

collection of verse doesn’t always make a book?” M. just 

laughed.—Nadezhda Mandelshtam, Hope Against Hope (New 

York: Atheneum, 1970), p. 190. 

The Russian book of poems, 1 in Mandelshtam’s conception, is a relatively recent 

phenomenon. Well into the nineteenth century, poets compiled their poems 

chronologically, grouped them loosely according to genre, or paid no attention at all to 

their arrangement. Tiutchev, for example, never took part in the organization of his 

poems into books. Batiushkov left such work to his friend Gnedich. While some 

scholars point to Pushkin’s alexandrines of 1836 as part of the first consciously 

constructed modern cycle of verse, 2 the first generally acknowledged “book of poems,” 

Baratynsky’s Сумерки, appeared in 1842. 3 

In a period when most collections were titled 

simply “Стихотворения” or “Собрание сочинений,” Baratynsky’s title, which reflects 

the consistent mood of the book’s poems, and his singular subtitle “Сочинение Е.Б” (as 

against Сочинения) immediately point to a new kind of intentional unity. While Fet’s 

collections show a similar type of thematic organization, it was not until the advent of the 

1 In this dissertation, the phrase “book of poems” will specifically refer to a consciously constructed poetic 

book, typical of the twentieth century. It will be contrasted to “collection” and “compilation." 

2 David Sloane, Aleksandr Blok and the Dynamics of the Lyric Cycle (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1987), 26- 

39. 

3 See Ronald Vroon, "The Renaissance of the Lyric Cycle in Russian Modernism: Sources and 

Antecedents," in Zyklusdichtung in den slavischen Literaturen. Beiträge zur internationalen Konferenz, 

Magdeburg 18.-20. Marz 1997, ed. Reinhard Ibler (Peter Lang, 2000), 567-8. 

1

Symbolist movement that Russian poets paid consistent and particular attention to the 

organization of their individual poems into integral collections. 

Ronald Vroon has claimed Balmont’s В безбрежности (1895) as the first book 

of poems to constitute a closed, unified sequence. 4 

Bryusov quickly follows with Chefs 

d’oeuvre (1895) and Tertia vigilia (1900). In the introduction to his 1903 book Urbi et 

Orbi (1903) Bryusov explicitly addresses the new conception of a book of poems: 

Книга стихов должна быть не случайным сборником разнородных 

стихотворений, а именно книгой, замкнутым целым, объединенным единой 

мыслью. Как роман, как трактат, книга стихов раскрывает свое содержание 

последовательно, от первой страницы к последней. Стихотворение, 

выхваченное из общей связи, теряет столько же, как отдельная страница из 

связного рассуждения. Отделы в книге стихов—не более как главы, 

поясняющие онда другую, которых нельзя переставлять произвольно. 5 

The compositional principles outlined in this book, tremendously popular and influential 

in its time, quickly became accepted guidelines for the majority of the symbolist poets. 6 

One poet particularly excited by Urbi et Orbi, Aleksandr Blok, took these 

principles to a new level, organizing his entire life’s work into a “trilogy of 

incarnation”—a three volume Собрание сочинений which forms the lyric biography of 

the poet. This trilogy was conceived well before the majority of the poems that were to 

go into it had been written. In his 1911 introduction to the collection Blok describes the 

basic structure the trilogy was to take: 

Тем, кто сочувствует моей поэзии, не покажется лишним включение в эту и 

следующие книги полудетских или слабых по форме стихотворений; многие из 

них, взятые отдельно, не имеют цены; но каждое стихотворение необходимо 

для образования главы; из нескольких глав составляется книга; каждая книга 

есть часть трилогии; всю трилогию я могу назвать «романом в стихах»; она 

4 Ibid., 576. 

5 V.Ia. Briusov, Sochineniia (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1987), vol. 1, 493. 

6 A.V. Lavrov, "Briusov," in Russkie pisateli 1800-1917: biograficheskii slovar' , vol. 1, (Moscow: 

Sovietskaia entsiklopediia, 1989), 334. 

2

посвящена одному кругу чувств и мыслей, которому я был предан в течение 

первых двенадцати лет сознательной жизни. 7 

Boris Pasternak’s 1922 book, Сестра моя—жизнь, has also been described as a 

novel. Tynianov compares it to a “diary in verse with precise place-names and dates.” 8 

Read as an integral whole, its poems, complete works of art in and of themselves, provide 

a narrative account of a specific love affair and journey. This specific story, Katherine 

O’Connor argues, is universalized by its poetic form, turning the seemingly simple 

narrative into a metapoetic statement. 9 

Extremely influential for both Pasternak’s 

contemporaries and later poets, Сестра моя—жизнь provides an important model for 

the twentieth-century Russian book of poems. 

In my dissertation I will not focus on this emergence of the book of poems. 

Instead, I will analyze three twentieth-century examples, all of which appeared after the 

importance of a book’s organization had been explicitly and widely discussed. 10 

My first 

two chapters deal with texts from the first half of the century: Vladislav Khodasevich’s 

Путем зерна (1920; 1921; 1927) and Zinaida Gippius’s Сияния (1938). The third 

chapter addresses a more recent work: Elena Shvarts's Труды и дни Лавинии, Монахини 

7 Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie sochinenii v 8 tomakh, vol. 1 (Moscow: Khudozhestvennaia literatura, 1960), 

559. 

8 Katherine Tiernan O'Connor, "Boris Pasternak's My Sister—Life: The Book Behind the Verse," Slavic 

Review 37, no. 3 (September 1978), 399. 

9 See Katherine Tiernan O'Connor's excellent book, Boris Pasternak's My Sister—Life: The Illusion of 

Narrative (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1988). 

10 

By 1915 Briusov's Urbi et Orbi pronouncement had become common currency in literary discussions. In 

his review of Blok’s “Стихи о России” Georgii Ivanov writes: Когда читаешь «Стихи о России», 

вспоминается слова В-ия Брюсова о книгах, которые нельзя перелистывать, а надо читать, «как 

роман». V. Enisherlov, Shtrikhi sud'by (Moscow: Sovremennik, 1980), 174. Fyodor Sologub, who had 

paid little attention to the organization of his early books, giving his wife and Briusov free reign in 

selecting and ordering the poems, shows a heightened attention to the composition of later works, perhaps 

swayed by the carefully constructed works of other symbolists. In the introduction to Лазурные горы, the 

first volume of his 1913 collected works, he writes: Стихотворения, собранные в этой книге, написаны 

в 1884-1898 годах; но далеко не все стихотворения тех лет помещены здесь. Выбор обусловлен 

желанием сохранить некоторую общность настроения. Стихи расположены в порядке, который для 

внимательного читателя покажется не случайным. Хронологический указатель напечатан в конце 

этой книги. Fyodor Sologub, Sobranie sochinenii, v. 1 (Saint Petersburg: Sirin, 1913), v. 1, opening pages 

(unnumbered). 

3

из ордена обрезания сердца (1987). In all three instances, the poets consciously and 

deliberately approach the construction of their books. Khodasevich rewrites his book 

twice, fundamentally changing it in the third edition. Gippius breaks away from her 

earlier chronologically organized “diaries” and creates a final summational book. Shvarts 

publishes the poems of a fictional character, thus creating a novel in verse of sorts. 

In identifying the organizing principles underlying each of these individual books, 

I draw on previous scholarship on the Russian lyric cycle—a form often distinct from the 

book of poems but one that raises similar questions of composition and influence. The 

formal approaches proposed by Ronald Vroon, I.V. Fomenko, and M.N. Darvin to the 

poetic cycle can be applied to the book of poems as well: close attention to titles, 

subheadings and epigraphs; framing of opening and closing poems; repetition of key 

words, phrases and images; similarity or juxtaposition of formal features such as meter; 

marked non-chronological ordering of poems. A larger formal question asked of the 

poetic cycle—to what extent the individual poems lose their autonomy within a larger, 

contextualized whole—is equally applicable to the book of poems. 11 

Much of the cycle scholarship pertains to the historical origins of the lyric cycle. 

Scholars disagree as to whether it emerged only in the latter part of the nineteenth century 

or whether it has roots as far back as the eighteenth century. 12 

This debate does not 

directly affect my work since first, I am not focusing on the historical background of the 

book of poems, and second, the debate specifically concerns the cycle rather than the 

complete book of poems. Baratynsky’s Сумерки is generally accepted as the first 

11 See Edward Stankiewicz, "Centripetal and Centrifugal Structures in Poetry," Semiotica 38, nos. 3-4 

(1982): 217-42, and Ronald Vroon, "Prosody and Poetic Sequence; Proc. of 1987 Conf. at UCLA" in 

Russian Verse Theory, ed. Barry Scherr (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica, 1989), 473-490. 

12 See David Sloane, Aleksandr Blok, and Ronald Vroon, "Renaissance." 

4

example of a consciously constructed Russian book of poems. It is important, however, 

to be aware of the huge popularity of the cycle at the turn of the century. Beginning with 

Bal’mont’s В безбрежности and Bryusov’s Chefs d’oeuvre in 1895, the period that 

some claim as the origin of “genuine” lyric cycles, almost all major volumes of lyric 

poetry are composed of cyclic groupings. Thus, the cycle plays a major role in the 

organization of the early twentieth-century book of poems. 

In order to explain the prominent role of the cycle at the turn of the century, Z.G. 

Mints looks to the mythopoetic nature of the younger generation of symbolists. She 

claims that in some cases the cycle has become "the functional equivalent of a 'poemamyth'" 

(своебразный функциональный заместитель «поэмы-мифы»). Its potential for 

generating plot mimics the myth’s narrative dynamic. 13 

Vroon echoes this notion of 

myth creation, arguing that symbolist cycles are often expressions of historiographic 

models that allow current events to take on epic proportions. 14 

Vroon argues that such 

cycles are non-narrative, 15 but he appears to equate narrative with a chronological 

representation of events. I explore a more expansive narrative tendency in the book of 

poems, perhaps best captured in the Russian term “последовательность”—a progressive 

movement over the course of the cycle or book of poems. Vroon clearly identifies this 

progressive element in Blok’s and Voloshin’s “non-narrative” historiographic cycles. 

13 Z.G. Mints, "O nekotorykh «neomifologicheskikh» tekstakh v tvorchestve russkikh simvolistov," in 

Tvorchestvo A.A. Bloka i russkaia kul'tura XX veka: Blokovskii sbornik III. (Tartu: Uchenye zapiski 

Tartusokogo gosudarstvennogo universiteta, 1979), vol. 459, 77. 

14 Ronald Vroon, "Cycle and History: Maksimilian Vološin's 'Puti Rossi'," Scando-Slavica 31 (1985): 59- 

61. 

15 Ronald Vroon, "Cycle and History: The Case of Aleksandr Blok's Rodina," Slavic and East European 

Journal 28, no. 3 (Fall 1984): 340-1. 

5

Other critics who have discussed the role of narrative in lyric cycles have 

distinguished plot types or outlined spatio-temporal schemes. 16 

Rather than trying to 

create my own narrative typology, I attempt to address the issue of narrative within the 

context of the second generation of symbolist poets—the poets, particularly Blok, who 

solidified a place for the lyric cycle and the book of poems in the Russian twentiethcentury 

tradition. To what extent do the books I consider follow a “poema-myth” model? 

To what extent can they be read as spiritual diaries or biographies of the poet, and, by 

extension, his or her time? Is some form of narrative necessary to create a successful 

book of poems? Does each of the books under consideration contain narrative elements? 

Are they the dominant elements? How does a narrative thrust affect the autonomy of the 

individual poems contained in the book? 

In my conclusion, I pose the question of tradition. I have chosen to focus on 

books from distinct time periods—the twenties and thirties and the eighties. While just a 

tiny sampling of the tremendous poetic output of the past seventy-five years, this 

selection of books begs the question of how the conception of the book of poems has 

changed over the course of the century. Does Shvarts approach the book of poems 

differently because of her fuller awareness of twentieth-century tradition? Or are 

Khodasevich and Gippius, having witnessed the advent of the book of poems and already 

writing after the importance of its form had been firmly established, even more conscious 

of their approach to the book? 

16 See Sloane, Aleksandr Blok, 43-60, and L. Liapina, "K voprosu tipologii liricheskikh tsiklov (liricheskii 

tsikl v poezii Bal'monta)," in Materialy XXVI nauchnoi studencheskoi konferentsii (Tartu 1971), 61-2. 

6

Chapter One: Vladislav Khodasevich's Way of the Grain 

Throughout his career, Vladislav Khodasevich paid very close attention to the 

construction of his books of poems. In the foreword to the 1914 edition of his second 

book of verse he writes, "В «Счастливый домик» вошло далеко не все, написанное 

мною со времени издания первой книги моих стихов. Многое из написанного и 

даже напечатанного за эти пять лет я отбросил: отчасти как не отвечающее моим 

теперешним требованиям, отчасти—как нарушающее общее содержание этого 

«цикла»." 17 

Here, Khodasevich sets out his two primary criteria for a book of poems: 

first, it performs an autobiographical function, allowing the poet to express his "current 

needs" at a certain point in his artistic and spiritual development; second, it adheres to a 

"general content," perhaps thematic, perhaps formal, which creates a sense of organic 

wholeness throughout the "cycle." 18 

The autobiographical aspect proves particularly important in Khodasevich's early 

work. In a draft of an ultimately unpublished introduction to his first book of poems, 

Молодость (1908), Khodasevich already recognizes the collection as an 

autobiographical reflection on the first stage of his conscious life—a stage which the 

writing of the book has completed: Чувствую ясно, что какая-то полоса в моей жизни 

17 Vladislav Khodasevich. Stikhotvoreniia (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel'/Biblioteka poeta, 1989), 367. 

18 N.A. Bogomolov recognizes the importance of such “general content” by claiming unity of mood as the 

primary organizing principle of Khodasevich’s poetic books. N.A. Bogomolov, "Zhizn' i poeziia 

Vladislava Khodasevicha" in Russkaia literatura pervoi treti XX veka (Tomsk: Vodolei, 1999), 96. He 

highlights Khodasevich’s attention to “current needs” by describing the books as distinct markers in his 

poetic biography: Для Ходасевича вообще издание книги было событием. Литературоведы пишут о 

том, как много для поэтов ХХ века значит само это понятие «книга стихов». Она не складывается 

произвольно, по прихоти самого автора, а является отражением целого большого периода его 

развития, выливается в повесть о жизни. И Ходасевич был одним из тех поэтов, для которых книга 

составляла важнейшую ступень творческой биографии. Его путь можно представить как 

восхождение от одной книги к другой, причем каждая из них являлась замкнутым и 

самодостаточным феноменом. Совершая круг внутри сборника, душа поэта замыкает его с тем, 

чтобы, на миг прервав сквозное развитие, перейти к следующему этапу, к следующей книге. Ibid., 

86. 

7

кончилась. Она длилась не долго. Какие-нибудь четыре-пять лет протекли с тех 

пор, как мое существование стало сознательно. Но эти годы навсегда останутся в 

моей памяти овеянными синим светом сумеречной печали, закатной боли. 19 

Unified by a common mood of "twilight sadness" and "sunset pain," the book provides an 

enclosed poetic memory of Khodasevich’s youth. Молодость thus emerges not as a 

stream-of-consciousness poetic diary of the past few years, but rather as a consciously 

organized book of poems. 

With Счастливый домик the tendency towards selective organization becomes 

more apparent, both with the published introduction quoted above, and with the division 

of the book into three titled sections: "Пленные шумы," "Лары," and "Звезда над 

пальмой." Khodasevich’s closest friend of this period, Muni (a pseudonym for the poet 

Samuil Kissin), outlines the overall structure of the book in a 1914 unpublished review of 

both Счастливый домик and Akhmatova’s Четки. In differentiating the two books, 

Muni opposes the fatedness of Akhmatova's diary-like design to the logic of 

Khodasevich's rationally conceived "biography": 

Книга Ходасевича не только жива органически, но и обладает слаженностью по 

разумному плану созданного творения. Книга Ахматовой, на первый взгляд, 

обладает только органической жизнью…Ее цельность есть цельность человеческой 

жизни—не биографии, а действительной жизни…Четки—это день за днем. И не 

Ахматова, пассивная и знающая, а судьба ткет в этих днях свой узор. 20 

For Muni, "biography" involves the poet’s conscious aesthetic organization of real life 

material. In Счастливый домик Khodasevich creates a biography for himself, selecting 

and ordering emotions and events within the walls of his happy little home—the clear 

19 Khodasevich, Stikhotvoreniia, 361. 

20 Samuil Kissin (Muni). Legkoe bremia (Moscow: August, 1999), 163. 

8

orders of his book. Akhmatova’s Четки, on the other hand, is fatefully driven by a 

stream of unfiltered "быт." Her biography can only be created for her. 

While Muni admires the harmony and order produced by Khodasevich’s rational 

plan, he is uncomfortable with the degree of rationalization involved. At the beginning of 

the review, he describes the book’s plan as "логичен до сухости." Both Khodasevich’s 

and Akhmatova’s books are "намеренно скромные, смиренные, быть может, даже 

слишком." 21 

Akhmatova’s because the poet has no aesthetic control over the flow of 

real life, Khodasevich’s because he has too much. Muni appears to crave a more 

creative, transformative poetic biography—one that would more fully synthesize life and 

art. Such an ideal "biography" recalls the symbolist concept of жизнетворчество (life 

creation) in which the poet strives to organize aesthetically not only his art, but also his 

behavior, the ultimate goal being the fusion of life and art. 22 

In his article "О символизме," Khodasevich claims that because of this close 

relationship between life and art (теснейшая и неразрывная связь писаний с жизнью), 

it is essential to study the symbolists in light of their biographies—both as individuals 

and as part of a larger symbolist collective: У отдельных авторов многое, если не 

почти все, может быть понято только в связи с хронологией их, и не только их, 

творчества. И наконец, едва ли не все наиболее значительное открывается не 

иначе, как в связи с внутренней и внешней биографией автора. 23 

Such a statement 

invites the same approach to Khodasevich himself. While born late to the symbolist 

21 Ibid., 160. Emphasis, mine. 

22 For a discussion of zhiznetvorchestvo, see Paperno's introduction in Irina Paperno and Joan Delaney 

Grossman, eds., Creating Life: The Aesthetic Utopia of Russian Modernism (Stanford: Stanford 

University Press, 1994), 1-11. See also Khodasevich's 1928 "Konets Renaty," the first chapter of his 

memoir Nekropol', in Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, (Moscow: Soglasie, 1996-7), vol. 4, 7-18. 

23 Vladislav Khodasevich, "O simvolizme," in Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, vol. 2, 175. 

9

movement, he did manage to "breathe in its air, when that air had not yet dissipated, and 

symbolism had not yet become a planet without an atmosphere." 24 

Like the symbolists, 

Khodasevich leaves traces of his own biography within his work. In his early work he 

imitates decadent symbolist models, pursuing the ideal of жизнетворчество through his 

mystical friendship with Muni and filling his poetry with pessimistic images of barren 

fields, decline and violent death. 25 

His understanding of the relation between biographical and literary fact begins to 

change, however, in the years following his first book, Молодость. According to David 

Bethea, Khodasevich's adoption of "Bryusov's bio-aesthetic genre, his willful blurring of 

the boundaries separating art and life, slowly yielded to Pushkin's subtle transformation 

of raw experience into the finished poem, his desire to keep out of sight all that was too 

narrowly personal or self-regarding." 26 

Bethea links this process of maturation to 

Khodasevich's study of Pushkin and his epoch and finds its first poetic traces in the late 

(1913) poems of Счастливый домик. 27 The change becomes much more evident, 

however, in Khodasevich's third book, Путем зерна, published in three distinct forms: 

twice as an independent book (1919/1920; 1921) and later as part of his collected works 

(1927). The changes made between the first and second editions are relatively small. 28 

Khodasevich includes six new poems in the 1921 edition, five of which had been written 

24 Ibid., 173. The original Russian reads, "я же успел еще вдохнуть его воздух, когда этот воздух еще 

не рассеялся и символизм еще не успел стать планетой без атмосферы." 

25 "В моей стране," the opening poem of Молодость and an exemplary "decadent" poem, will be 

discussed below. 

26 David Bethea. Khodasevich: His Life and Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 72. 

Bogomolov also discusses this tendency of Khodasevich to generalize the personal: Его стихи теснейшим 

образом соприкасаются с событиями биографии поэта, претворяют их в события генерального мифа 

о жизни поэта вообще, любого поэта. N.A. Bogomolov, "Zhizn' i poeziia," 82. 

27 Bethea, Khodasevich, 92-102. 

28 According to Khodasevich, the first edition, ordered in huge quantity by Gosizdat, ended up hidden away 

in warehouses of the Moscow Soviet. The second edition reached an actual public audience. Vladislav 

Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1983), vol. 1, 298. 

10

since the time of the first publication, and he excludes one poem, "Авиатору." The 

changes between the second and final edition, however, are fundamental. He excludes 

seven poems and adds four new ones. He drops the dedication, included in both the first 

and second editions, "to the memory of Samuil Kissin" (Muni). Perhaps most 

significantly, he chooses to open the book with the title poem, "Путем зерна," instead of 

with “Ручей," the opening poem of the earlier editions. 

As I will argue throughout this chapter, all of these changes support a move away 

from the highly emotional and personal poetry of Khodasevich's youth to a more 

removed, epic viewpoint. The first and second editions seem to be written at a critical 

biographical juncture. In struggling to bring together his youthful experiences and his 

newfound maturity, Khodasevich provides an account of his journey ("путь") from the 

depths of decadent despair to a hopeful, universal truth. In the third edition, Khodasevich 

breaks entirely from his youth. He publishes it as the first book in his 1927 Собрание 

стихов, discarding and effectively disowning his previous two books. The final edition 

appears seven years after its first publication—years filled with vast biographical change, 

most significantly Khodasevich's emigration and the writing of his two final books of 

verse, Тяжелая лира and Европейская ночь. 29 

reflects an immediate psychological journey. 30 

In its new form, Путем зерна no longer 

Khodasevich has stepped outside of his 

biography and created a more comprehensive view of a common human struggle. Some 

29 Тяжелая лира was first published in the end of 1922. Khodasevich published a reworked version in 

1923. A slightly expanded final version was included in the 1927 Собрание стихов. Европейская ночь, 

first published in the 1927 Собрание стихов, never appeared as a separate volume. 

30 David Bethea claims that "Khodasevich's poems nearly always tell the story of 'where he was' 

psychologically at the moment of writing." Bethea, Khodasevich, 92. The final edition of Путем зерна, 

however, reflects Khodasevich's psychological state at the time of publication. No longer struggling with 

the immediate inspiration of the individual poems, he is able to reorganize them in a more distanced, less 

personal way. 

11

personal elements, of course, remain, but in the form of the new book they take on a 

universal quality. 

In this chapter I will demonstrate this change in the book's overall conception by 

first discussing Khodasevich's placement of the title poem in the different editions. I will 

then address the connections between the early editions of Путем зерна and his early 

poetry and biography, specifically his second book, Счастливый домик, and his 

relationship with the poet Muni. Finally, I will examine the changes in the second and 

third edition, arguing that Khodasevich's choices to add and remove poems all support his 

journey away from the personal toward the universal. 

"Путем зерна" 

The title of Khodasevich's book comes from his 1917 poem "Путем зерна": 

Проходит сеятель по ровным бороздам. 

Отец его и дед по тем же шли путям. 

Сверкает золотом в его руке зерно, 

Но в землю черную оно упасть должно. 

И там, где червь слепой прокладывает ход, 

Оно в заветный срок умрет и прорастет. 

Так и душа моя идет путем зерна: 

Сойдя во мрак, умрет—и оживет она. 

И ты, моя страна, и ты, ее народ, 

Умрешь и оживешь, пройдя сквозь этот год,— 

Затем, что мудрость нам единая дана: 

Всему живущему идти путем зерна. 

The sower makes his way along the even furrows. 

His father and grandfather walked along these same paths. 

A grain gleams in his hand like gold, 

But into the black earth it must fall. 

12

And there, where the blind worm breaks its path, 

It will die and germinate in its destined time. 

So too does my soul go the way of the grain: 

Having gone down into the darkness, it will die and be reborn. 

And you, my country, and you, her people, 

Will die and be reborn, having made your way through this year. 

Since a single truth is given to us: 

Every living thing must go the way of the grain. 

Bethea rightly claims that this poem colors and organizes the final edition of Путем 

зерна, creating a cyclical pattern for the rest of the lyrics to follow—a movement through 

darkness and death to light and rebirth. The poems which come after "Путем зерна" are 

characterized by doubt and uncertainty—they describe the darkness out of which the 

grain will, in the end, be reborn in the final poem of the book, "Хлебы," a joyous 

description of breadbaking. "From first to last Khodasevich seems to say that the seed 

placed in soil has a purpose—it is to become the loaf that nourishes." 31 

This poem did not, however, open the first two editions, but instead appeared late 

in the book, in between the poems "Золото" and "2-ого ноября," a description of 

revolutionary Moscow. Bethea briefly mentions this change of position in a footnote but 

does not explore Khodasevich's reasons for making it other than to say that he apparently 

felt that the poem served better as a frontispiece than "Ручей," the poem which originally 

opened the book. In fact, Khodasevich's decision to open the book with "Путем зерна" 

reflects a new conception of the entire book. 32 

In the first two editions of Путем зерна, 

31 Bethea, Khodasevich, 139. By showing that it is this general movement of the lyrics as opposed to strict 

chronological ordering of the poems that defines the shape of Путем зерна, Bethea argues that the book is 

deliberately composed by Khodasevich as a unified work of art. Ibid., 142. 

32 Ibid., 138, n.66 Bethea also mentions the exclusion of several doubtful, anxious poems from the opening 

pages of the book in the final edition. He suggests that Khodasevich may have removed them because they 

were too close in manner to his earlier work, yet they, in Bethea's view, provide further evidence of the 

13

Khodasevich’s lyric persona is not fully convinced of the potential for rebirth at the onset 

of writing. Instead, he comes to this conclusion over the course of the book. We witness 

his path from despair and doubt to a shaky, tentative hope. The early versions of the 

book present Khodasevich's personal, biographical struggle at the time of writing, a time 

when he was moving beyond his mystical youth yet still reeling from the death of his 

friend Muni and everything that he represented—the decadent disavowal of the everyday 

world, the symbolist dream of a complete unification of life and art. By contrast, the 

final edition of Путем зерна is framed by the a priori knowledge of and faith in cyclical 

rebirth. The outcome is never in doubt, and the book thus follows the pattern established 

in the title poem, rather than discovering this pattern. The result is a more epic view of 

the poet in general, as opposed to the highly personal, specifically autobiographical lyric 

voice of the early editions. 

overall structural metaphor of the book. Later in the chapter, I will try to show that these poems were 

excluded because they are too personal and too closely related to Khodasevich's youth. They no longer 

served the larger view of the reconceived final edition of Путем зерна. 

In her study of Muni's poetry Inna Andreeva more directly addresses how the book changes from the first 

to final editions. By removing the dedication to Muni and several poems directly related to him 

("Авиатору," "Уединенье," "Рыбак"), and by choosing to open the book with the title poem, Andreeva 

claims that Khodasevich changed "not the composition, but the conception: the center of the plot became 

a lyric hero who makes his way, bearing a cross with his people and his country." (Автор менял не 

композицию—концепцию: центром сюжета становился лирический герой, проходящий со своим 

народом и страной крестный путь.) Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 368. Andreeva sees the first edition as an 

unceasing argument between Khodasevich and Muni over the very nature of life: В сущности каждая 

строка, каждое стихотворение здесь обращено к другу, с которым поэт ведет непрекращающийся 

разговор, спор о судьбе и значении культуры, истории, жизни человеческой, о природе разрушения, 

смерти и конечной победы жизни над смертью. Ibid., 272-3. Andreeva sees Khodasevich as holding a 

clearly established position within this argument—a position founded on the biblical formula of the title 

poem “Путем зерна”: “Так и душа моя идет путем зерна:/Сойдя во мрак, умрет—и оживет она.” (cf. 

John 12:24: "In very truth I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the ground and dies, it remains that 

and nothing more; but if it dies, it bears a rich harvest.") Andreeva contrasts Khodasevich’s conviction that 

the world will be reborn—that the seed will break through the earth—to Muni’s decadent vision of the end 

of an epoch. While I agree with Andreeva's general statement (that the final version of the book transforms 

a personal journey into a more epic one), I think she gives too much weight to the role of Muni in Путем 

зерна. While his relationship with Khodasevich serves as an important subtext, it does not define the 

structure of the entire book. 

14

"Путем зерна," "Золото," and "2-ого ноября " 

The poems surrounding "Путем зерна" in the first two editions support the initial 

reading of the title poem as a step along a path of personal discovery, rather than an 

already adopted worldview. "Золото," the poem which precedes it, serves almost as a 

first draft for "Путем зерна"—a testing out of the cyclical idea of death and rebirth and 

of the belief in the imperishability of the soul. While in "Путем зерна" Khodasevich 

expands this notion to encompass an entire nation, in "Золото" he deals with it purely on 

an individual level: 

В рот—золото, а в руки—мак и мед; 

Последние дары твоих земных забот. 

Но пусть не буду я, как римлянин, сожжен: 

Хочу в земле вкусить утробный сон, 

Хочу весенним злаком прорасти, 

Кружась по древнему, по звездному пути. 

В могильном сумраке истлеют мак и мед, 

Провалится монета в мертвый рот... 

Но через много, много темных лет 

Пришлец неведомый отроет мой скелет, 

И в черном черепе, что заступом разбит, 

Тяжелая монета загремит,— 

И золото сверкнет среди костей, 

Как солнце малое, как след души моей. 

Иди,—вот уже золото кладем в уста твои, 

уже мак и мед кладем тебе в руки. 

Salve aeternum 

Красинский 

Go—we are already placing gold in your mouth, 

we are already placing poppy and honey in your 

hands. 

Salve aeternum. 

Krasinskii 

Into your mouth—gold, and into your hands—poppy and honey; 

15

The final gifts of your earthly cares. 

But let me not be burned like a Roman: 

I want to taste the earth's fetal dream, 

I want to sprout with spring grass, 

Circling along the ancient, celestial path. 

In the dusk of the grave the poppy and honey will decay, 

The coin will vanish into my dead mouth… 

But after many, many dark years 

A mysterious stranger will unearth my skeleton, 

And in my black skull, broken by the spade, 

A heavy coin will rattle— 

And gold will gleam among my bones, 

Like a little sun, like a trace of my soul. 

Common features of "Золото" and "Путем зерна" are immediately obvious. Formally, 

both poems are written in rhyming iambic couplets: "Путем зерна" is written in 

alexandrines; "Золото" alternates between iambic hexameter and pentameter. Both 

poems share a striking number of words and images: the gold coin gleams in the black 

skull of "Золото"; the grain, destined for the black earth, gleams like gold in the hand of 

the sower of "Путем зерна." The poet's body ("Золото") and the grain ("Путем зерна") 

will, after death, germinate (прорасти) and create new life. Each will follow the "way of 

the grain"—circle along the "ancient and celestial path." Khodasevich treats the grain 

and the gold coin as symbols for the poet's soul which, in both poems, will be renewed or 

rediscovered after death. In "Путем зерна," however, Khodasevich extends the 

metaphor of the grain beyond the individual soul to the soul of a nation. He turns the 

personal experience of "Золото" into a collective, national journey. 

16

According to Khodasevich's notes "Золото" was written on January seventh, 1917 

in the space of ten to fifteen minutes: "Никогда ни до этого, ни после, не писал так 

легко. Это в сущности «экспромпт»." 33 While the epigraph comes from the Polish 

tragedy "Iridion" which is set during the fall of the Roman empire under Emperor 

Elagabalus, Khodasevich's poem predates the fall of the Russian empire. He is concerned 

with individual, rather than national fates. In the opening couplet the poet describes a 

ritual applied to others (твоих земных забот), 34 but the poem quickly becomes personal. 

The "я" of the poem asks to be treated not as a Roman, a member of a national culture, 

but as an individual with strong personal desires (Хочу...Хочу.) His body will follow the 

inescapable natural path of decay, in turn fertilizing new life. His skeleton, however, will 

remain and eventually be rediscovered along with the gold coin in his mouth—a trace of 

his everlasting soul. 

By directly following "Золото" with the title poem in the first editions of Путем 

зерна, Khodasevich appears to reapply the notion of death and reemergence of an 

individual life, which came to him so naturally and quickly in early 1917, to the 

aftermath of the events of October 1917. He equates the golden grain not only with the 

poet's soul, but also with his entire nation. Over the course of the poem Khodasevich 

moves from the impersonal "он" of the sower, through the "я" of the poet's soul, to the 

incorporation of the "ты" of his country and people into the ultimate "мы" of the final 

stanza. All of Russia will follow the way of the grain. 

This collective, historical nature of "Путем зерна" is further emphasized by the 

poem Khodasevich chooses to follow it in the first editions: "2-ого ноября," a 

33 Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 311. 

34 The gold coin is most likely a reference to the ancient Greek custom of putting a coin in the mouth of the 

deceased to pay his way across the river Styx. 

17

description of Moscow on the eighth day after the October revolution—the first day of 

relative peace in the city. The city residents emerge from their solitary basements onto 

the streets gathering in small groups, waiting together in long lines, crowding together on 

the sidewalks on their way to visit relatives and friends ("брели,/Теснясь на тротуарах, 

люди. Шли проведать/Родных, знакомых, близких: живы ль, нет ли?") On his way 

home after seeking out his own friends, the poet encounters two people, a carpenter he 

knows and an unknown child. Both encounters cause the poet to step outside of the 

historical tragedy which surrounds him and to recognize the more universal truth of the 

"way of the grain." Through a window the poet sees a carpenter finishing a coffin: 

Я постучал в окно. Он обернулся. 

И, шляпу сняв, я поклонился низко 

Петру Иванычу, его работе, гробу, 

И всей земле, и небу, что в стекле 

Лазурью отражалось. И столяр 

Мне тоже покивал, пожал плечами 

И указал на гроб. И я ушел. 

I knocked on the window. He turned around. 

And, having taken off my hat, I bowed low 

To Petr Ivanich, to his work, to the coffin, 

And to all the earth and to the azure sky 

That was reflected in the glass. And the carpenter 

Also nodded to me, shrugged his shoulders 

And pointed at the coffin. And I left. 

With simple gestures and no words the poet and the carpenter acknowledge their 

common plight. This acknowledgement starts at a local level—the poet bows to Petr 

Ivanich—but gradually grows to encompass the death which surrounds them (symbolized 

by the coffin) and its place in the natural order of the world. The poet bows to all the 

earth and to the sky, seen here simultaneously. It is by appreciating the constant elements 

of a balanced natural world that he and his people will make their way through their 

personal and national tragedy. 

18

Closer to his home, the poet encounters a group of children playing loudly. One, 

however, sits alone on a stone with hands spread wide, looking up and quietly smiling: 

Но, заглянув ему в глаза, я понял, 

Что улыбается он самому себе, 

Той непостижной мысли, что родится 

Под выпуклым, еще безбровым лбом 

И слушает в себе биенье сердца, 

Движенье соков, рост... Среди Москвы, 

Страдающей, растерзанной и падшей,— 

Как идол маленький, сидел он, равнодушный, 

С бессмысленной, священною улыбкой. 

И мальчику я поклонился тоже, 

Как-будто поправляя шляпу… 35 

But, having looked into his eyes, I understood, 

That he was smiling to himself, 

At that incomprehensible thought that is born 

Beneath a convex, still browless forehead 

And he was listening to the beating of his heart, 

To the movement of juices in his body, to his growth… In the middle of Moscow, 

A struggling, torn apart and fallen city— 

He sat, indifferent, like a little idol, 

With a senseless, sacred smile. 

And I bowed to the boy also, 

As if adjusting my hat… 

Again the poet discovers a sign of the grain's way—a child who, oblivious to his 

immediate surroundings, recognizes and takes pleasure in the palpable life of his growing 

body. Even amidst the devastation of revolutionary Moscow new life continues to thrive. 

In the final edition of Путем зерна, Khodasevich separates the title poem from 

"Золото" and "2-ого ноября," making it the book's opening poem. Distanced from 

"Золото," "Путем зерна" takes on a more independent, authoritative quality—instead of 

simply developing the previously explored theme of the cycle of death and 

rebirth/rediscovery, it now introduces this idea as the structuring element for the entire 

book. In its new position, "Путем зерна" is still able to inform a reading of "2-ого 

35 This line was excluded from the final edition of Путем зерна. 

19

ноября," but the historical context of "2-ого ноября" no longer penetrates "Путем 

зерна." The title poem relies exclusively on its dating, 1917, for its connection to the 

revolution. 

This diminishing of the historical relevance of "Путем зерна" grants other 

aspects of the poem more prominence. Bethea has noted the poem's metapoetic nature: 

the introduction of Khodasevich as a sower-poet following in the tradition of his poetic 

ancestors. The first words of the poem contain a pun on his name: Проходит сеятель. 36 

He follows the paths taken by his father and grandfather (his poetic forebears) along even 

furrows. As Khodasevich would have been well aware, the Latin word versus means 

both "furrow" and "line of verse." 37 

Thus, Khodasevich opens the final edition of his 

book by announcing his arrival as a mature poet. 

This poem opens not only the final edition of Путем зерна, but also 

Khodasevich's entire Собрание стихов from which he deliberately leaves out his first 

two books, Молодость and Счастливый домик. Thus he introduces "Путем зерна" as 

the first poem of his "first" book of poetry—taking the place initially held by "В моей 

стране," the first poem of Молодость. "Путем зерна" provides a clear contrast to, even 

polemic with "В моей стране," a poem about the futility of sowing, the barrenness of his 

country's dead land: 

Мои поля сыпучий пепел кроет. 

В моей стране печален страдный день. 

Сухую пыль соха со скрипом роет, 

И ноги жжет затянутый ремень. 

36 Sergei Davydov first alerted Bethea to this pun. Bethea, Khodasevich, 139, n.66. 

37 Bethea, Khodasevich, 138-139. In addition to the metapoetic qualities of the poem, Bethea also 

acknowledges its function "as a frame for the events of the Revolution" (139), but, as I am trying to argue, 

the final edition of the book, separated by a decade from the events of the revolution, seems less tied to 

biography and history than its earlier incarnations. 

20

В моей стране—ни зим, ни лет, ни весен, 

Ни дней, ни зорь, ни голубых ночей. 

Там круглый год владычествует осень, 

Там—серый свет бессолнечных лучей. 

Там сеятель бессмысленно, упорно, 

Скуля как пес, влачась как вьючный скот, 

В родную землю втаптывает зерна— 

Отцовских нив безжизненный приплод. 

А в шалаше—что делать? Выть да охать, 

Точить клинок нехитрого ножа, 

Да тешить женщин яростную похоть, 

Царапаясь, кусаясь и визжа. 

А женщины, в игре постыдно блудной, 

Открытой всем, все силы истощив, 

Беременеют тягостно и нудно 

И каждый год родят, не доносив. 

В моей стране уродливые дети 

Рождаются, на смерть обречены. 

От их отцов несу вам песни эти. 

Я к вам пришел из мертвенной страны. 

Strewn ash covers my fields. 

In my country harvest day is sad. 

With a creak the plow digs up the dry dust, 

And the taut belt burns our legs. 

In my country there are no winters, no summers, no springs, 

No days, no dawns, no light blue nights. 

There autumn reigns all year long, 

There exists a gray light of sunless rays. 

There the sower senselessly, stubbornly, 

Whining like a dog, dragging himself along like a pack animal, 

Tramples seeds into my native land— 

The lifeless crop of paternal fields. 

And what is there to do inside your hut? 

Sharpen the blade of a dull knife 

And gratify the frenzied lust of women, 

Scratching, biting and screaming. 

And the women, in their shameful, whorish game 

21

Open to all, having exhausted all their strength, 

Become pregnant onerously and tediously, 

And every year they give birth, without bringing their children to term. 

In my country deformed children 

Are born, condemned to death. 

From their fathers I bring you these songs. 

I came to you from a dead country. 

The central images of "Путем зерна" are already found in this 1907 poem. In the third 

stanza of "В моей стране" Khodasevich introduces the sower, seeds, and fathers' fields 

which will appear again in 1917. In this country of Khodasevich's youth, however, there 

is no cycle of seasons—no chance for rebirth after a period of death. Instead, the land 

languishes in the permanent grayness of autumn. The sower uselessly plants lifeless 

seeds—the product of his father's fields. Here a tradition of dry dust and despair is 

carried on from one deformed generation to another, rather than the fertile tradition of the 

poetic forebears of "Путем зерна." The fathers of "В моей стране" bring different, 

decadent songs filled with images of decline, death and sexual perverseness. 

Noting the poem's dedication to Muni, Andreeva has posited a polemical 

relationship between "Путем зерна" and "В моей стране," but she limits her 

interpretation to a discussion of Khodasevich and Muni. She claims that the central 

images of "В моей стране" are adopted from Muni's poetry, and that Khodasevich 

responds to Muni in "Путем зерна" by rejecting these images of death and barrenness. 38 

The poem seems, however, not so much an answer to Muni as to Khodasevich's own 

early poetry, and decadent, mystical youth. 39 

In the book Путем зерна as well as in its 

38 Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 311-13. 

39 John Malmstad suggests this in his note to "В моей стране": Любопытно, что здесь в третьей строфе 

впервые появляются в стихах Ходасевича образы повторены позднее в стихотворении "Путем 

зерна" из его третьего, одноименного сборника, также посвященного Муни. Возможно, что в этом 

22

title poem, Khodasevich breaks away from this youth, claiming his new poetic beginning 

as the discovery of the true way of the grain. 

In an attempt to understand this break with his past more fully, I will now turn 

briefly to Khodasevich's early period. After first providing some background information 

on his mystical relationship with the poet Muni, I will discuss the connections between 

the first two editions of Путем зерна and Khodasevich's early work and biography. 

Muni 

Khodasevich met Muni in the end of 1905, and within a year they were virtually 

inseparable. Muni served as a witness to Khodasevich’s divorce from his first wife, 

Marina Ryndina; Khodasevich was practically a member of Muni’s extended Briusovian 

family (Muni married Briusov's younger sister Lidia in 1909). Khodasevich later would 

write of Muni as one the most important and dearest people in his life. 40 

In his 1926 memoir of Muni, Khodasevich remembers their years together (1905- 

14) as a time infused with symbolism: В горячем, предгрозовом воздухе тех лет было 

трудно дышать, нам все представлялось двусмысленным и двузначащим, 

очертания предметов казались шаткими…Каждое событие, сверх своего явного 

смысла, еще обретало второй, который надобно было расшифровать…Таким 

образом, жили мы в двух мирах. 41 

Khodasevich recognizes their own agency in 

creating this double world: «Символический быт», который мы создали, то есть 

более позднем стихотворении Ходасевич полемизирует со своей декадентской молодостью. 

Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 280. 

40 “Он [Андрей Белый] один из самых важных людей в моей духовной биографии и один из самых 

дорогих мне людей вообще. Он—да поэт С.В. Киссин (Муни), умерший в 1916 г.” John Malmstad, 

"A. Belyi i P.N. Zaitsev: Perepiska," in Minuvsheе: Istoricheskii al'manakh 13 (Moscow-St. Petersburg: 

Atheneum-Feniks, 1993), 218. 

41 Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, vol. 4, 69. 

23

символизм, ставший для нас не только методом, но и просто (хоть это вовсе не 

просто!) образом жизни,—играл с нами неприятные шутки. 42 

The worst of these “jokes” was Muni’s suicide in 1916. Khodasevich remembers 

Muni as unable to appreciate anything outside of their created symbolist world: Все, что 

лежало за пределами этой нашей жизни, с ее символическим обиходом, 

воспринималось Муни как докучная смена однообразных и грубых снов. 43 

When 

sent to serve in World War I accompanying hospital trains, Muni was separated from the 

cultural, intellectual, and spiritual world of his Moscow circle. Unable to bear the 

“пошлость” that surrounded him, he shot himself on March 22, 1916. 44 

Khodasevich took Muni’s death very badly. Already suffering from tuberculosis 

of the spine, he experienced insomnia and hallucinations, at one point imagining, along 

with his wife Anna Ivanovna Chulkova, that Muni was with them in their apartment. 45 

Khodasevich spent the summer following Muni’s death in Koktebel, recovering from his 

illness and beginning work on a collection of Muni’s poetry, including an introductory 

article. 

While Khodasevich succeeded in publishing a selection of Muni’s poems in 

“Понедельник” in 1918 46 and a cycle entitled “Крапива” in “Беседа” in 1923, 47 both of 

his attempts to publish a complete volume failed. It is important to note, however, when 

and how he hoped to release the book. First, in 1918, he arranged with the Moscow 

publisher “Альцион” to issue Легкое бремя, the title Muni had apparently chosen 

42 Ibid., 70. Emphasis, mine. 

43 Ibid., 74. 

44 For more information on the end of Muni's life, see Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 345-61. 

45 Ibid., 362. 

46 Ibid., 271. It is not entirely clear to what extent Khodasevich was involved in this publication. 

47 Ibid., 167. 

24

himself, 48 alongside the first edition of Путем зерна. Andreeva has pointed out the 

natural pairing of these books: both carry biblical titles which suggest a personal 

approach to life; Khodasevich explicitly recalls Muni in his dedication and in plots and 

lines taken directly from Muni’s poetry and fiction. 49 

It seems as though Khodasevich 

wanted to provide two forms of remembrance to Muni simultaneously—one in Muni’s 

voice, one in his own, still pained and confused by Muni’s death. The project fell 

through, however, and Путем зерна was published alone by “Творчество” in the end of 

1919 or beginning of 1920. 

Khodasevich tried again in 1921, this time agreeing with the Petersburg publisher 

“Эрато” to release Легкое бремя along with a new edition of Молодость. Both books 

were to appear in identical covers and format. 50 

Now, he pairs Muni’s book not with a 

memorial to Muni, but rather with a memorial to his own youth and to his early decadent 

poetry. In his introduction to the revised Молодость, Khodasevich writes: 

Чтобы кто-нибудь не заключил […] будто в теперешнем виде книга мне 

представляется хорошей, —скажу прямо: нет, это очень слабая книжка, и мила 

она мне не литературно, а биографически. Она связана с дорогими 

воспоминаниями. Ее заглавие, когда-то звучавшее горькой иронией, стало 

теперь точным обозначением: да, это моя молодость, то, с чего я начинал. Есть 

в ней отзвуки той поры, когда символизм еще не сказал последнего своего 

слова, когда для некоторых, особенно таких юных, каков был я, он еще не 

застыл в формах литературной школы, а был способом чувствовать, мыслить и, 

более того, —жить. 

48 In his memoir of Muni, Khodasevich writes: Жизнь была для него «легким бременем»: так он хотел 

назвать книгу стихов. Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii v chetyrekh tomakh, vol. 4, 74. 

49 Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 272-3. 

50 Ibid., 273. 

25

Unfortunately, with the failure of the small, private publisher, not only were the books 

left unpublished, but Muni’s manuscript along with Khodasevich’s introductory article 

were lost entirely. 51 

Khodasevich's final attempt to memorialize Muni was successful. In 1926 he 

wrote the sketch "Муни" which was later included in his book of memoirs, Некрополь 

(1936). It seems telling that the writing of "Муни" should coincide with the compiling of 

Khodasevich's 1927 Собрание стихов and the final edition of Путем зерна—the 

version which excludes the dedication and much of the poetry directly linked to Muni. 

Khodasevich replaces the larger, poetic remembrance with a relatively small nonfictional 

account of his past. Apparently at this stage in his life he prefers to address the 

personal and the biographical outside of his poetry, in the genre of memoir. 

Links between Путем Зерна and Счастливый Домик 

The first two editions of Путем зерна contain clear links to Счастливый 

домик—links which are lost in the final version of Путем зерна, suggesting a distinct 

move away from the poetry and worldview of Khodasevich's youth. The early editions of 

Путем зерна and all three versions of Счастливый домик open with a dedication to the 

poet Muni. In the case of Счастливый домик, the dedication belongs to the first section 

of the book, "Пленные шумы." Khodasevich's first book of poetry, Молодость, opens 

with the poem, "В моей стране," also dedicated to Muni. Thus, over the course of his 

first three books of poems, Khodasevich progressively dedicates the opening poem, 

opening section and entire book to Muni. This progression shows the increasing weight 

51 Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 166. It was only in 1999 that the first comprehensive collection of Muni's verse, 

edited by Andreeva, was published. 

26

Muni (or, in the case of Путем зерна, his memory) carries in each book. The constancy 

of this opening feature is broken in the 1927 edition of Путем зерна in which 

Khodasevich eliminates the dedication. Not only is he distinguishing the third edition 

from earlier editions of Путем зерна, but also from his earlier books—the books of his 

decadent youth. 

"Ручей" and "Элегия" 

Khodasevich more specifically ties the first two editions of Путем зерна to 

Счастливый домик with his choice of opening poems: "Элегия" (СД) and "Ручей" 

(ПЗ). Both "Элегия" and the first stanza of "Ручей" were written in the summer of 1908 

at Khodasevich's family dacha in Gireevo. Both poems begin with the imperative 

"взгляни," and each describes a rushing stream (ручей). In "Элегия" the stream is part 

of a potential, idyllic scene: 

Взгляни, как наша ночь пуста и молчалива: 

Осенних звезд задумчивая сеть 

Зовет спокойно жить и мудро умереть,— 

Легко сойти с последнего обрыва 

В долину кроткую. 

Быть может, там ручей, 

Еще кипя, бежит от водопада, 

Поет свирель, вдали пестреет стадо, 

И внятно щелканье пастушеских бичей. 

… 

Страна безмолвия! Безмолвно отойду 

Туда, откуда дождь, прохладный и привольный, 

Бежит, шумя, к долине безглагольной... 

… 

See how our night is empty and silent: 

The pensive network of autumn stars 

Calls [us] to live quietly and die wisely,— 

To descend lightly from the last precipice 

Into the gentle valley. 

Perhaps, a stream there, 

27

Still seething, runs out of a waterfall, 

A reed-pipe sings, a colorful herd is visible in the distance, 

And the cracking of shepherds' whips is heard. 

… 

Land of silence! Silently I will go away 

To the place from which the rain, cool and free, 

Rushes, noisily, to the speechless valley… 

… 

Here, as in many of the poems in the section "Пленные шумы," Khodasevich writes of 

the border between two worlds—the descent from the last precipice (of life) into the 

gentle valley (of death). He imagines different possibilities for this valley, the first being 

a typically pastoral scene with reed-pipes and shepherds. The scene, however, is not as 

contained and predictable as one might expect. It includes a stream which, still seething, 

links the valley to the agitated realm of life—the waterfall. The lyric persona plans to 

leave the silent valley and return to this waterfall—to the noisy source of the rushing rain. 

He refuses to live and die quietly. 

The poem ends with a reevaluation of the quiet valley: 

Но может быть—не кроткою весной, 

Не мирным отдыхом, не сельской тишиной, 

Но памятью мятежной и живой 

Дохнет сей мир—и снова предо мной... 

И снова ты! а! страшно мысли той! 

Блистательная ночь пуста и молчалива. 

Осенних звезд мерцающая сеть 

Зовет спокойно жить и умереть. 

Ты по росе ступаешь боязливо. 

But perhaps—it is not gentle spring, 

Nor peaceful rest, nor rural quiet, 

But a rebellious and living memory 

That this world breathes—and again before me… 

And again you! ah! that thought is terrible! 

The brilliant night is empty and silent. 

The twinkling network of autumn stars 

Calls [us] to live and die quietly. 

28

You step timidly on the dew. 

In the final, demarcated stanza, Khodasevich echoes the opening lines of the poem, but 

he does not provide a tidy circular structure. The idyllic version of the valley is replaced 

by a volatile memory of an unidentified "ты." The logical progression of the poem is 

broken by the sudden, unexpected appearance of an addressee, signaled by the 

conjunction "но" followed by several negatives. Ultimately, the reader and the lyrical 

persona are unsure of what awaits them. The valley and its border remain unfathomable 

and terrible. 

In the first stanza of "Ручей," Khodasevich provides another description of a 

stream—again a roaring, rushing, living source: 

Взгляни, как солнце обольщает 

Пересыхающий ручей 

Полдевной прелестью своей,— 

А он рокочет и вздыхает 

И на бегу оскудевает 

Средь обнажившихся камней. 

See how the sun captivates 

The drying stream 

With its noontime charm— 

It roars and sighs 

And at a run grows scarce 

Among the bared stones. 

While "Элегия" begins by asking the reader to observe an empty night, the first lines of 

"Ручей" beckon the reader to look at the noonday sun. The border of death, imminent 

but ultimately inscrutable in "Элегия," lurks somewhere in the future of "Ручей." The 

stream is drying out and growing scarce among the stones already bared by the sun's 

captivating charm. Khodasevich's choice of the word "рокочет" both expresses the 

stream's noise and suggests its inevitable fate (рок)—dessication and death. For now, 

29

however, it still retains vibrant signs of life—it roars, sighs, and runs. 52 

As in "Элегия" 

and "Пленные шумы" as a whole, the border between life and death is contemplated but 

ultimately unpenetrated. 

"Ручей": 

Eight years passed before Khodasevich wrote the second and final stanza of 

Под вечер путник молодой 

Приходит, песню напевая; 

Свой посох на песок слагая, 

Он воду черпает рукой 

И пьет—в струе, уже ночной, 

Ничьей судьбы не прозревая. 

Towards evening a young traveler 

Comes, humming a song; 

Laying his staff onto the sand, 

He scoops up water with his hand 

And drinks—in the already nighttime stream, 

Not seeing clearly anyone's fate. 

When Khodasevich read this poem to Viacheslav Ivanov, Ivanov guessed right away that 

much time had passed between the writing of the first and second stanzas. 53 

This 

intuition seems based on clear contrasts between the two stanzas. The poem shifts from 

the bright noontime sun of the first stanza to the calm of approaching evening. The 

poem's opening imperative, "взгляни," which calls on the reader to observe the dying 

stream, is neatly juxtaposed to the closing phrase, "не прозревая," which reports the 

traveler's failure to see. Even the pattern of masculine and feminine rhymes is reversed 

between the two stanzas. 

The most significant change in the second stanza, however, is the introduction of 

the young traveler. His youth is juxtaposed to the stream's apparent age/nearness to 

52 Khodasevich describes the stream as "running" in both poems: "на бегу" in "Ручей"; "бежит" in 

"Элегия." 


30

death. Unlike the stream, the traveler is not yet threatened by death. Still young 

(молодой), he enters the scene as evening approaches (под вечер). The stream, 

however, has already reached its nighttime phase (в струе, уже ночной). The traveler's 

youth and immaturity are similarly contrasted with the lyric persona's clearer, wiser 

perception. The traveler remains unaware of the significance of the stream—its symbolic 

representation of a life cycle. Instead he views it simply as a place to drink, and, by 

taking a drink, he unconsciously contributes to the stream's dessication. While the 

traveler is unable to recognize the consequences of his drink (the gradual diminishment 

of the world around him), the poet does. The image of the traveler placing his staff on 

the sand emphasizes his responsibility—the dryness suggested by the word посох acts 

upon the moisture suggested by песок. The poet acknowledges the traveler's role calmly 

and implicitly. This attitude is distinct from the frenzied tempo of the first stanza and the 

questioning, confused tone of "Элегия." In the intervening eight years he has come to a 

clearer understanding of death and a new sense of responsibility. 

Khodasevich's choice of the word "путник" emphasizes the importance of the 

traveler and "Ручей" to the book as a whole. The title Путем зерна suggests that the 

book will describe a journey (путь), and the first poem already introduces a traveler, still 

in the early stages of his journey. Nowhere else in the book, aside from the title poem 

and the closely related "Золото," are the words "путь" or "путник" invoked. In "Ручей" 

Khodasevich sets the traveler on his way, perhaps intending over the course of the book 

31

to show his growth from an unseeing youth to a mature poet, conscious of his effect on 

the world. 54 

Andreeva has read "Ручей" as an allegory: the stream, captivated by the midday 

charm of the sun that in turn dries it up, can be read as an image of Muni, seduced by the 

power of a symbolist dream, gradually losing his power to survive in the world. The 

traveler singing his song and drinking from the stream can be read as Khodasevich, 

writing his poetry and taking from Muni without thought of the consequences—Muni's 

fate. 55 

Completed two months before Muni's suicide, the poem is not a direct response to 

Muni's death, but it could reflect the deterioration in Khodasevich's and Muni's 

friendship. Khodasevich's choice of the phrase "не прозревая" to describe the traveler's 

inability to see suggests his own failure to devote himself fully to the symbolist 

worldview that Muni had so thoroughly adopted. "Прозреть," a key word for the 

symbolists, signifies a kind of transformative vision—the ability to "see through" the 

everyday world and perceive its higher, symbolic meaning. 56 

By 1916 Khodasevich had 

left behind the mystical life-work (жизнетворчество) of his youth. Muni, however, had 

not, and Khodasevich sensed the danger of Muni's remoteness. 

By 1919/1920, when the first edition of Путем зерна was published, this danger 

had been realized, and Khodasevich felt tremendous guilt over Muni's suicide. He was 

also struggling to reconcile his decadent youth with his more Pushkinian present, as 

witnessed by the proposed publications of Muni's and his own earlier works alongside 

54 The title "Путем зерна" is unique in its focus on movement and progression. Khodasevich's other 

books have largely static titles, limited to a particular time or place: Молодость, Счастливый домик, 

Европейская ночь. 

55 Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 368. 

56 See Michael Wachtel, Russian Symbolism and Literary Tradition (Madison: University of Wisconsin 

Press, 1994), 50-1. 

32

Путем зерна. By choosing "Ручей" as the book's first poem, he addresses both of these 

issues. 

"Ручей" immediately follows the book's dedication, "Памяти Самуила 

Киссина," suggesting that it can be read as a remembrance of Muni. Muni's own 

reaction to the poem also supports such a reading. When Khodasevich read it to Muni 

two days before he left Moscow for the last time, just a few days before his suicide, Muni 

replied, "ну, валяй, валяй в антологическом духе. А мне уж не до того." 57 

Apparently Muni heard only a pithy, epigrammatic stylization with no substance—no 

relevance to the burning question of existence. Considering this harsh reaction, it seems 

strange for Khodasevich to place it immediately following the dedication unless he meant 

to emphasize its potential allegorical meaning—a meaning which delves precisely into 

the nature of Muni's existence. 

The poem has more to offer, however, than a strict allegorical correspondence 

between Muni and the stream. Its very construction suggests a bridge between 

Khodasevich's youth and new maturity: the first stanza, written in 1908, recalls the 

opening poem of his previous book; the second stanza, written in 1916, displays a ripened 

poetic consciousness. In "Ручей" Khodasevich places these stanzas/time periods side by 

side—contrasted, yet part of a whole. 

The significance of "Ручей" changes considerably in the final edition of Путем 

зерна where its placement and final line are altered. When Khodasevich decided to open 

the book with the title poem, he demoted "Ручей" not just one position but two, placing it 

after the poem "Слезы Рахили" which it had originally preceded. "Слезы Рахили" is 

based on a biblical quotation: "Lamentation is heard in Ramah, and bitter weeping: 


33

Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more" 

(Jeremiah 31:15). A lament, the poem describes the tremendous burden of grief carried 

by the whole nation in the face of war. The collective, national voice of "Слезы Рахили" 

and its biblical reference complement the tone and biblical subtext of "Путем зерна." 

The poem seems to describe one point along the "way of the grain"—the period of 

absolute despair when the seed lies dead in the black earth. It will take a generation for 

the country to emerge from its sorrow and provide proud, glorious accounts of its brave 

forefathers. For now, only the inconsolable tears of Rachel are an adequate expression of 

the nation's plight. (Пусть потомки с гордой любовью/Про дедов легенды 

сложат/...Ах, под нашей тяжелой ношей/Сколько б песен мы ни сложили—/Лишь 

один есть припев хороший:/Неутешные слезы Рахили!) Notably, the poem, dated 5- 

30 October, 1916, addresses the grief suffered during the first world war, not during the 

revolution. "Путем зерна" and "Слезы Рахили" are linked not by a specific historical 

moment, but by a universal cycle of death and rebirth, despair and hope, grief and joy. 

This increased emphasis on the universal over the personal or biographical in the 

final edition of Путем зерна is played out in the final version of "Ручей" as well. 

Khodasevich changes the last line of the poem to read "Своей судьбы не узнавая" 

instead of "Ничьей судьбы не прозревая." He excises the verb прозреть along with all 

of its mystical, Symbolist connections, and he changes the focus from another's fate to 

the traveler's own fate. Thus the potential of an allegorical reading (with Muni as the 

stream) is greatly lessened; instead, a global reading is encouraged. In failing to 

recognize the stream as a symbol of the natural cycle of life and death, the traveler is 

failing to understand his own place within this cycle. While young and vibrant now, he 

34

too will follow the path of the grain and the stream, ultimately dying and making way for 

new life. 

"Рыбак" and "За окном—ночные разговоры" 

Muni's story "Летом 190* года" provides another significant link between 

Счастливый домик and the first editions of Путем зерна. It inspired a poem in each of 

Khodasevich’s books: “За окном—ночные разговоры” in Счастливый домик, and 

“Рыбак” in Путем зерна. Khodasevich’s decision to separate the two textually linked 

poems was not dictated by chronology. He placed “Рыбак,” written in 1919, near the 

beginning of the first two editions of Путем зерна, later removing it from the 1927 

edition. Khodasevich could easily have included “За окном” (1916), in the first edition 

of Путем зерна as well—the book contains several other poems written in 1915 and 

1916. Instead, however, he chose to add it to the second edition of Счастливый домик 

(1921), making it the latest poem included in the book. One of only two poems added to 

Счастливый Домик, 58 it occupies a prominent position—the opening poem of the final 

section, “Звезда над пальмой.” 

Khodasevich's deliberate, chronologically independent placement of the two 

poems is better understood when the poems are read in the context of "Летом 190* 

года"—a story which revolves around the Romantic theme of двойничество (doubling), 

central to Muni's and Khodasevich's youth. The story opens as a slightly disjointed firstperson 

narrative. The hero, as yet unnamed, has isolated himself in the countryside, 

grateful to escape social requirements and happy to be living with neither passions nor 

58 The other is "Акробат," to be discussed below. 

35

idylls (Слава Богу, здесь—никаких страстей и никаких идиллий 59 ). It soon becomes 

clear, however, that he is not entirely stable. He includes a strange “pharisaical” prayer 

in which he thanks God that he is not a sighing, tearful girl visiting the country 

(слезливая дачница), not a little stream, a little storm cloud or a little star, but he himself 

(я не струйка, не тучка, не звездочка, а я сам) (120). He writes fairy-tales for his niece 

in his spare time and quotes one, “Рыбак” (the basis for Khodasevich’s poem), which he 

will never send to her—it is too disturbing and confused. By the end of the first section, 

the hero acknowledges that he has taken on a new name, a name of a calm, rational 

person: Aleksei Vasil’evich Pereyaslavtsev: 

Жизнь мою—жизнь Алексея Васильевича—я знаю очень подробно, твердо 

знаю мои планы, ценю свой ровный характер, неприхотливость, и уважаю 

всех моих знакомых, за исключением покойного Александра Никитича 

Большакова, умершего, к величайшему его счастью, в апреле месяце 190* 

года, в Москве. (123) 

My life—the life of Aleksei Vasilievich—I know very well. I know my plans 

thoroughly, I value my even character, my unpretentiousness, and I respect all my 

acquaintances with the exception of Aleksandr Nikitich Bol'shakov who died, to 

his great fortune, in Moscow in April of 190*. 

In the second section Pereyaslavtsev explicitly acknowledges that this Bol'shakov 

is his previous self. Disgusted with his tender, ecstatic (восторженный (125)) past, he 

has created a double for himself, discarding Bol’shakov for the lucid, even-tempered 

Pereyaslavtsev. His tone is anything but clear and composed, however. He is afraid of 

Bol’shakov—afraid that he will return, especially after he receives a note addressed to 

Aleksandr Nikitich from Grace, a woman from his past who is planning to visit him. In 

an act of desperation, Pereyaslavtsev “wakes up” Bol'shakov in the middle of the night to 

talk to him. 

59 Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 119. All subsequent quotations from the story are taken from Legkoe bremia. 

Page numbers will be noted in parentheses in the text. 

36

The third section is written from the perspective of an acquaintance of 

Bol'shakov’s who is notified of Bol'shakov/Pereyaslavtsev's apparent suicide by 

drowning. Along with Grace and Melentiev, the owner of the estate where 

Bol'shakov/Pereyaslavtsev had been staying (purportedly modeled on Khodasevich 60 ), 

this acquaintance tries to decipher Bol'shakov/Pereyaslavtsev and his reasons for suicide. 

Parallels between the story and Muni's own life are immediately apparent. Like 

his hero, Muni created doubles for himself throughout his life. Part of the reason his 

poetry went relatively unnoticed is due to the fact that he signed the few poems he 

published by multiple names: Muni, Samuil Kissin, and Aleksandr Beklemishev. 61 

These names served not merely as different pseudonyms, but as different identities. In 

his memoir, Khodasevich describes Muni’s attempt in 1908 to transform himself entirely 

into the fictional creation of Beklemishev: Месяца три Муни не был похож на себя, 

иначе ходил, говорил, одевался, изменил голос и самые мысли. Существование 

Беклемишева скрывалось, но про себя Муни знал, что, наоборот, —больше нет 

Муни, а есть Беклемишев, принужденный лишь носить имя Муни «по причинам 

полицейского, паспортного порядка». 62 

In "Летом 190* года" Pereyaslavtsev makes 

a similar claim: "Я, Переяславцев, имею свои привычки, свое лицо, свою душу. Я 

только живу по паспорту Большакова, но его нет!" (125). It appears that Muni wrote 

"Летом 190* года" at approximately the same time he took on the persona of 

Beklemishev (1907-8). The story was, in fact, recommended for publication under the 

60 Ibid., 186. 

61 N.A. Bogomolov, "Muni," in Russkie pisateli 1800-1917: biograficheskii slovar', vol. 4 (Moscow: 

Bol'shaia Rossiiskaia entsiklopediia, 1999), 149. 


37

"pseudonym" A. Beklemishev. 63 

With this story, Muni carried out a magnificent 

symbolist act—he melded art with life. This fictional portent of his own suicide (eight 

years prior to the event) carries to the extreme the notion of life-creation 

(жизнетворчество). 

Muni, however, did not maintain this “двойное существование” until his death. 

Khodasevich put an early end to it by revealing Beklemishev’s identity in feigned love 

poems from his own fictional creation, Elizaveta Maksheeva. Already in 1908, 

Khodasevich recognized the danger of Muni’s identity games, and, by the time of his 

memoir (1926) admitted his own share of responsibility for Muni's death. While he was 

never fully taken in by Muni's identity play, he participated in it willingly: мы жили в 

такой внутренней близости и в ошибках Муни было столько участия моего, что я 

не могу не винить и себя в этой смерти. 64 

In the years between "Летом 190* года" and Некрополь, Khodasevich explored 

the theme of двойничество in his poetry. With "Рыбак" and "За окном…" he created 

two poems which act as doubles for each other—each revealing a different side of 

Bol'shakov/Pereyaslavtsev and ultimately Khodasevich's own transition from decadent 

youth to maturity as reflected by the placement of "За окном" in Счастливый домик 

and "Рыбак" in Путем зерна. 

Khodasevich's poem "Рыбак" is a poetic rewriting of the inserted skazka in 

Muni's story: 65 

63 Akhramovich's letter recommending the story for publication was most likely written before the fall of 

1908, when Beklemishev's poems began appearing in Русская мысль. Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 185-6. 


65 Muni's skazka also finds a resonance in Khodasevich's "Элегия" discussed above. After the description 

of the stream, the poem offers an alternative vision of the valley of death—an ancient fisherman sitting on a 

barren shore, oblivious to the poet's steps. 

Иль, может быть, на берегу пустынном 

38

Рыбак (сказка) 

Я старик, я—рыбак, и потому не могу объяснить многого из того, что делаю. 

Зачем я хочу выудить солнце с неба? 

Привязываю к тончайшей крепкой лесе острый английский крючок, 

наживляю самой большой звездой и закидываю мою удочку в небесное море. 

Мелкая рыбешка—звезды—вертятся вокруг моего лунного поплавка. Но 

мне их не надо. Я хочу поймать солнце. 

И каждое утро оно клюет. Я осторожно вывожу его на поверхность и целый 

день вожу на крепкой лесе. Но я не могу его вытащить: оно такое тяжелое. 

И каждый вечер солнце срывается у меня с удочки, заглотав звезду и 

крючок. 

Скоро у меня не останется ни звезд, ни крючков. 

Берегитесь! — будет темно. 

[I am an old man, I am a fisherman and therefore I cannot explain a lot of what I do. 

Why do I want to catch the sun out of the sky? I tie a sharp English hook to a very thin, 

strong line, I bait it with the biggest star I have and cast my rod into the celestial sea. 

Little fish—stars—hover around my lunar bobber. But they don't interest me. I want to 

catch the sun. And every morning it bites. I carefully bring it in onto the surface and all 

day I play it on the strong line. But I can't land it: it's so heavy. And every evening the 

sun breaks away from my rod, having swallowed the star and hook. Soon I won't have 

any stars or hooks left. Beware! It will be dark.] 

Рыбак 

Песня 

Я наживляю мой крючок 

Трепещущей звездой. 

Луна—мой белый поплавок 

Над черною водой. 

Сижу, старик, у вечных вод 

И тихо так пою, 

И солнце каждый день клюет 

На удочку мою. 

А я веду его, веду 

Задумчивый и ветхий рыболов, 

Едва оборотясь на звук моих шагов, 

Движением внимательным и чинным 

Забросит вновь прилежную уду... 

Or, perhaps, on the deserted shore 

A pensive, decrepit fisherman, 

Barely turning around to the sound of my steps, 

With an attentive and orderly movement 

Casts again his diligent rod. 

39

Весь день по небу, но— 

Под вечер, заглотав звезду, 

Срывается оно. 

И скоро звезд моих запас 

Истрачу я, рыбак. 

Эй, берегитесь! В этот час 

Охватит землю мрак. 

I bait my hook 

With a flickering star. 

The moon is my white bobber 

Over the black water. 

I sit, an old man, by the eternal waters 

And quietly sing like this, 

And the sun bites every day 

At my line. 

And I reel it in, I reel it 

All day along the sky, but 

As evening approaches, having swallowed the star, 

It breaks away. 

And soon my store of stars 

I, the fisherman, will use up. 

Hey, beware! At that moment 

Darkness will envelop the world. 

Khodasevich retains the basic plot line and much of the lexicon of Muni's inserted 

skazka: each day an old fisherman 66 catches the sun on his star-baited hook and pulls it 

across the surface until the sun swallows the star and falls back down into the water. 

Both the song and the fairytale end with the threat of darkness—the fisherman senses that 

he will eventually run out of hooks and stars. Khodasevich's poem, however, lacks the 

psychological quality of Muni's tale. Muni's narrator, incapable of understanding much 

of what he does, constantly questions himself, his actions and motivations. By contrast, 

Khodasevich's lyric persona sings along quietly, providing no psychological or emotional 

66 According to Andreeva, Muni's fisherman resembles Avvushka from Bely's "Северная Симфония." 

Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 186. 

40

comment. He straightforwardly reports his actions within a steady iambic meter, 67 lulling 

the reader with his song and creating a sense of security—a sense which is suddenly 

disrupted by the warning of inevitable darkness. The fisherman appears to have no 

control over and thus no responsibility for the fated darkness. Muni's fisherman, 

however, is openly desirous—he wants only the sun, not simply stars, and he races 

through his supply of bait because the sun is too heavy for him to pull out of the water. It 

is his self-acknowledged passion that brings about the darkness. 

Muni's skazka, while presented by Pereyaslavtsev, appears to stem from 

Bol'shakov. When Pereyaslavtsev proclaims his new name, he mentions that he reverts 

to his old name only in letters (usually stories) to his niece: только в письмах к 

племяннице я—дядя Саша (123). The hesitating tone, the grand desire but inability to 

capture the sun recall Pereyaslavtsev's complaints about Bol'shakov—his failure to carry 

through with his many passions, his acknowledgement of his own weakness (125). In his 

poem, Khodasevich transforms this voice of Bol'shakov, already a sympathetic character 

in comparison with Pereyaslavtsev, into a more mystical, idealized figure. By 

eliminating Bol'shakov's psychological dismay, he relieves his fisherman of 

responsibility and blame. The darkness seems destined, fated for no real purpose. 

Khodasevich has claimed Bol'shakov's words—the "truer" words, closer to the "real" 

source than Pereyaslavtsev's—and made them purer, more innocent. 

By contrast, Khodasevich's poem "За окном—ночные разговоры" adopts the 

voice of Pereyaslavtsev: 

За окном—ночные разговоры, 

Сторожей певучие скребки. 

67 The steadiness of this typical balladic meter is due to the rhyme scheme. All masculine rhymes ensure 

that the iambic pulse never breaks. 

41

Плотные спусти, Темира, шторы, 

Почитай мне про моря, про горы, 

Про таверны, где в порыве ссоры 

Нож с ножом скрещают моряки. 

Пусть опять селенья жгут апахи, 

Угоняя тучные стада, 

Пусть блестят в стремительном размахе 

Томагавки, копья и навахи,— 

Пусть опять прихлынут к сердцу страхи, 

Как в былые, детские года! 

Outside the window—night conversations, 

Melodious scrapers of watchmen. 

Let down the thick curtains, Temira, 

Read to me about seas, about mountains 

About taverns, where in the heat of argument 

Sailors cross knives. 

Let the Apaches burn the settlements again, 

Chasing away the stout herds, 

Let shine in their headlong sweep 

Tomahawks, spears and Indian knives,— 

Let fears surge to my heart again, 

As in the old, childhood years. 

In these first two stanzas Khodasevich's lyric persona, like Muni's hero, isolates himself 

from the world of everyday reality—the thick curtains are let down to block out the 

nighttime conversations. He calls instead for stories of violent adventure, a call which 

provides the poem's most direct resonance with "Летом 190* года." Immediately 

following the inserted skazka in Muni's story, the narrator explains that he is having 

trouble sleeping at night—he dreams of fires and women. He, like Khodasevich's 

persona, wishes to lose himself in exotic tales of Indian violence: 

Это все оттого, что жарко, или оттого, что в моей жизни нет никакой 

внешней фабулы. Нужно ее изобрести. Непременно очень сложную, 

запутанную, с частыми неожиданными событиями, требующими 

находчивости и энергии. Какой-нибудь краснокожий мексиканский роман с 

игорными домами, вероломными кабальеро, влюбленной индианкой. 

Благородные мустанги падают от усталости в пампасах. Чингахгук 

42

раскуривает трубку. Апахи похищают белых девушек. Потом—месть, 

груды золота и скальпов! 

It's all because it's hot, or because there's no external plot in my life. I'll have to 

invent one. It'll have to be very complicated and intricate with frequent 

unexpected events requiring resourcefulness and energy. Some sort of redskin 

Mexican novel with gaming-houses, treacherous caballeros, and a love-struck 

Indian girl. Noble mustangs fall in the pampas from exhaustion. Chingachgook 

takes a draw on his pipe. Apaches kidnap white girls. Then—revenge, heaps of 

gold and scalps! 

Critics have noted this textual connection 68 but have not elaborated on the poem's relation 

to the larger context of Muni's story. Both Khodasevich's lyric persona and 

Pereyaslavtsev want to plunge into the intricate fiction of a bad Western full of Apaches 

and violence. These adventures will rid them of earlier selves—will create new identities 

and new worlds in which to live. They will arouse the purely sensational fears of old, 

childhood days, not the complicated psychological battles experienced by Bol'shakov. 

The third and final stanza of Khodasevich's poem encapsulates Pereyaslavtsev's 

desire to escape his tender, passionate adolescence filled with romantic songs and affairs: 

Я устал быть нежным и счастливым! 

Эти песни, ласки, розы—плен! 

Ах, из роз люблю я сердцем лживым 

Только ту, что жжет огнем ревнивым, 

Что зубами с голубым отливом 

Прикусила хитрая Кармен! 

I am tired of being tender and happy! 

These songs, caresses, roses are imprisonment! 

Ah, of roses I love with my deceitful heart, 

Only the one that burns with a jealous fire, 

The one that with her blue-tinted teeth 

The crafty Carmen bit! 

Khodasevich's lyric hero feels trapped in romantic clichés (songs, caresses, roses), yet he 

suggests that these clichés may be truer than his new, cold character with his deceitful 

68 

See N.A. Bogomolov's commentary in Khodasevich, Stikhotvoreniia, 382-3 and Andreeva's in Kissin, 

Legkoe bremia, 186. 

43

heart. His frenzied tone and hatred for all things tender and happy recall Pereyaslavtsev's 

self-hatred, or more accurately, hatred of Bol'shakov. He buried Bol'shakov along with 

his stupid passion, with his love (Я похоронил его с его глупой восторженностью, с 

его любовью (125)). Like Pereyaslavtsev, Khodasevich's persona takes pleasure only in 

the violent ends of others—others as remote and exotic as American settlers and Carmen. 

Khodasevich published "За окном…" in "Утро России" in February 1916, 

shortly before Muni's suicide. He chose to republish it in the second edition of 

Счастливый домик (1921) rather than the earlier first edition of Путем зерна (1919- 

20). This decision suggests that Khodasevich associated the Pereyaslavtsev voice with 

his youthful, more decadent poetry and biography. The poem is irresponsible, and, in 

light of Muni's suicide, cruel. Still he feels it is significant enough to add to his second 

book. The symbolist experiments with двойничество and жизнетворчество are too 

important to ignore. By 1919, when he wrote "Рыбак," Khodasevich realized the danger 

of these experiments. He returns to the original self—to the voice of Bol'shakov, the 

"true" side of the double—and relieves the fisherman/Bol'shakov/Muni of his 

psychological struggle and thus his responsibility. The final darkness in Khodasevich's 

poem is thus bleaker than in Muni's skazka—it is entirely hopeless, inevitable, fatal. 

Khodasevich excised "Рыбак" from the 1927 edition of Путем зерна, severing 

ties to Muni, to his previous book, and to his youthful symbolist experiments. He 

gradually turned to an entirely different form of двойничество—a potentially positive 

form. Instead of escaping outside of himself to create a new identity, he struggled with 

the split between body and soul within himself. While the first edition of Путем зерна 

seems more heavily weighted towards frustration with this split ("В заботах каждого 

44

дня," "Сны"), the later editions emphasize successful moments (“Эпизод,” “Вариация”) 

in which the lyric persona achieves a complete separation of body and soul. These 

epiphanies enable the soul to observe and contemplate its earthly self from a higher 

plane. I will discuss these poems in more detail when I address the changes made to the 

1921 edition of Путем зерна. Here I suggest that while Muni's experiments with 

двойничество were driven by an inability to deal with the “real” world, Khodasevich’s 

gradually prove helpful in synthesizing the spiritual and the physical realms—in finding a 

way to live. "Рыбак" has no such helpful attributes. With its bleakness and 

hopelessness, it no longer belonged in Khodasevich's reconceived book. 

Changes to the 1921 edition of Путем зерна 

The second edition of Путем зерна is very close to the first—Khodasevich adds 

six poems, all but one written after the publication of the first edition, and he eliminates 

one. Of the six new poems, only two remain in the final edition of Путем зерна: 

"Вариация" and "Дом." In this section of the chapter I will show how these two poems 

fit organically into the final version of Путем зерна. Khodasevich acknowledges the 

"way of the grain" in each of them, expressing a hopeful understanding of the universal 

cycle of death and rebirth. By contrast, the new poems later excluded from the final 

edition ("Газетчик," "Как выскажу моим косноязычьем," "Сердце," and "Старуха") 

are mired in the personal despair and anguish more typical of Khodasevich's early poetry. 

In 1921 Khodasevich was suffering through one of his worst periods of furunculosis. His 

physical and emotional pain is reflected in these tormented, cynical poems—poems 

which, once separated from his immediate biographical circumstances, no longer find a 

place in the more wide-reaching final edition of Путем зерна. 

45

"Вариация" 

In the 1921 edition of Путем зерна Khodasevich continues to pay close attention 

to the overall structure of the book. Rather than simply lumping together the six new 

poems, he places them strategically throughout the book. This conscious placement is 

most explicit with the 1919 poem "Вариация," a lyric variation of the blank verse 

narrative, "Эпизод" (1918), which precedes it: 

Вновь эти плечи, эти руки 

Погреть я вышел на балкон. 

Сижу, —но все земные звуки— 

Как бы во сне или сквозь сон. 

И вдруг, изнеможенья полный, 

Плыву: куда—не знаю сам, 

Но мир мой ширится, как волны, 

По разбежавшимся кругам. 

Продлись, ласкательное чудо! 

Я во второй вступаю круг 

И слушаю, уже оттуда, 

Моей качалки мерный стук. 

Again these shoulders, these hands 

I went out onto the balcony to warm. 

I sit, but all the worldly sounds 

Reach me as if in a dream or through a dream. 

And suddenly, utterly exhausted, 

I swim: where, I myself do not know, 

But my world widens, like waves 

In expanding circles. 

Continue, sweet wonder! 

I step into the second circle 

And I hear, already from over there, 

The measured creak of my rocking-chair. 

46

Khodasevich explicitly mentions the relationship between the two poems in his notes to 

"Вариация": Август, в Москве, после того, как накануне случилось вторично, но не 

так отчетливо, как в Гирееве на террасе, утром. 69 

In both poems the lyric "я" 

experiences what the anthroposophists dubbed a "separation of the ethereal body" 

(отделение эфирного тела 70 )—the soul separates from the body, enabling the poet to 

observe his physical, earthly self from a higher plane. 

While tremendously different in form ("Эпизод" is a 77 line poem 71 written in 

blank verse; "Вариация" consists of three quatrains in iambic tetrameter), the poems are 

tied together by several elements. The beginning of "Вариация" echoes the conclusion 

of "Эпизод" (lines 68-77), a description of the lyric persona's return into the physical 

world: 

Снова 

Увидел я перед собою книги, 

И маску Пушкина, и снова за окном 

Услышал возгласы. Мне было трудно 

Вновь ощущать все тело, руки, ноги... 

Так, весла бросив и сойдя на берег, 

Мы чувствуем себя вдруг тяжелее. 

Струилось вновь во мне изнеможенье, 

Как бы от долгой гребли,—а в ушах 

Гудел неясный шум, как пленный отзвук 

Озерного или морского ветра. 

Again 

I saw before me my books, 

Pushkin's death mask, and again outside the window 

I heard voices. It was difficult 

To sense again my whole body, hands, feet… 

Just as, having discarded the oars and come down onto the shore, 

We feel ourselves suddenly heavier. 

Again exhaustion flowed in me, 

As if from long rowing—and in my ears 

69 Khodasevich, Stikhotvoreniia, 311. The event described in "Эпизод" took place in Gireevo. 

70 Ibid., 310. 

71 The poem was shortened by one line (#69) in the 1927 edition. In this discussion, I will refer to line 

numbers according to the first two editions of Путем зерна. 

47

An unclear noise rumbled, like the captive echo 

Of the lake or sea wind. 

The fourth full line of this excerpt ("Вновь ощущать все тело, руки, ноги…") is 

recalled in the first line of "Вариация" ("Вновь эти плечи, эти руки"). In both cases, 

the lyric hero is intensely aware of his own physicality. In both poems he also senses 

utter exhaustion ("Струилось вновь во мне изнеможенье" in "Эпизод"; "И вдруг, 

изнеможенья полный" in "Вариация"). Thus the soul appears to experience its return 

to the body in "Эпизод" in much the same way that it leaves the body in "Вариация." 

This cyclical, repeating pattern is highlighted by the use of "вновь" in both poems. The 

first word of "Вариация," "вновь" refers both to the literal repeated action of stepping 

out onto the balcony and to the earlier experience of "Эпизод." In "Эпизод," "вновь" 

brings the reader back to the beginning of the poem—to the pre-episode state of 

exhaustion which is mirrored at the end: Изнемогая в той истоме тусклой, /Которая 

тогда меня томила, /Я в комнате своей сидел один…(lines 3-5: Languishing in the 

dull lassitude that wore me down, I sat in my room alone…). In lines 13-17 of "Эпизод" 

the lyric "я" first describes his surroundings (the bookshelf, death mask of Pushkin, 

children’s cries outside the window) which return in vivid detail once the episode is over 

(lines 68-70: Снова/ Увидел я перед собою книги,/ и маску Пушкина, и снова за 

окном/Услышал возгласы.) 

While at the end of "Эпизод" the poet apprehends these surroundings clearly, his 

first description is clouded by the onset of the episode. The sounds of the world reach 

him as if through thick, deep waters: …Громыхали/Салазки по горе, но звуки 

мира/Неслись ко мне как будто бы сквозь толщу/Глубоких вод… (lines 17-20: 

Toboggans rumbled down the hill, but the sounds of the world reached me as if through 

48

deep blue waters.) 72 

These lines produce another echo in the third and fourth lines of 

"Вариация" ("Сижу, —но все земные звуки—/Как бы во сне или сквозь сон"). They 

also introduce the first extended use of water and sailing imagery which fill "Эпизод" 

and color "Вариация." 

In both poems the separation of the body and soul is compared to setting out to 

sea, moving from the solid earth of the shore to a wider world of waves. The poems, 

however, are fundamentally distinguished by the final position of the lyric persona. In 

"Эпизод" the poet has stepped out of the boat, back onto the shore. He has returned to 

his previous state of exhaustion, left only with an indistinct, captive echo of the wind. He 

compares his difficult and painful return to that of a snake trying to crawl back into his 

discarded skin (lines 60-67). 73 

72 Khodasevich revises these lines in the 1927 edition of Путем зерна to read: …Громыхали/Салазки по 

горе, но эти звуки/Неслись во мне как будто бы сквозь толщу/Глубоких вод… 

73 Another description of this exhausting, repeated return from the pure realm of the soul to the everyday 

world is found in Khodasevich’s earlier poem “Сны” (1917). Here the split between the body and the soul 

is played out in terms of dream and wakefulness. The lyric “я” urges his soul to break away from the body 

in sleep—to learn how to live in another realm. The soul can maintain this freedom, however, only until it 

is inevitably awakened and joined again with the body in an unhappy union (нерадостный союз). The 

final two stanzas of “Сны” stress the harsh sameness of each waking day, alleviated only by a lingering 

reflection of the dream: 

День изо дня, в миг пробужденья трудный, 

Припоминаю я твой вещий сон, 

Смотрю в окно и вижу серый, скудный, 

Мой небосклон, 

Все тот же двор, и мглистый, и суровый, 

И голубей, танцующих на нем… 

Лишь явно мне, что некий отсвет новый 

Лежит на всем. 

Day after day, in the difficult moment of awakening, 

I remember your prophetic dream, 

I look out the window and see my gray, meager 

Horizon, 

I always see the same courtyard, both hazy and bleak, 

And the pigeons dancing on it… 

The only thing I sense clearly is that some new reflection 

Lies over everything. 

49

This sense of cyclical entrapment is broken, however, in "Вариация." Unlike the 

circular "Эпизод," "Вариация" ends with a sense of openness and outward movement. 

The lyric persona is not returned to the physical world after the spiritual separation, but 

continues to move further into the ephemeral realm. His world is ever-widening—he 

steps into the second circle of waves, anticipating a third and a fourth. While aware of 

the earthly world (the measured cadence of his porch-swing), it reaches him from far 

away (оттуда). 

In the 1927 edition of Путем зерна, Khodasevich reinforces this hopeful 

development with a seemingly small revision to "Эпизод," the deletion of line 69 (И 

маску Пушкина, и снова за окном). As a result the final stanza begins: 

Увидел я перед собою книги, 

Услышал голоса. 

Снова 

By excising the specific details of Pushkin’s death mask and the window (first mentioned 

in the fifteenth and seventeenth lines of the poem), Khodasevich lessens the degree of 

sameness between the lyric hero’s surroundings before and after the episode. Eliminating 

one of the persistent uses of "снова" also weakens the first editions’ stress on entrapment 

and futility. 

In all three editions of Путем Зерна “Сны” is followed by several poems which deal explicitly with death. 

The lyric persona envisions his own body laid out in state ("О, если б в этот час желанного покоя") as 

well as the bodies of others ("В Петровском парке," "Смоленский рынок"). He tells young girls 

("Милые девушки, верьте или не верьте…") and even death itself ("На ходу") how close he is to dying. 

"Эпизод," for all of its resonance with "Сны," appears to mark a turn toward a new, more hopeful pattern. 

The experience of separation is complete and ecstatic in "Эпизод," whereas the escape into dream is 

limited and tarnished in "Сны." 

50

"Дом" 

Another hopeful poem incorporated into the 1921 edition of Путем зерна is the 

1919-1920 blank verse narrative "Дом." While focused on an image of destruction and 

decay (a house destroyed after the revolution), the poem, like "Вариация," opens 

outward, suggesting, in the end, the potential for rebirth. Informed by both the title poem 

and "Ручей," "Дом" serves as a point of transition from the more personal, questioning 

journey of the first editions of Путем зерна to the more confident, epic statement of the 

final version. 74 

The poem opens with a description of the ruined house. The wood of the upper 

story has been torn down for fuel, leaving only the "crude shell" (грубый остов) of the 

stone base. This skeleton is defined by its negative spaces—its emptinesses. The empty 

spaces of the windows (пролеты широких окон), not the still present outlines or frames, 

are clearly drawn (lines 7-8). Even larger gaps—perhaps the holes where doors used to 

stand—lead the traveler who visits the house from one emptiness into another (lines 29- 

30). The rooms that used to house families now contain only heaps of trash that reek of 

rancid cold (lines 9-10). 

This bleak vision of emptiness is strangely tempered by the calm voice of the 

speaker. He describes his frequent evening visits to the house as restful (lines 3-4). He 

balances the negative images of destruction and decay with a positive description of the 

sky and green trees of the courtyard rising up out of the ruins (lines 4-6). While the 

74 Michael Wachtel has discussed this poem in the context of the Russian blank verse tradition. He does 

not, however, consider the context of the book which contains it and as a result describes the poem as 

"unremittingly bleak." He associates the water imagery of the poem with the apocalyptic imagery of a 

destructive flood, rather than seeing it as a symbol of life and spiritual energy, a consistent feature of water 

in Путем зерна (see, for example, my earlier discussion of "Ручей.") Michael Wachtel, The Development 

of Russian Verse: Meter and its Meanings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 101-3. By 

reading "Дом" in the context of the entire book, specifically the context of the structuring title poem, I will 

try to show how the poem in fact acts as a hopeful link in the cycle of death and rebirth. 

51

description is largely colored by negative images (замызганные деньги/soiled money, 

черный день/black (rainy) day, духота/stuffiness, мрак/gloom), the people who once 

lived in the house are portrayed with a similar balance. They both argue and are 

reconciled with each other (ссорились, мирились, line 13), they both are born and die 

(рождались, умирали, lines 18-19). 

This reciprocal pattern of human activity, once hidden behind the solid walls of 

the house, is now openly exposed to the casual passerby (все теперь/Прохожему 

открыто, line 19). Over the course of the poem, the speaker will similarly reveal the 

cycle of human existence—the path of the grain set out in the book’s title poem—to the 

reader. Darkness will give way to light, death to rebirth and regeneration. 

The first sign of this revelation comes with the speaker’s heightened, almost odic 

tone in describing the wanderer who visits the house (lines 20-31): 

О, блажен, 

Чья вольная нога ступает бодро 

На этот прах, чей посох равнодушный 

В покинутые стены ударяет! 

Чертоги ли великого Рамсеса, 

Поденщика ль безвестного лачуга— 

Для странника равны они: все той же 

Он песенкою времени утешен; 

Ряды ль колонн торжественных, иль дыры 

Дверей вчерашних—путника все так же 

Из пустоты одной ведут они в другую 

Такую же… 

O blessed is the one 

Whose willful foot steps boldly 

On this dust, whose indifferent staff 

Strikes the abandoned walls! 

The mansions of great Ramses, 

Or the hovel of an unknown worker— 

To the stranger they are all the same: always by the same 

Song of time is he consoled; 

Whether there are rows of ceremonial columns, or holes 

Of yesterday's doors—all the same 

52

The traveler is led from one emptiness into another 

Identical one… 

Here the pilgrim is described as blessed and free. He steps boldly, undismayed by 

the destruction that lies around him. His indifference comes not from a cold or cruel 

nature, but from a knowledge of the soothing song of time—a song which suggests that 

there is no lasting difference between a hovel and a palace or columns and doors. Given 

enough time, all of these things ultimately decay and lead to the same state of emptiness. 

While such emptiness seems at first disheartening, its sameness (emphasized by the use 

of все так же, такую же) is paralleled by the sameness of the song of time (все той же 

песенкою)—an eternal, consoling force. This movement from emptiness to emptiness 

suggests passage through a life cycle; the ruins of past life lead the living from a pre-natal 

void to a posthumous one. 75 

The pilgrim in this section recalls the "молодой путник" in the second stanza of 

the poem "Ручей." In both poems, the traveler is accompanied by a staff (посох) and a 

song. In both instances, he observes a scene of decay: the ruined house in "Дом"; a 

drying stream in "Ручей." But while the speaker in "Дом" admires and even envies his 

wanderer’s wise indifference to the natural process of decay, the narrator of "Ручей" 

presents his pilgrim as fatally unaware of any such process. In his ignorance, he 

unwittingly contributes to it by taking a drink from the evaporating stream. He does not 

yet understand the song of time. It is only when the young pilgrim of "Ручей" matures 

into the blessed, willful pilgrim of "Дом" that this song of time can be understood. 

After the description of the pilgrim in "Дом," the speaker's gaze follows the 

broken staircase of the house up to its landing, seemingly a rostrum in the sky. Above 

75 My thanks to Adam Weiner for this metaphorical reading of пустота. 

53

this shines an evening star, a "guide to thoughtful meditation." At this elevation and level 

of high abstraction, the speaker discusses the very nature of time and man’s place within 

it (lines 47-58): 

Как птица в воздухе, как рыба в океане, 

Как скользкий червь в сырых пластах земли, 

Как саламандра в пламени,—так человек 

Во времени. Кочевник полудикий, 

По смене лун, по очеркам созвездий 

Уже он силится измерить эту бездну 

И в письменах неопытных заносит 

События, как острова на карте… 

Но сын отца сменяет. Грады, царства, 

Законы, истины—преходят. Человеку 

Ломать и строить—равная услада: 

Он изобрел историю—он счастлив! 

Like a bird in air, or a fish in the ocean, 

Like a slippery worm in moist layers of earth, 

Like a salamander in flame—so is man 

In time. The half-wild nomad, 

According to the changing of the moons and the outlines of the constellations 

Already tries to measure this abyss 

And in inexperienced characters he notes down 

Events, like islands on a map… 

But the son takes the place of the father. Towns, kingdoms, 

Laws, truths—all pass. For man 

It is an equal pleasure to break down and to build: 

He invented history—he is happy! 

From his earliest nomadic days, man has tried to contain and quantify time in calendars 

and chronicles. He is content with his invention of history—a linear record of the 

progression and succession of families, kingdoms, laws and truths. He falsely believes 

that he has achieved some degree of control over time—that he has successfully 

measured its abyss (бездна). But an abyss is by definition immeasurable. Time’s terrible 

expanse (ужасный простор, line 39), its wide-open chasm (пучина, line 46) can be 

neither measured nor contained. It does not have an absolute beginning or end, but rather 

is always present as an elemental container of human life, just as air contains the birds 

54

and the ocean holds the fish. While the historian can not see this, the madman in the next 

lines (59-66) does: 

И с ужасом и с тайным сладострастьем 

Следит безумец, как между минувшим 

И будущим, подобно ясной влаге, 

Сквозь пальцы уходящей, —непрерывно 

Жизнь утекает. И трепещет сердце, 

Как легкий флаг на мачте корабельной, 

Между воспоминаньем и надеждой— 

Сей памятью о будущем… 

With both horror and secret pleasure 

The madman tracks how between the past 

And the future, like a clear liquid 

Which slips through your fingers, unceasingly 

Life flows away. And your heart trembles, 

Like a light flag on a ship's mast, 

Between memory and hope— 

That hope of the future. 

Moved by the terrible, passionate power of revelation, the madman recognizes the 

cyclical nature of time and life. While the image of clear liquid constantly slipping away 

through fingers suggests an eventual end to life, the final two quoted lines show the 

cyclical relationship of the past to the present. The madman’s heart wavers between 

recollection (the past) and hope (the future). This hope is described as a memory of the 

future (сей памятью о будущем). In order for the future to be remembered, it must have 

happened before—it must be part of an endless cycle of life. This cycle necessarily 

includes both death (the liquid of life slipping away) and rebirth (hope). 

In the final stanza of "Дом" the speaker returns from these abstract ruminations to 

the concrete site of the ruined house. An old woman approaches and begins to tear off 

shingles and insulation. The speaker joins her: 

Молча подхожу 

И помогаю ей, и мы в согласьи добром 

Работаем для времени. 

55

Silently I walk up 

And help her, and we in kind agreement 

Work for time. 

These lines, while describing the continued destruction of the house, are entirely 

positive—the speaker helps the old woman, they work "in kind agreement" for time. The 

speaker has absorbed the madman’s revelation. Recognizing the cyclical nature of time, 

he and the old woman hasten the destruction of the house in order to usher in the process 

of regeneration more quickly. 

The hopeful final lines of the poem reveal the very beginnings of this rebirth: 

Темнеет, 

Из-за стены встает зеленый месяц, 

И слабый свет его, как струйка, льется 

По кафелям обрушившейся печи. 

It grows dark, 

From behind the wall a green moon rises, 

And its weak light, like a little stream, pours 

Out along the tiles of the ruined stove. 

Out of the darkness "rises" a "green moon." The use of the adjective "green" here 

suggests something young, not quite ripe, yet alive and verdurous. The weakness of the 

light and the use of the diminutive "струйка" in the next line add to this sense of infancy. 

The flow of the light stream brings to mind previous associations between images of 

water and life: it echoes the liquid flow of life in the madman’s ruminations earlier in 

"Дом," and it recalls the dying stream, threatened by the pilgrim’s ignorance in "Ручей." 

Here, however, it is just beginning its path in full awareness of its destination. Its weak 

light (слабый свет) will continue to grow and strengthen until it becomes the blinding 

light (слепящий свет) that fills the final poem of Путем зерна, "Хлебы"—a light which 

surrounds the baking of bread, the final destination of the grain’s path. "Хлебы" and 

"Дом" are also connected by the use of the word "печь." The collapsed oven of the 

56

uined house in "Дом" is in full working order in "Хлебы," ready to receive the streams 

of future bread (струи будущего хлеба)—sure signs of new life. 

In addition to pointing us back to "Ручей" and forward to "Хлебы," these final 

images return us to the beginning of "Дом," revealing the cyclical structure of the poem 

itself. The rising green moon of line 73 recalls the green trees which rise youthfully out 

of the ruins in lines 5 and 6. This positive early image, which on first reading seemed 

puzzlingly at odds with the stark picture of destruction that surrounds it, now carries a 

clearer significance. From the very outset of the poem, the cycle of death and rebirth is 

implicitly acknowledged. Signs of renewal accompany signs of decay. This cycle 

becomes evident, however, only after a full reading of the entire poem. By the time 

Khodasevich repeats the adjective "green," the verb "rise" and the concept of youth or 

infancy, the reader has followed the traveler and the madman along their revelatory path. 

Further informed by the pattern established in the poem "Путем зерна," the reader can 

now recognize the hopeful images as the beginnings of a new cycle of life and death— 

another path of the grain. 

The excised poems: "Газетчик," "Как выскажу моим косноязычьем," 

"Сердце," and "Старуха" 

I have tried to show above that "Вариация" and "Дом" contain elements of hope 

essential to the final edition of Путем зерна. By contrast, Khodasevich eliminates the 

four other poems first found in the 1921 edition ("Газетчик," "Как выскажу моим 

косноязычьем," "Сердце," and "Старуха"). In order to understand this choice, it is 

helpful to recall Khodasevich's introduction to the proposed 1921 revised edition of 

57

Молодость. At the time of the introduction, the poems in Молодость no longer meant 

what they did when he wrote them: 

многое было в них намеком на чувства, давно изгладившиеся, на события, 

потерявшие былое значение, а то и вовсе забытые. Вижу, что даже 

отдельные образы, строки, слова этих стихов имели когда-то особый, ныне 

затерянный смысл. И не за литературные недостатки вычеркнул я теперь из 

«Молодости» около пятнадцати пьес, —таких недостатков слишком 

достаточно и в оставшейся части, —а потому, что сам перестал понимать 

их. 76 

It seems that the four poems ultimately left out of Путем зерна similarly failed to 

maintain meaning for Khodasevich in 1927. Written in the haze of Khodasevich's 

excruciating illness, the poems provide a highly emotional account of an extremely 

difficult period. By 1927, however, they no longer held the same biographical relevance. 

With the final edition, Khodasevich had also conceived a grander purpose for Путем 

зерна. The book no longer centered on his own personal journey, but rather laid out a 

universal path for all humanity to follow—a path which relies on the cyclicity of life and 

death. The entirely hopeless, pessimistic additions to the 1921 edition did not find a 

place along this path, therefore they no longer belonged in the reconceived final version 

of Путем зерна. 77 

One of the poems, "Газетчик," recalls Khodasevich's early, decadent poetry. The 

newspaper man is described as a little demon (маленький демон, reminiscent of 

Sologub's "мелкий бес") and a twirling, striding beast (бестия): 

«Вечерние известия!...» 

Ори, ласкай мне слух, 

Пронырливая бестия, 

Вечерних улиц дух. 


77 The poems "Уединение" and "Воспоминание" which were removed from the first editions of Путем 

зерна exhibit a similar hopelessness and despair inappropriate to the tone and message of the final book. 

58

Весеняя распутица 

Ведет меня во тьму, 

А он юлит и крутится, 

И все равно ему— 

Геройство иль бесчестие, 

Позор иль торжество: 

Вечерние известия— 

И больше ничего. 

Шагает демон маленький, 

Как некий исполин, 

Расхлябанною валенкой 

Над безднами судьбин. 

Но в самом безразличии, 

В бездушьи торгаша— 

Какой соблазн величия 

Пьет жадная душа! 

"Evening news!…" 

Yell, caress my ears, 

Pushy beast, 

Spirit of the evening streets. 

The muddy springtime 

Leads me into darkness, 

But he fidgets and twirls around, 

And everything is the same to him— 

Heroism or dishonor, 

Disgrace or triumph: 

It's all the evening news— 

And nothing more. 

The little demon strides 

Like some sort of giant, 

With a loose felt boot 

Over the chasms of others' fates. 

But in that very indifference, 

In the soullessness of the tradesman— 

What a temptation of greatness 

Does the greedy soul drink up! 

59

The newspaper hawker’s indifference to his wares—the affairs of the world and the fates 

of other men—has nothing in common with the wanderer’s indifference in "Дом." It is 

based not on any greater understanding of life’s patterns (e.g. that heroism and dishonor 

naturally replace each other as life replaces death), but rather on cold calculation—it does 

not matter what he sells as long as others buy it up. His indifference does have 

something in common, however, with the description of man in lines 47-58 of "Дом." By 

"inventing history" and writing down events, haughty man believes he has gained control 

over those events. This control is proven false in "Дом," but in "Газетчик" the hawker's 

similar "greatness," his indifferent treatment of human stories typed up in the mundane 

genre of the evening news, tempts the speaker. The lyric "я" lacks such control over his 

own life—the muddy spring roads 78 lead him inevitably into darkness—but his "greedy 

soul" longs for it. Any attempts to achieve such greatness, however, are akin to selling 

himself to the devil, becoming "soulless" like the hawker. 

The poem "Сердце" is likewise concerned with greed. The speaker describes his 

heart as a bloody miser (кровавый скупец) who stores away earthly moments in a huge 

lead box. He seems to believe that locking them up will help him cling to life. In the 

final stanza he recognizes the futility of his heart’s actions: 

И много тяжелых цехинов, 

И много поддельных гиней 

Толпа теневых исполинов 

Разграбит в час смерти моей. 

And many heavy zecchins, 

And many fake guineas 

A throng of tenebrous giants 

Will steal in the hour of my death. 

78 Here the word "распутица" suggests a certain degree of debauchery, depravity (cf. "распутство"). 

60

By describing his carefully stored "earthly moments" as fake and useless coins, the 

speaker suggests his life’s utter lack of value. Despite this worthlessness, "tenebrous 

giants" 79 will steal the coins anyway, sealing his death and leaving no hope for rebirth. 

The poem "Старуха" similarly describes a meaningless life, helplessly robbed. 

An old woman drags her sled through the windy and snowy streets of Moscow. Crying 

out to a passerby for help, she is ignored. The next day her corpse is found in the snow: 

Легкий труп, окоченелый, 

Простыней покрывши белой, 

В тех же саночках, без гроба, 

Милицейский увезет, 

Растолкав плечом народ. 

Неречист и хладнокровен 

Будет он,—а пару бревен, 

Что везла она в свой дом, 

Мы в печи своей сожжем. 

The light corpse, stiff with cold, 

Covered with a white sheet, 

On the very same little sled, without a coffin, 

The policeman leads away, 

Having pushed aside the crowd with his shoulder. 

Speechless and cold-blooded 

It will be—but the pair of logs 

That she was taking to her home, 

We will burn in our stove. 

After death, the old woman is robbed of her humanity, described only as a corpse. She 

has just one thing of value left—the logs with which she planned to heat her home. They 

will not warm her speechless, cold-blooded corpse, but rather they will fill the stove of 

the bystanders who witnessed but disregarded her struggle in the snow. The word "печь" 

appears in only two other poems in Путем зерна, "Дом" and "Хлебы," in which it is 

associated with the final image of the "path of the grain"—the baking of bread. Here, 

instead of providing sustenance, the stove will quickly devour stolen wood—wood which 

79 Note that Khodasevich refers to the hawker in “Газетчик” as a giant as well (line 14). 

61

could have supported a life cruelly lost. "Старуха," unlike "Дом," offers no hope for 

renewal or rebirth. The poem, like the old woman, leaves no lasting trace and is 

discarded from the final edition of the book. 

Perhaps the most pessimistic poem to be added to the 1921 edition and the one 

which most directly attacks the cyclical pattern set out in "Путем зерна" is "Как 

выскажу моим косноязычьем": 

Как выскажу моим косноязычьем 

Всю боль, весь яд? 

Язык мой стал звериным или птичьим, 

Уста молчат. 

И ничего не нужно мне на свете, 

И стыдно мне, 

Что суждены мне вечно пытки эти 

В его огне; 

Что даже смертью, гордой, своевольной, 

Не вырвусь я; 

Что и она—такой же, хоть окольный, 

Путь бытия. 

How will I express with my twisted tongue 

All the pain, all the poison? 

My tongue became a beast's or a bird's, 

My lips are silent. 

And I need nothing from this world, 

And I am ashamed 

That I am fated to these eternal tortures 

In its fire; 

That even by a proud, self-willed death, 

I will not break free; 

That even it is the same, albeit roundabout, 

Path of existence. 

This poem most explicitly addresses the physical anguish experienced by Khodasevich in 

the early twenties—an anguish that threatens to silence his poetic voice and which leads 

him to thoughts of suicide (гордая, своевольная смерть). The poem's last line, "Путь 

62

бытия," recalls the book’s title, "Путем зерна." Here, however, the "path of existence" 

is seen as a fateful trap rather than a natural pattern of life and death to be embraced and 

accepted. The speaker is condemned to eternal torments without any hope of relief or 

regeneration. Even through suicide he cannot escape his fate—he will inevitably be 

reborn into the same life of pain and poison. Such a bitter statement against the hopeful 

message of "Путем зерна" no longer finds a place in the 1927 edition of the book. In the 

final book Khodasevich continues to express moments of doubt and despair (e.g. "Утро," 

"У моря"), but these moments never close off the potential for life and hope, and they 

never threaten to silence the poet. 

Poems added to the final edition of Путем зерна 

Unlike the wholly pessimistic additions to the 1921 edition, the four new poems 

included in the final edition of Путем зерна all support the central idea of the book—the 

cycle of death and rebirth set out in the opening poem. Each also reflects Khodasevich's 

move away from the immediate expression of his own youthful emotions to a more 

mature contemplation of universal questions. He places three of these poems, "Брента," 

"Мельница," and "Акробат" in the fifth, sixth and seventh positions of the book, 

following the title poem, "Слезы Рахили," "Ручей," and "Сладко после дождя теплая 

пахнет ночь." In effect these new poems take the place of the excised cluster of poems 

originally placed after "Ручей" and "Слезы Рахили": "Авиатору," "Газетчик," 

"Уединение," "Как выскажу моим косноязычьем," "Рыбак," and "Воспоминание." I 

will argue that one of the new poems, "Акробат," acts as a direct replacement for 

"Авиатору." "Брента" and "Мельница" do not respond specifically to individual 

poems, but rather provide a general relief from the overwrought emotion of the earlier 

63

group. They address a point in the past with calm, at times playful retrospection. The 

one poem to remain from the earlier cluster, "Сладко после дождя теплая пахнет 

ночь," similarly deals with the passage of time, recalling a love affair sixteen years past. 

In the final edition of Путем зерна it serves as a neat introduction to "Брента"—a 

recollection of Khodasevich's trip to Italy in 1911 and the end of his love affair with 

Zhenya Muratova. 

"Брента" 

In the summer of 1911 Khodasevich traveled to Italy. The trip resulted in a 

newfound appreciation of the Renaissance, later to find a place in his poetry, but it was 

largely inspired by Khodasevich's love affair with the wife of his friend, the art historian 

Pavel Muratov. The affair began in 1910, and Khodasevich followed Muratova, who 

"cultivated the role of 'infernal' woman and seemed to take sadistic pleasure in 

tormenting her poet-slave," 80 to Venice. The affair, which came to an end in Italy, has 

been viewed as the final stage of Khodasevich's personal dissipation, begun in 1908: "He 

drank every evening in the cafés and restaurants of Moscow, played all-night games of 

chemin de fer at the Circle of Art and Literature…and together with Muni, seemed to live 

in the oneiric atmosphere of their aimless walks and the draughts of their feverish 

conversations." 81 

The trip to Italy, split with Muratova, and sudden deaths of both his 

parents soon after his return to Russia created a definitive break in Khodasevich's 

biography. At some point during this period he contemplated suicide. He felt incredible 

guilt over his dissolute past and his neglect of familial duties. The poem "Брента," 

80 Bethea, Khodasevich, 87. 

81 Ibid., 86-7. 

64

written over the years 1920-1923, looks back at this period—specifically the trip to Italy. 

The lyric persona claims that his worldview has radically changed as a result of this trip, 

but he does so without an emotional expression of the personal anguish experienced by 

Khodasevich at the time. Khodasevich writes from a distant perspective—far enough 

separated from the real events of his biography both to simplify and generalize them. He 

presents his trip to the river Brenta not as a moment of personal crisis, but as a general 

awakening from romantic youth to prosaic maturity: 

Адриатические волны! 

О, Брента!.. 

Евгений Онегин [гл. 1, XLIX, 1-2] 

Брента, рыжая речонка! 

Сколько раз тебя воспели, 

Сколько раз к тебе летели 

Вдохновенные мечты— 

Лишь за то, что имя звонко, 

Брента, рыжая реченка, 

Лживый образ красоты! 

Я и сам спешил когда-то 

Заглянуть в твои отливы, 

Окрыленный и счастливый 

Вдохновением любви. 

Но горька была расплата. 

Брента, я взглянул когда-то 

В струи мутные твои. 

С той поры люблю я, Брента, 

Одинокие скитанья, 

Частого дождя кропанье 

Да на согнутых плечах 

Плащ из мокрого брезента. 

С той поры люблю я, Брента, 

Прозу в жизни и в стихах. 

Adriatic waves! 

O, Brenta!.. 

Evgenii Onegin 

Brenta, you little red stream! 

How many times have your praises been sung, 

65

How many times have flown to you 

Inspired dreams— 

Just because your name rings, 

Brenta, you little red stream, 

False image of beauty! 

I too hurried once 

To glance into your ebb-tides, 

Happy and moved 

By the inspiration of love. 

But bitter was the reward. 

Brenta, I looked once 

Into your turbid waters. 

Since that time, Brenta, I have loved 

Solitary wanderings, 

The trickling of steady rain, 

And on my hunched shoulders 

A cloak of wet canvas. 

Since that time, Brenta, I have loved 

Prose in life and in verse. 

Following in the tradition of Byron's and Pushkin's romantic extolments of the Brenta, 

the young poet travels to the majestic river but, instead of a magnificent source of 

inspiration, discovers only "a rust-colored, mean little stream." 82 

The love which drove 

him there rewards him only with bitterness. His affair has crumbled, and, more 

importantly, his blind trust in romantic images has been broken. All Brenta can offer is a 

resonant name, fitting for a poetic line but perpetuating a false image of beauty. 

Bethea sees evidence of Khodasevich's poetic maturity in this poem—an 

emergence of ironic word-play which will play a central role in his later poetry. By 

rhyming Brenta, whose name has been glorified as resonant and ringing, with brezenta 

82 In his commentary to Eugene Onegin, Nabokov writes: "In a curious poem, the great poet Vladislav 

Hodasevich (1886-1939), a century later, described the kind of therapeutic shock he experienced when, 

upon visiting the real Brenta, he found it to be a ryzhaya rechonka, a rust-colored, mean little stream." 

Aleksandr Pushkin, Eugene Onegin: A Novel in Verse (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), vol. 

2 (Commentary and Index), 186. 

66

(canvas), he entirely deflates the river's romantic legacy. 83 

In this poem he has made his 

move toward prose in verse. Thematically, Khodasevich has moved towards prose in 

life. He chooses to replace the false romantic image with details of everyday 

experience—the sound of steady rain, the cloak of wet canvas. Such prosaic images are 

distinctly opposed to the convoluted fictions his poetic persona craved in "За окном— 

ночные разговоры." There too, the poet is disillusioned by romantic images (Я устал 

быть нежным и счастливым!/ Эти песни, ласки, розы—плен!), but he chooses the 

dramatic and fantastic over the prosaic: Ах, из роз люблю я сердцем лживым/Только 

ту, что жжет огнем ревнивым,/Что зубами с голубым отливом/Прикусила хитрая 

Кармен! The persona recognizes his own position as false—his heart, like the Brenta's 

image of beauty, is deceitful (лживый)—yet he still longs for the passions and emotions 

of childhood days (Пусть опять прихлынут к сердцу страхи,/Как в былые, детские 

года!). With "Брента" Khodasevich's persona has reached a distinctly different 

perspective. He has bypassed the emotionally turbulent period of decadent adolescence 

and moved directly from a romantic youth to a prosaic maturity. "Брента" avoids any 

hint of personal crisis. It, like the final edition of Путем зерна as a whole, cuts ties with 

the volatile emotions so prominent in Молодость and Счастливый домик, instead 

claiming, in a calm and playful tone, a complete break from the past. 

"Брента" follows the poem "Сладко после дождя теплая пахнет ночь," the only 

poem of the otherwise excised cluster to remain in the final edition of Путем зерна. It 

acts as a perfect introduction to"Брента" and the general discussion of the passage of 

time: 

83 Bethea, Khodasevich, 114-5. 

67

Сладко после дождя теплая пахнет ночь. 

Быстро месяц бежит в прорезях белых туч. 

Где-то в сырой траве часто кричит дергач. 

Вот, к лукавым губам губы впервые льнут. 

Вот, коснувшись тебя, руки мои дрожат... 

Минуло с той поры только шестнадцать лет. 

The warm night smells sweet after the rain. 

The moon rushes quickly in the openings of the white clouds. 

Somewhere in the damp grass a corncrake cries repeatedly. 

Look, for the first time lips cling to cunning lips. 

Look, touching you, my hands tremble… 

Since that time only sixteen years have passed. 

In both "Брента" and "Сладко после дождя…" Khodasevich describes an event in the 

past and relates it in time to the present with the phrase, "с той поры." In the case of 

"Брента" he emphasizes the change that has taken place in the persona's life since the 

time of his visit to the river—his rejection of romantic images for prosaic details. In 

"Сладко после дождя…" he states how many years have passed since the time of the 

romantic encounter described in the poem. This announcement of the gap in time, 

however, comes as a surprise to the reader. The first five lines of the poem provide an 

account of a first kiss in vivid detail and in the present tense. The first three lines set the 

physical scene, and lines four and five describe the actual kiss. Lines four and five both 

begin with the word "вот," suggesting the immediacy of the event as if the poetic persona 

is pointing out the scene to the reader as it occurs. In the fifth line, however, 

Khodasevich introduces first and second-person pronouns—the persona is suddenly 

personally involved in the kiss. He is an active participant, not simply a spectator and 

narrator. Apparently overcome with emotion, his hands shake. The kiss appears suspect, 

68

even dangerous—the lips are cunning, sly. 84 

The line breaks off with an ellipsis, and the 

poem concludes with an abrupt statement of time: only sixteen years have passed since 

that kiss. 

At first, the last line appears to emphasize the immediacy of the encounter. The 

persona remembers the physical details and emotions of the event extremely clearly. 

Only sixteen years have passed—it seems like yesterday. Yet these sixteen years separate 

his youth, encapsulated in a frenetic kiss, from a calm, retrospective maturity. Only 

sixteen years have passed, yet life is completely different now. The poem, while 

expressing the immediate emotion accompanying the kiss, is tempered by the distance of 

time which separates the poetic persona from his previous self. As in "Брента," a break 

has been made, bridgeable only through memory. 

"Мельница" 

Khodasevich places "Мельница" (1920-23), another poem dealing with the 

passage of time, immediately after "Брента" in the final edition of Путем зерна. In this 

poem, however, he does not recall a period from his own life, but rather describes the 

deterioration of an agrarian scene over time—a theme which clearly resonates with the 

book's title poem and "Дом": 

Мельница забытая 

В стороне глухой. 

К ней обоз не тянется, 

И дорога к мельнице 

Заросла травой. 

84 

The description of the kiss recalls the image of the crafty Carmen at the end of "За окном…": Ах, из 

роз люблю я сердцем лживым/Только ту, что жжет огнем ревнивым,/Что зубами с голубым 

отливом/Прикусила хитрая Кармен! It also suggests a link to Muratova, a Carmen-esque figure with 

whom Khodasevich broke in 1911, roughly 16 years before the publication of this poem. 

69

Не плеснется рыбица 

В голубой реке. 

По скрипучей лесенке 

Сходит мельник старенький 

В красном колпаке. 

Постоит, послушает,— 

И грозит перстом 

В даль, где дым из-за лесу 

Завился веревочкой 

Над людским жильем. 

Постоит, послушает,— 

И пойдет назад: 

По скрипучей лесенке, 

Поглядеть, как праздные 

Жернова лежат. 

Потрудились камушки 

Для хлебов да каш. 

Сколько было ссыпано— 

Столько было смолото, 

А теперь шабаш! 

А теперь у мельника— 

Лес да тишина, 

Да под вечер трубочка, 

Да хмельная чарочка, 

Да в окне луна. 

A forgotten mill 

In a remote region. 

No string of carts extends toward it, 

And the road to the mill 

Has grown over with grass. 

No little fish splashes 

In the light blue river. 

Down the creaky staircase 

Comes the little old miller 

In his red cap. 

He stands and listens for a while— 

And he wags his finger 

Into the distance, where smoke from beyond the forest 

Curled like a little string 

70

Over human habitation. 

He stands and listens for a while— 

And he goes back: 

Up the creaky staircase, 

To take a look at the idle 

Millstones lying about. 

The dear stones labored 

for loaves and kasha. 

However much was poured out, 

That much was ground 

And now the work is over! 

And now the miller has 

The forest and silence, 

And toward evening a little pipe, 

And a little cup of spirits, 

And the moon in the window. 

Khodasevich completed this poem on March 13, 1923. The following day he sent the 

"little verses" (стишки) to Nina Berberova for her parodic ladies' journal Ненюфары. 

Berberova recalls: "Ходасевич считал «Мельницу» стихотворением «несерьезным» 

и думал, что самое лучшее место для него—дамский журнал. Когда он предложил 

«Мельницу» «Ненюфарам», редакция вернула их ему, как слишком «трудные» для 

читательниц журнала." 85 

While too "difficult" for Ненюфары, the verses were clearly 

light to Khodasevich. The meter (trochaic trimeter with dactylic and masculine endings), 

colloquialisms (шабаш, да), tremendous number of diminutives (рыбица, лесенка, etc.), 

repetitions (постоит, послушает), and parallel constructions (Сколько было ссыпано— 

/ Столько было смолото) all contribute to the folk-song quality of the poem. There is 

no lyric я—the stylized narrative of the poem is related from a distant perspective. No 

emotion is expressed, no clear judgment is passed. 

85 Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 305. Khodasevich included the following note with the poem: 

Милые Ненюфары, посылаю вам эти стишки, хоть я не девочка. Я их сам сочинил, и пожалуйста 

напечатайте их в себе. Целую добрую редакцию. Ibid., 304. 

71

Within the context of Путем зерна, however, the seriousness of the theme cannot 

be overlooked. Khodasevich has taken an agricultural image—an idle, abandoned mill— 

to describe the end of a cycle of productivity. The road is overgrown with grass, no fish 

splashes in the river. The only sign of life left is the little old miller in his red cap. He 

futilely raises a finger to the city, where he is no longer needed. Left to his silence, pipe 

and spirits, the miller's world seems destined for oblivion. His idle millstones will create 

no more bread. 

The poem resonates strongly with Khodasevich's blank verse narrative "Дом." 

Both poems revolve around an observer at an abandoned, deteriorating building—a place 

that used to be full of bustling activity. But while there is an expectation of rebirth at the 

site of the house, the mill appears lost. "Мельница's" final image of the moon in the 

window (луна в окне), however, recalls the image of the rising green moon at the end of 

"Дом." Its light provides hope for a new cycle of activity—a cycle guaranteed by 

"Путем зерна," both poem and book. 

Of the excised poems, "Мельница" most closely resembles "Рыбак," a song that 

relates in a folk-like manner the gradual but inevitable decline of an old man and his 

activity—fishing for the sun. "Рыбак," however, intimates the inevitable collapse of all 

earthly life. Once the old fisherman runs out of stars, the cycle of night and day will be 

forever broken, and the whole world will be swallowed up by darkness (охватит землю 

мрак). "Мельница" predicts no such fate. While the miller's life may end, the life of the 

village in the distance will continue. Bread will come from another source, if not from 

him. This promise of continued life and the poem's contemplation of the toll time takes 

72

on human endeavor grant "Мельница" a place in the final edition of Путем зерна—a 

place which the fatalistic, hopeless "Рыбак" must give up. 

"Авиатору" and "Акробат" 

In the second edition of Путем зерна, Khodasevich excluded only one poem 

from the first edition: "Авиатору" (1914). In this poem the lyric persona distrustfully 

observes the flight of an airplane, ultimately calling on the pilot to fall back to earth 

where he belongs. 

Над полями, лесами, болотами, 

Над извивами северных рек 

Ты проносишься плавными взлетами, 

Небожитель—герой—человек. 

Напрягаются крылья, как парусы, 

На руле костенеет рука, 

А кругом—взгроможденные ярусы: 

Облака—облака—облака. 

И смотря на тебя недоверчиво, 

Я качаю слегка головой: 

Выше, выше спирали очерчивай, 

Но припомни—подумай—постой. 

Что тебе до надоблачной ясности? 

На земной, материнской груди 

Отдохни от высот и опасностей,— 

Упади—упади—упади! 

Ах, сорвись, и большими зигзагами 

Упади, раздробивши хребет,— 

Где трибуны расцвечены флагами, 

Где народ—и оркестр—и буфет. 

Over fields, forests, swamps, 

Over the bends of northern rivers 

You rush by in your smooth ascents 

Heaven-dweller—hero—man. 

The wings become taught like sails, 

73

Your hand grows stiff on the wheel, 

And all around—piled up tiers: 

Clouds—clouds—clouds. 

And looking at you disbelievingly, 

I rock my head lightly: 

Outline the spirals higher, higher, 

But remember—think for a minute—stop. 

What business of yours is the clarity beyond the clouds? 

On the earthly, maternal breast 

Rest from the heights and dangers,— 

Fall—fall—fall! 

Ah, come down, and in big zigzags 

Fall, having shattered your spine,— 

Where the rostrums are adorned with flags, 

Where the people are—and the orchestra—and the refreshments. 

In the first edition of Путем зерна Khodasevich placed "Авиатору" immediately after 

the poem "Слезы Рахили," written in 1916. After hearing this poem, a lament for the 

victims of war and a call for peace, Georgii Chulkov accused Khodasevich of defeatism 

(пораженчество). 86 

The lyric persona finds no glory in the legends and patriotic songs 

of war; instead he sees value only in the inconsolable tears of Rachel. Khodasevich did 

not remove or change "Слезы Рахили" in the later editions of Путем зерна, but its 

proximity to "Авиатору," a more cruelly defeatist poem, may have resulted in the latter's 

removal. 87 

A more likely explanation, however, seems to lie with the imitative nature of 

"Авиатору." Mikhail Gasparov and Inna Andreeva have both noted the poem's 

86 Khodasevich, Sobranie stikhotvorenii, vol. 1, 300. 

87 Khodasevich had made earlier disparaging comments about aviation, predicting a distinct break between 

pre- and post-aviation eras. He viewed airplanes as the triumph of the technical and mechanical over the 

spiritual and creative, and predicted the primarily destructive, military use of aviation. See his article, 

"Накануне," in Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 2, 66-7. 

74

esemblance to Muni's "И вот достигнута победа" (c. 1912-1913). 88 

Like Khodasevich, 

Muni directly addresses an aviator, emphasizing the unnaturalness of human flight—man 

does not belong in the skies. The remarkable technical achievement of flight provides 

amusement for the crowds, but the plane, the "new Icarus," remains an "uninspired slave 

of another's dream" (бескрылый раб чужой мечты). It is trapped in its own power 

(Железных крыльев царь и узник [Tsar and prisoner of its iron wings]) and ultimately 

is scorned by Apollo, a god of artistic power. 

Even more strongly than Muni's poem, however, Khodasevich's "Авиатору" 

recalls Blok's 1910 poem "В неуверенном, зыбком полете": 

В неуверенном, зыбком полете 

Ты над бездной взвился и повис. 

Что-то древнее есть в повороте 

Мертвых крыльев, подогнутых вниз. 

Как ты можешь летать и кружиться 

Без любви, без души, без лица? 

О, стальная, бесстрастная птица, 

Чем ты можешь прославить Творца? 

В серых сферах летай и скитайся, 

Пусть оркестр на трибуне гремит, 

Но под легкую музыку вальса 

Остановится сердце—и винт. 

In an unsure, shaky flight 

You rose up over the abyss and hung in mid-air. 

There is something ancient in the turn 

Of dead wings, bent down. 

How can you fly and circle 

Without love, without a soul, without a face? 

88 See Andreeva's commentary in Kissin, Legkoe bremia, 178, and Mikhail Gasparov's introduction to Muni 

in his anthology of Silver Age Russian Poetry: Russkaia poeziia serebrianogo veka, 1890-1917: 

antologiia, ed. Mikhail Gasparov (Moscow: Nauka, 1993), 341. In this same introduction, Gasparov 

claims that Muni's poetry generally recalls Khodasevich's early poetry: Стихи Муни тоже напоминают 

раннего Ходасевича: пессимизм, ориентация на эпоху Пушкина и Баратынского, влияние Белого и 

Сологуба, для оттенения, стилизованные любовно-альбомные стихи, только немного больше 

мистики и быта. Ibid. 

75

O, steel, passionless bird, 

How can you glorify the Creator? 

Fly and wander in the gray spheres, 

Let the orchestra roar on the rostrum, 

But to the accompaniment of light waltz music 

The heart—and the propeller—will stop. 

Similarities between Blok's and Khodasevich's poems are obvious. Both open 

with a direct address to a plane (in the case of Blok's poem) or aviator (Khodasevich). 

The first stanzas of each poem describe the plane's/aviator's flight as cold and lifeless. In 

Blok's poem, the wings are dead and the plane hangs in mid-air. In "Авиатору" the 

wings are taught and the pilot's hand is frozen to the wheel. Both poets question the 

plane/aviator directly (Blok in the second stanza, Khodasevich in the third), asking how 

and why he dares to fly. While Khodasevich's hero is human, and Blok's is steel and 

passionless, neither belongs in the heavenly realm. The final stanza of Khodasevich's 

poem is a clear echo of Blok's: Blok's plane will crash to the music of an orchestra on a 

rostrum; Khodasevich's aviator is urged to fall near the rostrums, orchestra, and 

refreshments. In addition to these thematic and lexical borrowings, Khodasevich's poem 

is written in the same form as Blok's poem, quatrains of anapestic trimeter with an 

alternating rhyme scheme (although with dactylic, rather than feminine rhymes). 

It seems likely that Khodasevich discarded "Авиатору" because he saw it as too 

derivative of Blok's poem. 89 

The poem does not offer anything particularly new or 

original, but instead looks back at and imitates a symbolist model. It also lacks the bald 

89 Khodasevich's "Авиатору" also recalls Blok's poem "Авиатор" (1910-January, 1912) which describes 

the ascent and crash of a plane trying to break a world record at an air show. Blok depicts the flight as 

unnatural and pointless, and he shares Khodasevich's concerns about the military future of aviation. The 

poet asks the aviator why he chose to fly and proposes an answer in the final stanza: Иль отравил твой 

мозг несчастный/Грядущих войн ужасный вид:/ Ночной летун, во мгле ненастной/Земле несущий 

динамит? While the titles of Blok's and Khodasevich's poems are virtually shared, "Авиатору" is, in fact, 

much closer to "В неуверенном, зыбком полете" than "Авиатор" in terms of both form and content. 

76

personal emotion so typical of the poems which surrounded and took its place in the first 

and second editions: "Уединение," "Газетчик," "Как выскажу моим косноязычьем." 

The lyric hero is a distant observer, rocking his head lightly to the almost singsong 

rhythm of the poem. His calls for the aviator's demise lack any personal involvement. 

More interesting than the removal of "Авиатору," however, is its apparent 

reincarnation in the form of the poem "Акробат," one of the four poems added to the 

1927 edition of Путем зерна. While the painfully emotional and even violent poems 

which occupied the place of "Авиатору" in the second edition were discarded from the 

more sedate, contemplative final edition, the detached, almost philosophical nature of the 

excised "Авиатору" reemerges in "Акробат," another observation of a man hovering 

between earth and sky: 

От крыши до крыши протянут канат. 

Легко и спокойно идет акробат. 

В руках его—палка, он весь—как весы, 

А зрители снизу задрали носы. 

Толкаются, шепчут: «Сейчас упадет!»— 

И каждый чего-то взволнованно ждет. 

Направо—старушка глядит из окна, 

Налево—гуляка с бокалом вина. 

Но небо прозрачно, и прочен канат. 

Легко и спокойно идет акробат. 

А если, сорвавшись, фигляр упадет, 

И охнув, закрестится лживый народ— 

Поэт, проходи с безучастным лицом: 

Ты сам не таким ли живешь ремеслом? 

The tightrope is stretched from roof to roof. 

The acrobat walks lightly and calmly. 

77

There's a stick in his hands, he's all like a balance, 

And the viewers below lifted up their noses. 

They jostle each other and whisper, "Now he'll fall!" 

And each of them anxiously awaits something. 

On the right an old woman looks from a window, 

On the left there's a reveler with a glass of wine. 

But the sky is clear, and the rope is firm. 

The acrobat walks lightly and calmly. 

But what if, breaking loose, the acrobat should fall, 

And gasping, the deceitful crowd crosses itself— 

Poet, pass by with a neutral gaze: 

Don't you too live by such a trade? 

The first five stanzas of "Акробат" were originally written in 1914 to accompany 

a silhouette for the "Летучая Мышь" theater of miniatures and were included in the 

second edition of Счастливый домик (1921). In 1921 Khodasevich wrote the last two 

stanzas and published the new version in both the third edition of Счастливый домик 

(1922) and the final edition of Путем зерна. 90 Khodasevich's placement of the poem in 

the third edition of Счастливый домик is logical. He did not complete the seven-stanza 

version in time for the 1921 editions of either Счастливый домик or Путем зерна, but 

it was ready for the third edition of Счастливый домик in 1922. 91 

Why he chose to 

include it again in the final edition of Путем зерна is a more interesting question. It 

appears to act both as a substitute for his previously excised poem "Авиатору" and as an 

ideal complement to the book's title poem. 

In "Авиатору" and "Акробат" Khodasevich describes a person who hangs 

precariously above the earth—in one case supported by the taught sail-like wings of an 


91 The five stanza version neatly replaces the poem "Новый год" in the second edition of Счастливый 

домик. 

78

airplane; in the other by a firm, stretched tightrope. In both poems, earth-bound 

observers watch his movements, hoping for him to fall. Both poems are written in 

ternary meters, suggesting the smooth, undulating flights of the airplane (плавные 

взлеты) and the calm, light step of the acrobat. Everything must be perfectly balanced to 

keep the plane and acrobat aloft. 

The poet's perspective, however, has been inverted. In "Авиатору" it is the lyric 

persona who calls on the aviator to fall. He is watching distrustfully from the ground, 

questioning the right of the aviator to break the natural order and attempt to fly. In 

"Акробат" the observers are playfully but derisively described as old women, drunkards, 

and crowds of people with noses stuck up toward the sky. They whisper in anticipation 

of the acrobat's demise. The poet disassociates himself from this "deceitful mass" 

(лживый народ) which longs to gasp at a fall, and instead aligns himself with the 

acrobat, comparing his craft with the poet's: Ты сам не таким ли живешь ремеслом? 

This rhetorical question, posed not to the subject of the poem (the acrobat) but to the poet 

at large, replaces the question asked of the aviator: Что тебе до надоблачной ясности? 

The acrobat, like the poet, has earned access to this unearthly realm. He risks his neck 

with each step just as the poet takes a risk with each line of verse. 

The association of the acrobat and the poet recalls the metaphor of the sower as 

poet in the title poem "Путем зерна." 92 

In fact, "Акробат" echoes this poem in formal, 

thematic and lexical ways. While written in distinct meters, the poems both consist of a 

series of rhymed couplets. 93 

This tidy form emphasizes the steadiness and balance 

described in each poem. In "Путем зерна" the sower walks among the even furrows 

92 See earlier discussion of "Путем зерна." 

93 "Золото" is the only other poem in the book written in couplets. Its close connection to the title poem is 

discussed above. 

79

traveled by his ancestors. Similarly, the acrobat walks lightly on his tightrope, like a 

perfectly balanced scale. Both poems describe a fall: the destined fall of the grain into 

the black earth (оно должно упасть), and, by metaphorical association the fall of the 

poet's soul; the potential fall of the acrobat, and, by direct association, that of the poet. 

More important than either fall, however, is the steady progress of the grain and 

acrobat along a difficult but defined route: the grain's way from death to rebirth; the 

acrobat's tightrope from roof to roof. Both poems emphasize this progress through the 

use of words related to movement and paths. "Путем зерна" is full of motion verbs, and 

Khodasevich repeats the word путь three times in the poem. In "Акробат" the only 

actions (verbs) attributed to the acrobat are walking and, potentially, falling. By contrast, 

the viewers all remain in one spot, sticking up their noses, crowding together, whispering, 

waiting, observing. The repetition of the line "Легко и спокойно идет акробат," like 

the repetition in the title poem of the phrase "идет путем зерна"/"идти путем зерна," 

suggests that despite the harsh environment, time is passing, and the lyric hero is moving 

forward. 

This progress is most specifically highlighted by the verb проходить/пройти (to 

walk; to pass through). The first word of "Путем зерна," it opens up the poem and 

indeed the entire final edition of the book. The sower/poet walks out among the even 

furrows of fertile soil (Проходит сеятель по ровным бороздам). Later in the poem, 

Khodasevich compares the grain's way to that of his country and people who will die and 

be reborn, having passed through this difficult year (пройдя сквозь этот год). This verb 

appears in the book Путем зерна only one other time—in the penultimate line of 

"Акробат": Поэт, проходи с безучастным лицом. Like the poet of "Путем зерна" the 

80

poet of "Акробат" must make his way through, along his destined path. This strong 

resonance with the title poem as well as the connections to the excised "Авиатору" make 

"Акробат" a fitting addition to the final version of Путем зерна. 

Conclusion 

In this chapter I have shown how the final edition of Путем зерна represents a 

new stage in Khodasevich's poetic career. Thanks in part to its publication history (three 

different editions over the course of seven years), the book is distanced from its initial 

biographical sources. This distance allows Khodasevich to reconceptualize the book—to 

organize it around a belief in the cyclicity of life and death rather than an individual 

journey along this cycle. He breaks from the highly emotional, personal poetry of his 

previous books and finds a more epic poetic voice. 

The first two editions of Путем зерна remain linked to his early work. The 

opening poem, "Ручей," resonates with the opening poem of his previous book of poems, 

Счастливый домик. "Путем зерна," the first poem in the final edition, severs this tie 

and in fact provides a polemical response to the opening poem of his first book of poetry, 

"В моей стране." Khodasevich rejects this past, claiming Путем зерна as his first book 

of poetry in his 1927 Собрание стихов and presenting the message of "Путем зерна"— 

the continual renewal of life through death—as the structural motif of the book. 

Khodasevich's various additions to and excisions from the 1921 and 1927 editions 

all support this general movement away from the personal toward the universal truth of 

the "way of the grain." 

81

Chapter Two: Zinaida Gippius's Radiances 

In most studies of Gippius, critics have focused on the philosophical and religious 

foundations of her verse rather than on its formal aspects. 94 

This is due not only to the 

rich content of her poetry, but also to its apparent “stylelessness.” Vladislav 

Khodasevich wrote that Gippius related to form the way an intellectual woman relates to 

her clothing—she loves it, but she doesn’t respect it: 

Она формально усложняет и украшает свои стихи, но лишь между делом, не 

вдумываясь и нацепляя на себя, что попало. В конце концов ее стихи 

оказываются еще более манерными, чем у других символистов, и отсутствие 

стиля становится ее стилем… Как бы ни были велики прегрещения Гиппиус 

перед формой,—возлюбленное содержание платило и платит ей за любовь и 

верность взаимностью. 95 

In addition to this emphasis on content over form, critics have maintained that 

Gippius’s poetry does not evolve, but rather remains consistently distinctive 

(своеобразная) over the course of her poetic career. Aside from a brief flirtation with 

Nadsonian verse, her early poetry can be considered mature in terms of both content and 

poetic form. She struggles with the same major themes throughout her poetic career 

(love, death, and the devil), and this struggle is distinctly marked by paradox—she 

regularly shifts between moods of ecstatic faith and hopeless despair. 

In this chapter, I will attempt to show that Gippius's final book, Сияния, defies 

both of these assumptions. While remaining true to the thematics of her earlier work, 

Gippius provides a new form for her poetry, paying close attention to the structure of her 

book. For the first time, she provides a single dedication for the entire work. While the 

dedicatee is left unnamed, evidence points to Saint Teresa of the Child Jesus whose 

94 An exception is James Orville Bailey's 1965 dissertation, The Versification of Zinaida Gippius (Harvard, 

1965), a detailed statistical study of Gippius's verse. 

95 Zinaida Gippius, Stikhotvoreniia (Saint Petersburg: Novaia biblioteka poeta), 517. 

82

spiritual presence can be felt throughout the book. Also for the first time, Gippius 

chooses an overall thematic title, Сияния. Her first two collections are titled simply 

Собрание стихов and are organized according to the years the poems were written. The 

title of her third collection, Стихи. Дневник 1911-1921, explicitly labels the book a 

diary—a collection of chronologically organized entries. 96 

The seemingly thematic 

headings of its subsections, “У порога,” “Война,” “Революция,” and “Там и здесь,” in 

fact refer to periods of Gippius’s life to which the poems correspond in terms of the time 

of their writing. With Сияния, Gippius moves away from this diary-type organization. 

The poems, written over the course of fifteen years, represent only a small portion of the 

poetry she wrote in her later period. They are not arranged chronologically, and Gippius 

chooses not to date them in the text. 97 

In her previous books, Gippius dated each of her 

poems. By leaving out the dates in Сияния, Gippius seems to highlight the 

interdependence of the poems. Instead of assigning each poem a distinct moment in time, 

she suggests that each is part of the overall course of Сияния. 

Gippius thought carefully about the way she structured her poetic collections. 

She wrote explicitly about the composition of a book of poetry in the introduction to her 

first collection, Собрание стихов 1889-1903, “Необходимое о стихах”: “Мне жаль 

создавать нечто совершенно бесцельное и никому не нужное. Собрание, книга 

стихов в данное время—есть самая бесцельная, ненужная вещь.” 98 

She recalled an 

earlier time when books were written as wholes, intended to be read straight through. At 

96 Some relatively minor exceptions were made, but groupings of poems were all written within the same 

period. Chronology is emphasized in the title of her second book, as well. Like the third, it contains dates 

in its title: Собрание стихов. Книга вторая 1903-1909. While the second book is limited to a relatively 

short time period, Gippius does not follow a chronological order within the book. 

97 Gippius makes two exceptions, dating "Рождение" and "Лазарь," which will be discussed below. 

98 Gippius, Stikhotvoreniia, 71. Emphasis, Gippius's. 

83

“the given time,” that is at the time of writing, 1903, such a book was an impossibility. 

Contemporary poets and their poems had become more subjective, more set apart from 

the outside world and thus from the outside reader. The compilation of poems in one 

book overwhelmed the reader: 

Ведь все-таки каждому стихотворению соответствует полное ощущение 

автором данной минуты; оно вылилось—стихотворение кончилось; 

следующее—следующая минута,—уже иная; они разделены временем, жизнью; 

а читатель перебегает тут же с одной страницы на другую, и смены, скользя, 

только утомляют глаза и слух. 99 

In 1908 in the introduction to her Литературный дневник, Gippius returned to 

the topic of a literary collection, now defending the practice as a way to preserve a 

particular historical perspective: 

Есть точка зрения, с которой всякий сборник,—стихов, рассказов или статей,— 

бессмыслица. Автор не может не смотреть на него, в иные минуты, с досадой. 

В самом деле: собирают разбросанные по длинному прошлому, разделенные 

временем, дни, часы—и преподносят их в одном узле (в одной книжке)— 

сегодня. Перспектива ломается, динамика насильственно превращается в 

статику, образ искажен,—ничего нет. 

Но есть другой, более верный, взгляд на «сборник»: взгляд исторический. 

Надо уметь чувствовать время; надо помнить, что история везде и все в 

истории—в движении. Последняя мелочь—и она в истории, и она может комунибудь 

пригодиться, если только будет на своем месте. Всякий вчерашний 

день—история, а всякий «сборник» именно вчерашний день. 100 

At this point, Gippius's collections, including Литературный дневник, were largely 

organized chronologically. Often titled diaries, they presented poems, stories, and 

articles as a series of independent entries. In the introduction to Синяя книга, a diary of 

the tumultuous years 1914-1917, Gippius wrote that it was precisely in these diaristic 

forms, as opposed to memoirs, that the flow of real life could be found: 101 

99 Ibid., 72. Emphasis, Gippius's. 

100 Zinaida Gippius, Dnevniki (Moscow: Intelvak, 1999), v. 1, 165. 

101 Modest Gofman, however, found just the opposite in Gippius's collections of verse: Творчество З. 

Гиппиус—творчество минут, а не жизни. Вот почему у нее почти нет циклов, вот почему ее 

84

Дневник—не стройный «рассказ о жизни», когда описывающий сегодняшний 

день уже знает завтрашний, знает, чем все кончится. Дневник—само течение 

жизни. В этом отличие «Современной записи» от всяких «Воспоминаний», и в 

этом ее особые преимущества: она воскрешает атмосферу, воскрешая 

исчезнувшие из памяти мелочи. «Воспоминания» могут дать образ времени. 

Но только дневник дает время в его длительности. 102 

Gippius, however, moved away from the diary form after her emigration. While 

she kept extensive journals in Russia, there is no sustained diary record of the years in 

Paris. Instead, she explored the form of the memoir (Живые лица) and the biography 

(Дмитрий Мережковский 103 ). In compiling Сияния, Gippius approached her verse 

differently as well. Instead of providing a complete, chronological series of poems which 

would resurrect a certain period in time, she selected and ordered them in a more 

deliberate way to provide a fuller picture of her own spiritual journey. A.V. Lavrov 

noted that Gippius left out her more contemporary, historically based poems in Сияния: 

“в этом нельзя не видеть сознательной авторской установки—преодолеть 

сиюминутное, сосредоточиться на изначально сущем и непреходящем. Видимо, 

Гиппиус, составляя книгу, осмысляла ее как подведение итогов в своих 

стихотворных медитациях, и такая задача диктовала определенные принципы 

отбора.” 104 

сборники стихов, рассказов, статей—являются случайными сборниками разных стихов, рассказов, 

статей, а не живым целым—книгою. Gippius, Stikhotvoreniia, 38. 

102 Gippius, Dnevniki, vol. 1, 381-2. The word "длительность" suggests the Bergsonian term "durée," a 

concept largely understood by Russian modernists as the "constant flow of divine reality that can be 

apprehended only through an effort of intuition." Hilary L. Fink, Bergson and Russian Modernism, 1900- 

1930 (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 1999), xviii. In a 1930 letter to Gerell, however, 

Gippius used the French term to refer to two distinct periods in her life: the present "durée" and the past 

"durée." In this usage, Gippius "obscures the true Bergsonian sense of the term as the indivisible, ceaseless 

flow of reality, 'succession without distinction'" Ibid., 60. Thus, Gippius, appears to use Bergsonian terms 

loosely, not adhering to a strict reading of his philosophy. Gippius invokes Bergson in two poems in 

Сияния to be discussed later in the chapter: "Eternité Frémissante"and "Веер." 

103 The Merezhkovsky biography was initially titled Он и Мы, suggesting an autobiographical or 

memoiristic nature. 

104 Gippius, Stikhtovoreniia, 64. 

85

This "summational" quality of Сияния should not be mistaken for a static 

uniformity. The book tells the story of Gippius's dynamic spiritual journey toward 

God, 105 a journey which continually shifts between moods of ecstasy and despair. In this 

chapter I will examine the formal ways in which Gippius depicts these shifts, both within 

individual poems and between poems consciously placed in sequence. I will also explore 

the unifying features of the book—the title and dedication—as well as the book's overall 

narrative progression (последовательность) from the declaration of the poet's mission in 

the opening poem, "Сиянья," to her failure in the final poem, "Домой." 

Сияния—the title and title poem 

Gippius begins her book with the metapoetic title poem, "Сиянья." First 

published in Русские записки in 1937, it appears that the poem was written shortly 

before the compilation and publication of the book. 106 

Сиянья 

Сиянье слов... Такое есть ли? 

Сиянье звезд, сиянье облаков— 

Я всё любил, люблю... Но если 

Мне скажут: вот сиянье слов— 

Отвечу, не боясь признанья, 

Что даже святости блаженное сиянье 

Я за него отдать готов... 

Всё за одно сиянье слов! 

Сиянье слов? О, повторять ли снова 

Тебе, мой бедный человек-поэт, 

Что говорю я о сияньи Слова, 

Что на земле других сияний нет? 

105 Olga Matich has described this "dynamic" nature of Gippius's faith. Gippius's path is one of "constant 

movement toward her goal, which is communication with God and a full understanding of Him." Olga 

Matich, Paradox in the Religious Poetry of Zinaida Gippius (Munich: Centrifuga, 1972), 37. "It is in 

seeking God and the transformation of the flesh that Gippius finds metaphysical fulfillment. Ibid., 74 

106 I have found no precise date of composition. 

86

Radiances 

Radiance of words… Does such a thing exist? 

Radiance of stars, radiance of clouds— 

I loved it all, I love it still…But if 

I'm told: here is the radiance of words— 

I'll answer, not fearing the admission, 

That even the blessed radiance of sainthood 

I am ready to give away for this… 

Everything for one radiance of words! 

Radiance of words? Oh, must I repeat again 

To you, my poor human-poet, 

That I speak of the radiance of the Word, 

That other radiances do not exist on earth? 

The two stanzas of "Сиянья," while beginning with the same question (is there 

such a thing as a radiance of words), create a distinct paradox. In the first stanza, the 

poet, full of hope and expectation, is willing to give up everything, even the "blessed 

radiance of sainthood," for a radiance of words. In the second stanza, she has come back 

to down to earth. She appears to be addressing herself, 107 realizing that she is a "poor 

human-poet," neither godly nor saintly. Her poems—attempts at radiances of words— 

will never approximate the radiance of God's Word. Nonetheless, she embarks upon her 

journey—a book of radiant poems. 

In the initial publication of "Сиянья" the second stanza was set off by a post 

scriptum mark (P.S.), thus emphasizing its secondary nature to the first stanza, a sense 

already established by the fact that the first stanza is twice as long as the second. In the 

Сияния version, this P.S. has been removed, pointing to a more equal balance between 

the ecstatic joy of the first stanza—the possibility of a merging of the poet and true 

107 In his memoir of Gippius, Sergei Makovskii discussed the female addressees of her poems, noting that it 

is often unclear whether they refer to some one woman in particular, or to Gippius herself. "Вообще З.Н. 

не хочет, чтобы стихи ее были связаны с кем-то: они отвлеченны даже тогда, когда рождены 

выношенной страстью, и лишь изредка звучат они как личное признание." Sergei Makovskii, Na 

Parnase serebrianogo veka (Moscow: Soglasie, 2000), 174. 

87

adiance—and the fall to reality of the second—the realization of the unbridgeable gap 

between God and human. This dramatic shift, present throughout Gippius's career, 108 

will play out in a particularly concentrated fashion over the course of her final book. 

So too, will the poet's attempt to move from multiplicity toward singularity. In 

the first stanza, the poet marvels at the many radiances in the skies—the radiance of stars 

and clouds—all of which she has loved. She longs, however, for just one radiance of 

words (одно сиянье слов), as if a single poetic radiance could capture all of the world's 

many lights. By the end of the poem, she has realized that what she seeks is not a 

radiance of words, but the radiance of the singular Word of God which encompasses all 

that is heavenly on earth. Throughout the book, particularly in the poems 

"Вечноженственное" and "Eternité Frémissante" which will be discussed below, 

Gippius continues to seek God's unified truth in its multiple manifestations on earth. 

By lending this poem's title to the title of the book, Gippius suggests that the 

poems in her book be considered radiances, or at least her attempts to create radiances of 

words on earth. Fundamentally, she knows that this is a doomed project. The only true 

radiance of words is the radiance of God's Word, something no human poet can ever 

achieve. 109 

While the poet will reach epiphanies along her journey, ultimately her 

attempts will prove futile, leading to the utter despair of the final poem, "Домой." 

108 Throughout her life and work Gippius strove to merge the worlds of man and God, relentlessly pursuing 

what she knew to be unattainable. Her conscious awareness of the impossibility of achieving a heavenly 

miracle on earth (here, the radiance of words) is perhaps most famously evident in the opening poem of her 

first collection of verse, "Песня" (1893), also characterized by the paradox of despair and expectant desire: 

Увы, в печали безумной я умираю,/Я умираю,/Стремлюсь к тому, чего я не знаю,/Не знаю!/И это 

желание не знаю откуда,/Пришло откуда,/Но сердце хочет и просит чуда,/Чуда!…Мне нужно то, 

чего нет на свете,/Чего нет на свете. For a detailed study of the paradoxical nature of Gippius's verse, 

see Matich's excellent book, Paradox in the Religious Poetry of Zinaida Gippius (Munich, 1972). 

109 Later in the book, she will remind herself yet again of the inefficacy of human language. In the poem, 

"Воскресенье," dedicated to Merezhkovsky, the poet advises her addressee not to search for "impossible 

words" for the Resurrected Christ (Не ищи невозможных слов). The only worthy earthly words are the 

88

Epigraph/Dedication to St. Thérèse of Lisieux 

From the opening page, Gippius's final book is distinct from her earlier 

collections: first, for its thematic title; second, for the dedication included on the title 

page. While Gippius occasionally attached epigraphs or dedications to individual poems 

in her previous books (and in Сияния as well), this is the only instance where she 

provided a dedication or epigraph to an entire book. This gesture, like the thematic title, 

adds to the sense of the book as a unified whole—the entire book can be given a single 

name and a single dedicatee. 

The dedication itself is somewhat cryptic, leaving the addressee unnamed: 

Тебе, чье имя не открою, 

Но ты со мной всегда, 

Ты мне, как горная вода 

Среди земного зноя. 

For you, whose name I will not reveal, 

But you are with my always, 

To me you are like mountain water 

Amidst the intense heat of the earth. 

At first the dedication seems to be a very private gesture, a concealed address from 

Gippius to her dedicatee. Yet, by presenting it so publicly on the title page of her book, 

and by declaring that she will not reveal the addressee, Gippius sets up a riddle for the 

reader. She stresses the addressee's constant presence in her life (ты со мной всегда), a 

presence which presumably will be felt in the book that follows. Uncovering the identity 

of the dedicatee may provide a key to reading the book as a whole. 

final words of Thomas (Нету слов об этом на свете,/Кроме слов—последних—Фомы). Even here, 

Gippius does not dare to replicate those words (Господь мой и Бог мой (John 20:28)) in her own voice. 

89

As yet the addressee has not been definitively revealed, 110 yet considerable 

evidence points to the Catholic saint Thérèse of Lisieux, or Saint Teresa of the Child 

Jesus. After first establishing this connection, I will argue that Teresa serves as a 

spiritual model for Gippius when writing Сияния. Her presence is indeed felt throughout 

the book. 

Saint Teresa was a Carmelite nun born in 1873, just a few years after Gippius. 

While her life was relatively unremarkable—she lived only twenty-four years—she is 

remembered for a collection of epistolary essays published under the title Histoire d'une 

âme in which she described her childhood, entrance into the convent at the age of 15, and 

terrible physical and spiritual suffering throughout her short life. Teresa frequently 

struggled with religious doubt, even up to her final days. Her dramatic swings from pure 

faith to depression and guilt found a resonance in Gippius's own spiritual journey. 

Gippius repeatedly mentions her devotion to Saint Teresa in letters and diaries. She and 

Merezhkovsky visited the church of Teresa in Paris every week and had a statue of her in 

their home. At the time of the writing of Сияния, Merezhkovsky was working on a 

biographical novel about Teresa (Маленькая Тереза) as part of his series Лица святых 

от Иисуса к нам. Gippius actively participated in the preparation of the book, gathering 

materials for her husband. 

110 In the commentary to the recent edition of Gippius's verse by Novaia biblioteka poeta (1999) no 

suggestions are made. While conceding that a "real" referent may be found by biographers, Oleg Kling 

claims that the epigraph is addressed primarily to Blok. He also proposes that the entire book is based upon 

features of Blok's "Стихи о прекрасной даме." Oleg Kling, "Evoliutsiia i 'latentnoe' sushchestvovanie 

simvolizma posle oktiabria," Voprosy literatury 4 (July-August 1999): 55-56. 

90

The first link between the dedication to Сияния and Teresa is its date of 

composition: December 24, 1933, 111 the Catholic Christmas Eve. Gippius wrote a very 

similar poem, "Ты" on the same date: 112 

Ты не приходишь, но всегда,— 

Чуть вспомню,—ты со мною. 

Ты мне—как свежая вода 

Среди земного зноя... 

You don't come, but always— 

I barely recall—you are with me. 

To me you are like fresh water 

Amidst the intense heat of the earth. 

Dates were of great significance to Gippius, and she did not assign or record them 

lightly. 113 

The Catholic Christmas Eve was associated in her mind with Teresa's 

conversion at the age of fourteen—the night that she received God's grace as described in 

Histoire d'une âme. In a letter to Greta Gerell on January 4, 1934, less than two weeks 

after writing these two poems, she describes her love for Teresa, evoked by the Christmas 

holiday: 

Notre Noël c'est le 7, Dimanche prochain. Mais comme j'aime beaucoup quelques 

saints romains, la petite Thérèse surtout, j'ai beaucoup vénéré le jour de Noël passé. 

… Les saints…il y en a que j'admire, il y en a d'autres que j'aime tout simplement 

comme s'ils étaient des personnes vivantes (ne le sont-ils pas, d'ailleurs?). La petite 

Thérèse a séduit le monde entire, et vous le serez, bien sûr, quand vous lirez l'historie 

de sa vie écrite par elle-même—je vous enverrai le livre ce Dimanche; ou un jour 

plus tard—quand j'irai dans le magasin à elle. Après je vous enverrai la traduction de 

quelques-unes de mes poésies que je lui ai faites. Peut-être vous enverrai-je l'autre 

111 This date is not included in the actual text of Сияния, but it is given as the date of the epigraph in the 

notes to the 1999 edition of Gippius's verse. Gippius, Stikhtovreniia, 518. 

112 "Ты" was published in Современные записки in 1934. The original was dated "24 дек 1933." 

Gippius, Stikhtvoreniia, 555. 

113 Vladimir Zlobin cites Gippius as writing, "За числами слежу я очень зорко,/Как вещий знак дает 

нам числа Бог." Vladimir Zlobin, A Difficult Soul: Zinaida Gippius (Berkeley: University of California 

Press, 1980), 125.. Birthdays are given particular importance in her 1903 poem, "Числа": И день, когда 

родимся, налагает/На нас печать заветного числа;/До смерти наши мысли и дела/Оно сопровождает. 

In a letter to Georgii Adamovich (15 August 1927) Gippius wrote: "категория чисел—ближе 

соприкасается с реальностью, чем мы привычно воображаем." Temira Pachmuss, Intellect and Ideas 

in Action: Selected Correspondence of Zinaida Hippius (Munich: Centrifuga, 1972), 367. 

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livre, au lieu de la »Vie«—»L'Enfant chérie du monde«; il es très bien écrit. Tous ces 

livres je las avais, mais M. Dmitry me les a chipés, car il a l'intention d'écrire sur cette 

petite fille aussi. 114 

Evidence that most clearly links the dedication to Teresa is found in yet another 

poem written by Gippius near Catholic Christmas. Dated December 23, 1925 in the 

manuscript, the poem was published in the Warsaw-based newspaper За свободу! in 

1929 under the title "24 декабря." Here, Gippius clearly reveals the "ты" of "24 

декабря" as Saint Teresa, placing the text in between her poem, "St. Thérèse de l'Enfant 

Jésus" and a short article about Teresa titled "Любимая." Gippius included the poem in 

Сияния, but under a new title, "Втайне" ("In Secret"). In Сияния "Втайне" directly 

precedes "St. Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus," but, in the larger context of the book and with 

the altered, "secret" title, the connection is not immediately apparent. 

Сегодня имя твое я скрою, 

И вслух—другим—не назову, 

Но ты услышишь, что я с тобою. 

Опять тобой—одной—живу. 

На влажном небе Звезда огромней, 

Дрожат—струясь—ее края. 

И в ночь смотрю я, и сердце помнит, 

Что эта ночь—твоя, твоя! 

Дай вновь увидеть родные очи, 

Взглянуть в их глубь—и ширь—и синь. 

Земное сердце великой Ночью 

В его тоске—о, не покинь! 

И всё жаднее, всё неуклонней 

Оно зовет—одну—тебя. 

Возьми же сердце мое в ладони, 

Согрей,—утишь,—утешь, любя... 

Today I hide your name, 

114 Pachmuss, Intellect, 537. 

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And aloud to others I do not name you, 

But you will hear that I am with you 

Again I live by you alone. 

In the damp sky the Star is more enormous, 

Its edges, streaming, flicker. 

And I look into the night, and my heart remembers 

That this night is yours, yours! 

Let me see again your familial eyes, 

Let me look into their depth—into their expanse and blueness. 

The earthly heart in the great Night 

In its despair—oh, do not abandon it! 

All the more greedily, all the more steadfastly, 

It calls you alone. 

Take my heart in your palms, 

Warm it, quiet it, console it, lovingly… 

The title and first stanza clearly echo the epigraph of Сияния. The name of the addressee 

is again kept secret, however a few clues as to the identity of the unnamed "ты" are 

given: she is grammatically marked as feminine in the fourth and fourteenth lines and 

she is presented as something otherworldly, heavenly. The poet, with a heart tied to the 

earth (земное сердце), looks up into the sky hoping to see her beloved. A similar 

distance is expressed in the epigraph—water from the heights of the mountains assuages 

the brutal heat of the earth. 

Despite this physical separation between the я and the ты, certain elements link 

them closely together in "Втайне." The poet desires to look into the addressee's familiar 

eyes (родные очи), suggesting that Gippius and Teresa are from the same "clan" (род) or 

family. As in the epigraph, the poet claims the addressee's constant presence. Here, 

however, the poet inverts the relationship. Whereas in the epigraph, Teresa was always 

with the poet (всегда...ты со мною), here the poet is always with Teresa (я с тобою). 

While clearly still relying on Teresa, asking for her consolation and love, the poet 

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suggests the reciprocity of the relationship. The two are always together, each with the 

other, as if equal or even interchangeable. 

This sense of equality and similarity clearly drew Gippius to Teresa. In her 1929 

article "Любимая" she stresses their contemporaneity. 115 

Not only the full period of 

Teresa's life (1873-1897), but even her canonization (1925), usually a long drawn-out 

process, falls fully within Gippius's lifetime. Thus, Gippius has indeed been present 

throughout Teresa's physical and spiritual life. Gippius describes the great speed with 

which Teresa was canonized, crediting not the Roman Catholic church, but the thousands 

of devoted followers who already pray before her altars. Teresa lived only yesterday 

(Она жила «вчера»)—the sisters of her convent, and her actual familial older sisters 

have survived her and brought about her canonization. 

According to Gippius, Teresa attracted such a loyal and immediate following 

precisely because of her accessibility and contemporaneity: "они полюбили Терезу, 

поверили ей,—и почувствовали ее своей; такой близкой, как будто равной, и в то 

же время такой любимой Богом, что для нее Он все сделает. К Терезе же совсем 

просто можно обращаться—к своей-то!" 116 

While Gippius is describing Teresa's 

immediate followers, the ones who brought about her canonization, clearly she includes 

herself among them when claiming Teresa's kinship. She too can relate to Teresa simply 

and directly, as someone both equal and especially loved by God—both near and distant. 

115 While Gippius originally published this article in 1929, she returned to it at the time of the composition 

of Сияния. She sent a copy to Gerell in a letter dated January 22, 1934 (just over two weeks after sending 

her the letter about Teresa and Christmas), in order to explain further her love for Teresa. She also 

indicated her plans to send a French translation of the article to Teresa's sister Pauline who, at the time, was 

still the prioress of the Carmelite convent in Lisieux. Pachmuss, Intellect, 538. 

116 Zinaida Gippius, "Liubimaia," Za svobodu!, no. 135 (26 May 1929), 3. 

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Gippius expresses this paradox of closeness and distance most explicitly in the 

poem "St. Thérèse de L'Enfant Jésus" which accompanies the article "Любимая" and "24 

декабря" in За свободу! and which follows "Втайне" in Сияния: 

Девочка маленькая, чужая, 

Девочка с розами, мной не виденная, 

Ты знаешь всё, ничего не зная, 

Тебе знакомы пути неиденные— 

Приди ко мне из горнего края, 

Сердцу дай ответ, неспокойному... 

Милая девочка, чужая, родная, 

Приди к неизвестному, недостойному... 

Она не судит, она простая, 

Желанье сердца она услышит, 

Розы ее такою чистою, 

Такой нежной радостью дышат... 

О, будь со мною, чужая, родная, 

Роза розовая, многолистая... 

Little girl, a stranger 

A girl with roses, unseen by me, 

You know everything, knowing nothing, 

Untraveled paths are familiar to you— 

Come to me from the mountain region, 

Give my troubled heart an answer… 

Dear girl, stranger, relative, 

Come to an unknown, unworthy one…. 

She does not judge, she is simple, 

She will hear the desire of my heart, 

Her roses radiate such pure 

Such tender joy… 

O, be with me, stranger, relative 

The rose-colored rose, many-leafed…. 

Teresa, a stranger (чужая), is again physically distant, invisible to the poet and inhabiting 

a higher realm. As in the epigraph in which Teresa is described as mountain water 

(горная вода), the poet calls her down from the mountain region (из горнего края) to 

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her unknown, unworthy self. 117 

Spiritually, however, the poet feels a close connection 

with Teresa, her relative (родная). She is inspired by her childlike simplicity and purity, 

her ability to know without knowing, to hear the call of another's heart instinctively. In a 

letter to Georgii Adamovich dated September 5, 1928, Gippius described her constant 

desire for a similar simplicity in her poetry. Hindered by her time and her struggle 

against the prevailing "isms" of her day, she realized she would never achieve such 

simplicity, but she strove for it all the same: 

с самого начала (допотопно) я стремилась прочь от всякого «декадентства», 

отрекалась от него, издевалась над ним, объявляла и проповедовала 

«простоту» (историческая информация для вас). Мое время было, однако, 

очень трудное, бороться за простоту приходилось на два фронта, т.е. прежде 

всего, против П.Я., Надсона и т.д., а тут же и против фиолетовых рук на 

эмалевой стене. [...] Так вот, время и школа не могли не повредить моей 

сознательной воле к «простоте», которой я уже теперь не достигну, хотя 

стремиться к ней не перестану. 118 

This struggle for simplicity in poetic form is a symptom of her larger quest for spiritual 

simplicity as embodied by Teresa: 

даже моя влюбленность в маленькую Терезу—а у нас с ней свои отношения— 

из того же источника: влечение к «простому» и простоте, к сиянию «enfance 

spirituelle», к самому высокому, потому что в малом. Да, тут не Толстой вам, с 

его сложнейшей вязью и пере-пере-вывертами,—до опустошения и боговыгона, 

в конце концов (прекрасная статья Маклакова а Совр. Зап.), самообманная 

простота; тут иное. 119 

Here Gippius equates Teresa's simplicity with the "radiance of 'spiritual childhood," 

directly connecting the word "сияние" to Teresa. Her life-long journey toward radiant 

simplicity, both in her poetry and her spiritual life, defines the progressive movement of 

Сияния, where radiances and Teresa are again closely linked. 

117 Сияния includes other poems about mysterious feminine figures from the mountains, for example the 

two poem cycle, "Ей в горах," originally dedicated to Berberova. 

118 Pachmuss, Intellect, 382. 

119 Ibid., 383. 

96

Gippius's deliberate struggle toward simplicity (сознательная воля к 

«простоте»), however, can never achieve Teresa's innocent and pure faith. Instead, like 

the hyper-conscious Tolstoy, Gippius twists back and forth in her poetry between faith 

and despair—throughout her career, but particularly in the carefully conceived and 

constructed Сияния. The tragedy for Gippius, however, is that she, unlike Tolstoy, 

remains undeceived. She recognizes the true ideal in Teresa, asks for her help and 

presence throughout the book, but ultimately retreats, as will become evident in the 

discussion of the final poem in the book, "Домой." 

Gippius concludes her article in За свободу! with a description of Teresa's 

crowning achievement—the discovery of her own spiritual path: 

Никаких видимых героических подвигов у Терезы нет. Нет у нее и никаких 

ослепительных экстазов. Но у нее есть свой духовный путь. «Это моя 

маленькая тропинка к Богу», говорит она, «маленькая потому, что я сама 

маленькая; верная, прямая тропинка, и такая простая, что всем по силам, 

каждому, если он даже мал и слаб, как я"… 120 

Long before ever hearing of Teresa, Gippius had pursued her own spiritual path, striving 

to form a new church, the true Christian church, with her husband and Dmitrii Filosofov. 

Here, many years later, and after the Cause had been formally abandoned, she has found 

a spiritual exemplar who can serve as an inspiration for her own spiritual quest. While 

Merezhkovsky will use Teresa's example to support further the case for the Third 

Church, 121 Gippius will take a more personal approach, describing the extreme highs and 

120 Gippius, "Liubimaia," 3. 

121 In his biographical novel Маленькая Тереза, Merezhkovsky promotes Teresa as a continuer of Luther's 

reforms and a direct heir to Teresa of Avila and John of the Cross. She furthers their work by 

subconsciously acknowledging and embracing the Third Church: Маленькая Тереза, сама того не 

сознавая, и перешла из старой Церкви Римской в новую, Вселенскую. Первая точка этого перехода 

и есть свидание с Папой. Здесь же начинается и путь ее к тому великому делу всей жизни ее и 

святости, в котором силою тишайшей, не только миру, но и ей самой неслышимой, невидимой, 

изменит она круговращение земли так, что взойдет над нею новое солнце—Третье Царство Трех. 

Dmitrii Merezhkovsii, Malen'kaia Tereza (Ann Arbor: Ermitazh, 1984), 125. 

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lows of her spiritual journey in Сияния as a parallel journey to Teresa's. 122 

Like Teresa, 

(как я), Gippius will struggle with doubt and despair on her individual path—a path 

which, like Teresa's, strives towards sainthood and resurrection. 

A trinity of poems: "Рождение," "Вечноженственное," and "Женскость" 

Sainthood and resurrection are manifestations of the poet's ultimate goal in 

Сияния—the unification of heaven and earth. Teresa is only one incarnation of the ideal, 

but, because of her closeness to Gippius, she provides particular inspiration and hope. 

The larger implications of Teresa's spiritual path are evident in two poems which are 

placed near the beginning of the book, "Рождение," and "Вечноженственное." Like 

"Втайне," "Рождение" is a Christmas poem: 123 

Беги, беги, пещерная вода, 

Как пенье звонкая, как пламя чистая. 

Гори, гори, небесная звезда, 

Многоконечная, многолучистая. 

Дыши, дыши, прильни к Нему нежней, 

Святая, радостная, ночь безлунная... 

В тебе рожденного онежь, угрей, 

Солома легкая, золоторунная... 

Несите вести, звездные мечи, 

Туда, туда, где шевелится мга, 

Где кровью черной облиты снега, 

Несите вести, острые лучи. 

На край земли, на самый край, туда— 

Что родилась Свобода трехвенечная 

И что горит восходная Звезда, 

Многоочитая, многоконечная... 

Run, run, cave water 

Like sonorous singing, like a pure flame. 

Burn, burn, heavenly star, 

Many-pointed, many-rayed. 

122 Gippius describes this difference in approach in the January 22, 1934 letter to Gerell: Je suis bien 

contente que M. Dmitry s'intéresse à des saints aussi enfin. Mais certes nous nous y prenons un peu 

différemment. Ce n'est pas mon »travail«, c'est ma contemplation. Pachmuss, Intellect, 540. 

123 "Рождение" is dated December 24th in the actual text of Сияния. 

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Breathe, breathe, cling to Him more tenderly, 

Holy, joyful, moonless night... 

Be tender, warm the newborn within you, 

Light, golden-fleeced straw... 

Spread the news, starry swords, 

There, there, where the gloom stirs, 

Where the snows are glazed with black blood, 

Spread the news, sharp rays. 

To the end of the earth, the very end, there— 

That three-crowned Freedom has been born 

And that a rising Star burns, 

Many-eyed, many-pointed... 

In addition to the Christmas date, several links can be made between "Рождение" and 

Gippius's poems about Teresa. Gippius uses many of the multiple subjects and 

addressees of "Рождение" to describe Teresa elsewhere: the cave water of the first line 

resembles the refreshing mountain water of the epigraph; the heavenly burning star of the 

third line recalls the enormous Star of "Втайне"; the night, which belongs to Teresa in 

"Втайнe," is called upon to caress and warm the newborn, just as Teresa, also in 

"Втайне," is asked to "warm, quiet, and console" the poet (Согрей,—утишь,—утешь, 

любя...). The various attributes given to the feminine subjects of "Рождение" (чистая, 

радостная, нежная) are also applied to Teresa. While these adjectives are relatively 

common, an unusual echo is found between the attributes of the star in "Рождение" 

(многоконечная, многоочитая, and most particularly многолучистая) and the manyleafed 

(многолистая) rose of Teresa in "St. Thérèse de l'Enfant Jésus." The leaves of 

Teresa's rose reach out from its rosy (i.e. absolute, pure) core in multiple directions, just 

as the many points, eyes, and rays shine out of the star in "Рождение." Both the star and 

the rose are able to share their purity and holiness by means of this radiant reach. 

In "Втайне," December 24 is not so much the night of Christ's birth as the night 

of Teresa's rebirth—her spiritual awakening: И в ночь смотрю я, и сердце 

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помнит,/Что эта ночь—твоя, твоя! 124 

Similarly, "Рождение" points beyond the 

traditional Christmas story. While the poem clearly acknowledges the birth of Christ, 

naming him by means of the capitalized masculine pronoun in line five (Нему) and 

referring to the newborn in line seven (новорожденного), it does not center on him. 

Christ, in fact, is presented solely as an object who receives tenderness and warmth. The 

active subjects providing this love are all feminine (вода, звезда, ночь, солома). It is 

not the birth of Christ, or the Son of God, which is announced in the final lines of the 

poem, but the birth of a wholly feminine "three-crowned Freedom." 

The significance of the trinity to Gippius's worldview is well-known. In her 

memoir of Merezhkovsky, she describes the summer of 1905 when she first realized what 

was to become her idée fixe—the seemingly obvious "trichotomous structure of the 

world" (тройственное устройство мира). Within this system, one represents the 

individual, two the merging of two individuals in love, and three the plurality or 

community in which neither one nor two is lost. 125 

Merezhkovsky later developed this 

idea into the religious dialectic that would occupy him throughout his life. For him, the 

first stage of the Trinity was the realm of God the Father, the Old Testament and the past; 

the second stage the realm of God the Son, the New Testament and the present; the third 

and final stage, to be disclosed in the future, would entail the Third Testament and be 

embodied by the Holy Spirit in the form of an Eternal Woman-Mother. 126 

For Gippius, 

this new church required a new degree of human freedom. While the path of salvation, 

124 December 24th was an important date in Gippius's life as well. In her diary, Серый блокнот, she notes 

it as the actual day in 1919 when she and Merezhkovsky left Petrograd and headed toward their new life in 

emigration. Gippius, Dnevniki, vol. 2, 279. 

125 Gippius, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii (Paris: YMCA Press, 1951), 137-9. 

126 Temira Pachmuss, Zinaida Hippius: An Intellectual Profile (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern 

Illinois University Press, 1971), 104. Temira Pachmuss, Merezhkovsky in Exile: the Master of the Genre 

of Biographie Romancée (New York: Peter Lang, 1990), 189-90. 

100

evealed by the Church and the saints, is open to all, it is up to the individual to make the 

choice and to follow his own path. In making this choice, the individual will not be lost 

within the communal ideal, but will instead be freed—capable of both communion and 

selfhood. 127 

The birth of "three-crowned Freedom" in "Рождение" thus represents the 

fulfillment of Merezhkovsky's and Gippius's prophecies. Beyond the birth of Christ, 

"Рождение" signals the rebirth or resurrection of the Christian Church. In the realization 

of the Third Testament, Heaven and Earth will be miraculously united—all antitheses (of 

sex and asceticism, individualism and sociality, slavery and freedom, atheism and 

religiosity, hatred and love) will be resolved. 128 

"Рождение" was written four years before "Втайне" and "St. Thérèse de l'Enfant 

Jésus." 129 

Gippius does not mention Teresa or any other female figure explicitly in the 

poem, yet the prominence of feminine nouns, particularly the culminating capitalized 

"Свобода" and "Звезда," creates a strong feminine presence. This feminine role will 

take on a stronger, more personal force when the abstract nouns of "Рождение" are 

exchanged for the names of Teresa, other individual women, and the familiar pronoun 

"ты" later in Сияния. This movement toward specificity—toward an identification with 

or exploration of individual spiritual paths—is typical of Gippius. Unlike her husband, 

127 See Matich, Paradox, 49 and Pachmuss, Merezhkovsky in Exile, 64-5. In addition to Merezhkovsky's 

global dialectic, Gippius found local and personal manifestations of the trinity, or "Three in One." She 

described her spiritual group—Merezhkovsky, Filosofov and herself—as a trinity; each retained his or her 

individuality and independence, yet together they created something larger than themselves. See Matich, 

Paradox, 27. 

128 Pachmuss, Merezhkovsky in Exile, 58. 

129 "Рождение" is dated December 24, 1920 and is the second-oldest poem included in Сияния. It could 

have been included in Gippius's previous book, Стихи. Дневник (1911-1921), but it resonates much more 

closely with her life after her emigration to France in 1920, particularly her newfound love for Teresa. 

101

she is more concerned with her own spiritual journey, her own realization of God, than 

with the historical evolution of a new church for all humanity. 

Were it not for the many echoes found in the later poems about Teresa, 

"Рождение," one of only a handful of poems in the book which do not incorporate the 

poet's "я," might seem too impersonal for the overall tone of Сияния. The formulation 

"трехвенечная Свобода" seems to resemble Merezhkovsky's dialectic or the formal 

prayers invoked by Gippius, Merezhkovsky, and Filosofov at the time of the Cause more 

than the highly personalized, emotional language of Сияния as a whole. 130 

By means of 

these echoes, however, and particularly by dating the poem December 24th in the text, 

Gippius connects it to the later poems. Within the context of Сияния, a poem such as 

"Втайне," later both in terms of time of writing and position within the book, can now 

inform the earlier poem, "Рождение." The birth of "Рождение" could thus be read as the 

birth of Gippius's spiritual journey. The impersonal yet feminine Freedom leads her 

toward Teresa and other individual manifestations of the eternal feminine. Ultimately 

these figures lead her along her own spiritual path towards her own resurrection. 

A clear turn towards this personal path is evident in the seventh poem of Сияния, 

"Вечноженственное" ("The Eternal Feminine"), in which Gippius strives to celebrate 

and emulate the ideal, an unnamable feminine entity: 131 

Каким мне коснуться словом 

Белых одежд Ее? 

С каким озареньем новым 

Слить Ее бытие? 

О, ведомы мне земные 

Все твои имена: 

Сольвейг, Тереза, Мария... 

130 Pachmuss, Merezhkovsky in Exile, 68-9. 

131 This poem was originally dedicated to Nina Berberova. See Nina Berberova, Kursiv moi (Moscow: 

Soglasie, 2001), 287. 

102

Все они—ты Одна. 

Молюсь и люблю... Но мало 

Любви, молитв к тебе. 

Твоим—твоей от начала 

Хочу пребыть в себе, 

Чтоб сердце тебе отвечало— 

Сердце—в себе самом, 

Чтоб Нежная узнавала 

Свой чистый образ в нем... 

И будут пути иные, 

Иной любви пора. 

Сольвейг, Тереза, Мария, 

Невеста-Мать-Сестра! 

With what word can I touch 

Her white garments? 

With what new illumination 

Can I fuse Her being? 

O, known to me are 

All your earthly names: 

Solveig, Teresa, Mary… 

All of them—are you Alone. 

I pray and love… But there is too little 

Love, too few prayers to you. 

Masculinely and femininely yours from the beginning 132 

I want to abide in myself, 

So that my heart will answer you— 

My heart—in its very self, 

So that the Tender One will recognize 

Her pure image in it... 

And there will be other paths, 

A time of other love. 

Solveig, Teresa, Maria... 

Bride-Mother-Sister! 

Unlike "Рождение," this poem reveals much about Gippius herself. The first lines mark 

her as a poet—she wishes to touch and illuminate the Eternal Feminine with words. As 

in the title poem, "Сиянья," however, she realizes the impossibility of the task. The 

radiance of God is beyond her reach as a human poet and cannot be named in human 

words. As a result, Gippius refers directly to the Eternal Feminine only by the nameless 

132 This line is Pachmuss's translation, Merezhkovsky in Exile, 275. 

103

pronouns она and ты. She can, however, approach her by way of her earthly 

manifestations, the trinity of Maria, Teresa, and Solveig. Together, these human 

incarnations create a larger three-fold unity, a Three-in-One (Все они—ты Одна). 

Together, they encompass the multiple roles of the feminine—Bride, Mother, and Sister. 

Gippius's choice of Solveig, the heroine of Ibsen's dramatic poem Peer Gynt, for 

her earthly trinity continues to reveal her own personal history. Gippius compared 

Solveig's faithful love for Peer Gynt throughout his roguish travels to her own constant 

love for Filosofov after their final split in the 1920's. At the end of Ibsen's play, when 

Peer Gynt asks where his true self has been during all the years of his misdaventures, 

Solveig, both his mother and his bride, replies: "Here—in my faith, my hope, and in my 

love." 133 

In Коричневая тетрадь, Gippius, despite her doubts and despair, wanted to 

provide the same answer to Filosofov: Не знаю, дойду ли до этого, но хочу дойти. До 

полной реализации того, что ты не погиб, что ты живешь—со мной, в моем сердце 

(больном), именно ты единственный, ты сам. «Где был я, я сам?—тревожно, в 

роковую минуту, спрашивает Петр Гюнт. И для него, как для тебя есть это место. 

Не бойся. 134 

After she learned about Filosofov's death in 1940 she again recalled 

Solveig, envying her pure faith: Чего бы проще, кажется, говорить, как Сольвейг: 

«Где б ни был ты—Господь тебя храни,/А если ты уж там—к тебе приду я»... Да, 

приду. А если не приду—ведь я этого не узнаю... Но мысль, что не приду и не 

узнаю... Gippius longed to believe as clearly as Solveig, yet doubts constantly tormented 

her. While her faith was often in question, her love was not: вера—всякая, даже не моя 

133 Henrik Ibsen, Peer Gynt, trans. Gerry Bamman and Irene B. Berman (New York: Theatre 

Communications Group, 1992), 238. 

134 Gippius, Dnevniki, vol. 2, 353. Emphasis Gippius's. 

104

ничтожная, а большая,—всегда слабее любви. 135 

Thus she held up Solveig, for whom 

faith and love are equally unshakeable, as a spiritual model. 

Another personal aspect of Gippius is found in the androgynous language of lines 

11 and 12: Твоим—твоей от начала/Хочу пребыть в себе. Stemming from Plato's 

Symposium, the idealization of the androgyne fascinated Russian writers at the turn of the 

century. Decadent and symbolist writers explored androgynous relationships in their 

poetry and prose; Merezkhovsky purported a belief in the androgynous nature of Christ 

and God. Beyond these poetic and metaphysical explorations, however, Gippius 

acknowledged androgyny in her own life, viewing herself as inherently both masculine 

and feminine—one of the seemingly unresolvable splits in Gippius's psyche. In the 

September 14, 1900 entry of Contes d'amour she wrote: "I do not desire exclusive 

femininity, just as I do not desire exclusive masculinity. Each time someone is insulted 

and dissatisfied within me; with women, my femininity is active, with men—my 

masculinity! In my thoughts, my desires, in my spirit—I am more a man; in my body—I 

am more a woman. Yet they are so fused together that I know nothing." 136 

In 

"Вечноженственное," the poet attempts to resolve this divide, to fuse both aspects of her 

being within herself. Both her masculinity and femininity stem from the Eternal 

Feminine (твоим—твоей от начала), and can be resolved in Her presence. This fusion 

will take place in her heart, not her head—it will be a pure spiritual moment rather than 

an intellectual one, and it will lead her towards new paths, a new love and a new life. 

135 Ibid., 512. Emphasis, Gippius's. This tendency to rely on faith over love is also typical of Teresa, who 

wrote of her spiritual crises throughout Histoire d'une âme. 

136 Temira Pachmuss, Between Paris and St. Petersburg: Selected Diaries of Zinaida Hippius (Urbana: 

University of Illinois Press, 1975), 77. 

105

This emphasis on the future is also typical of Gippius. She writes of what she 

desires, of what will be. Her poetry is guided by what Olga Matich calls "dynamic 

faith"—the constant journey towards God, without ever realizing Him fully. It is only 

after death that God can be fully known. In her article "Влюбленность," she wrote: Так 

же, как мир, Бог, правда, жизнь—никогда нами не могут быть познаны, но лишь 

все более и более познаваемы, так не узнаем мы и этой тайны. Знание есть конец, 

смерть, или порог безвременья, иной жизни; познавание—жизнь мира, движение во 

времени. 137 

In the journey from "Рождение" to "Вечноженственное," God has indeed 

become more knowable to Gippius. Now approaching Him from her own personal 

experience by means of her private trinity of Mary, Teresa and Solveig, she has moved 

from the impersonal announcement of the birth of a new faith to her own private quest for 

God—a quest which, she knows, will never find resolution on earth. 

Not only is it unrealizable, but in seeking it, Gippius will continuously face 

obstacles, primarily in the form of doubts. 138 

In Сияния Gippius often expresses this 

alternation between doubt and faith in the placement of her poems, one of the clearest 

examples being the separation of "Рождение" and "Вечноженственное" (the fifth and 

seventh poems in the book respectively) by a poem of worldly despair and cynicism, 

"Женскость." After proclaiming the birth of the religious ideal in "Рождение," Gippius 

falls back to earth in "Женскость" before embarking upon her personal quest for 

godliness in "Вечноженственное." 

137 Gippius, Dnevniki, vol. 1, 265. Matich contrasts Gippius's dynamic faith to Merezhkovsky's static 

solutions: "Unlike Merežkovskij, who views such notions as vlublennost' and consecrated flesh as static 

philosophical concepts or as mysteries which must be solved, Gippius emphasizes the significance of the 

process involved." Matich, Paradox, 74. 

138 Her "dynamic faith can be characterized by the alternation of doubt and hope that the divine revelation 

will take place." Matich, Paradox, 37. 

106

Падающие, падающие линии... 

Женская душа бессознательна, 

Много ли нужно ей? 

Будьте же, как буду отныне я, 

К женщине тихо-внимательны, 

И ласковей, и нежней. 

Женская душа—пустынная, 

Знает ли, какая холодная, 

Знает ли, как груба? 

Утешайте же душу невинную, 

Обманите, что она свободная... 

Всё равно она будет раба. 

Falling, falling lines… 

A woman's soul is unconscious, 

Does it need much? 

But be, as I will be from now on, 

Quietly attentive to woman, 

And more affectionate, and more tender. 

A woman's soul is empty, 

Does it know how cold, 

Does it know how crude? 

But console the innocent soul, 

Deceive her that it is free… 

All the same it will be a slave. 

The disdainful tone of "Женскость" clearly jars with the reverential 

announcement of the birth of Freedom in "Рождение." In fact, this birth appears to be 

ironized: the freedom of "Рождение" is denied the female soul in "Женскость"; woman 

will be deceived into believing she is free, when in fact she is forever a slave. The poet, 

while acknowledging the gross and empty 139 nature of the female soul, vows to treat her 

more tenderly and attentively, again fooling her into a sense of contentment. This "more 

139 Gippius's use of the adjective "пустынная" in describing the female soul provides a sharp contrast to 

previously discussed comparisons of Teresa to cool, mountain water. 

107

tender" treatment ironically echoes the sincere call to approach the Son of God in 

"Рождение" more tenderly (нежней—in both cases an end rhyme). 

This reversal of tone and purpose in "Женскость" is revealed formally as well. 

The final line of "Рождение" rises rhythmically with three and four syllables leading up 

to the two stresses of the iambic line: Mnogoochítaia, mnogokonéchnaia. By way of 

contrast, the first line of "Женскость" "falls" rhythmically from three initial stresses: 

"Pádaiushchie, pádaiushchie línii…" In moving from "Рождение" to "Женскость" 

Gippius has similarly fallen from the heavenly realms of paradise to the crudeness of life 

on earth. This fall, like the fall of Eve, is representative of the "falling lines" of women 

everywhere. 140 

Their unconscious, uninhabited souls are incapable of realizing the truth 

of God, just announced in "Рождение." Despite their apparent freedom after the fall, 

they remain slaves to their incomprehension. 

The word "женскость," apparently a neologism created by Gippius, suggests the 

helplessness, incomprehension, and disloyalty of the female sex. 141 

In Черное по 

белому, published in 1908, Gippius included a story entitled "Вечная женскость" about 

a student, Ivan, who is abandoned by his wife, Varya. She leaves him for a tenor who has 

promised to rent her a room so that she can be free. Despite her betrayal, Ivan has 

forgiven her and wishes to help her. He has come to the realization that it is in her nature 

as a woman to betray him—doomed by her женскость, she is, in fact, innocent, as is the 

140 This emphasis on falling was even more evident when the poem was first published in 1927 under the 

title "Падающее." 

141 As K.M. Azadovskii and A.V. Lavrov point out, the negative traits associated with женскость are 

limited to a certain type of woman.: Характерно, что объектом «ненависти» Гиппиус в ее 

произведениях становится далеко не любая женщина, а лишь та, что погружена в «быт», охвачена 

«неизменной чувственностью». И наоборот: Гиппиус создала целый ряд возвышенных женских 

образов, несущих символическую нагрузку. From K.M. Azadovskii and A.V. Lavrov's introductory 

article to Zinaida Gippius, Sochineniia: Stikhotvoreniia. Proza. (Leningrad: Khudozhestvennaia 

literatura, 1991), 17-18. 

108

feminine soul (невинная душа) of the poem. When his mother does not understand or 

condone his act of forgiveness, he comes to the following conclusion: "she, too, was one 

of those creatures who are given to the world but whom it is not given for others to 

understand; one of those creatures who are not endowed with a capacity to understand, 

for his mother, too, was—a woman." 142 

Ivan recognizes the signs of this inescapable 

"женскость" even in the eyes of his little sister, Lena: Her "two beautiful, dark eyes, 

intelligent in their own way, righteous, wonderful, yet mysterious, and perfect in their 

own undying mysteriousness, glanced at him. They were the eyes of a creature whom 

everyone has agreed to consider and to call a human being, and everyone actually does 

call her that, trying to regard her as a human being, although from this designation 

nothing but suffering and pain results for anyone." 143 

Still a child, Lena has not yet been 

fully corrupted by her "женскость." Her beautiful mysteriousness could lead to 

something greater than human nature, perhaps an aspect of the eternal feminine. 144 

In 

Ivan's view, however, she seems doomed to the fate of his mother and his wayward 

wife. 145 

142 Zinaida Gippius, "The Eternal Woman" in Selected Works of Zinaida Hippius, trans. and ed. Temira 

Pachmuss (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972), 165. Page numbers for subsequent quotations from 

the story will be noted in parentheses in the text. For the Russian text, see Zinaida Gippius, Chernoe po 

belomu (Book V of Short Stories. Reprint edition.), (Newtonville, MA: Oriental Research Partners, 1977), 

108-123. 

143 Ibid., 164. 

144 I.L Savkina discusses the commonality of Gippius's seemingly opposite descriptions of femininity: 

"интерпретация природы женственного остается у Гиппиус неизменной—как в презрительно 

ироническом, так и в возвышенно-символическом контекстах." For example, the emptiness of 

женскость can be seen as the purity of женственность. I.L. Savkina, "Obraz Bogomateri i problema 

ideal'no zhenskogo v russkoi zhenskoi poezii XX veka," Preobrazhenie (Russkii feministskii zhurnal) 3 

(1995): http://www.a-z.ru/women/texts/savkinar.htm#. This positive nature of desertedness is evident in 

Gippius's 1896 poem, "Любовь моя—одна": Однообразно и пустынно,/ Однообразием 

сильна,/Проходит жизнь... И в жизни длинной/Любовь одна, всегда одна. 

145 Gippius treats the infidelity of Bunin's mistress, Galina Nikolaevna Kuznetsova, in a similar way. While 

Kuznetsova appears to exercise her freedom by leaving Bunin for the singer Margo Kovtun, she remains a 

slave to her passion. In a 1927 letter to Berberova, Gippius writes about Kuznetsova, "Да, вы правы: все 

равно она будет раба." Zinaida Gippius, Pis'ma k Berberovoi i Khodasevichu (Ann Arbor: Ardis, 1978), 

23. 

109

This enslaved "creature" of both "Вечная женскость" and "Женскость" provides 

an absolute contrast to the three-crowned Freedom of "Рождение." By placing these 

poems next to each other, Gippius demonstrates the tremendous vacillations of her faith 

and spirit. In "Вечноженственное" Gippius attempts to reconcile these opposites within 

her own spiritual journey. She strives to escape the banal "женскость" of her earthly life 

and to approach the perfection of the eternal feminine. These three poems form 

something of a trinity—a personalized dialectic. "Рождение" announces the goal of 

spiritual freedom; "Женскость" represents one of Gippius's many falls back to the cruel 

world; "Вечноженственное" describes Gippius's journey toward the truth of 

"Рождение," having experienced worldly "Женскость." The personalization of this 

journey is suggested in the gender of the poems' titles. The neuter titles of the positive 

poems, "Рождение" and "Вечноженственное," combine the masculine and the feminine 

and suggest the possibility for an androgyne like Gippius to reach the ideal of eternal 

femininity. Gippius reserves the feminine gender for the negative "Женскость" which 

represents her fallible, fickle, nature as an all-too-human woman. 146 

The obstacle of exile: "Неотступное" and "Южные стихи" 

In Сияния, Gippius's spiritual journey toward God is disrupted by her physical 

separation from her home, Russia. Gippius left no detailed record of her life in 

emigration, only occasionally keeping sporadic diaries, primarily of her first months in 

146 While grammatical gender often carries significance in Gippius's writing, it is particularly evident in the 

case of these titles. Gippius originally gave "Вечноженственное" a feminine title, "Вечная 

женственность," and "Женскость" was initially the neuter "Падающее." By changing the titles, she 

highlights the spiritual promise of the neuter while denigrating the feminine. 

110

Paris. 147 

She did, however, provide a glimpse into her personal experience of exile in a 

group of poems near the beginning of Сияния: "Неотступное" and the short cycle, 

"Южные стихи." These poems, unlike the angry, politically charged poetry written 

immediately after her emigration, highlight the poet's emotional response to Russia's fall, 

bringing together Gippius's spiritual path with that of Russia. In "Неотступное" the poet 

ties herself to Russia's fate, pleading persistently for her native land's regeneration. 

Trapped in the stagnant heat of her surroundings, she continues to linger in her despair in 

the first poems of the southern cycle. In the cycle's final poem, "Дождь," she finds some 

relief from her anguish, enabling a return to her journey of dynamic faith. 

Gippius explicitly names Russia just once in Сияния, in the book's eighth poem, 

"Неотступное," which immediately follows "Вечноженственное." 148 

In this poem, the 

poetic persona knocks tenaciously at the gates of Heaven, begging God to resurrect sinful 

Russia: 

……… 

Отдай мне ту, кого люблю, 

Восстанови ее из праха! 

Верни ее под отчий кров, 

Пускай виновна—отпусти ей! 

Твой очистительный покров 

Простри над грешною Россией! 

И мне упрямому рабу, 

Увидеть дай ее, живую... 

Открой! 

Пока она в гробу, 

От двери Отчей не уйду я. 

147 In her biography of Merezhkovskii she wrote very little of their years in emigration: Мне особенно 

трудно писать об этих годах жизни Дм. С-ча и нашей, потому что я как раз в это время никакой 

последовательной записи не вела, кроме отрывочной, в первые месяцы после нашего приезда в 

Париж. Gippius, Dmitrii Merezhkovskii, 295. She did, however, briefly describe the feelings of loneliness 

and helplessness associated with emigration in this same memoir. Ibid., 295-6. 

148 Gippius names Petersburg in "Лазарь," one of the last poems of the book, which acts as an interesting 

counterpart to "Неотступное." 

111

................ 

Give back to me the one I love, 

Restore her from the ashes! 

Return her under the father's protection, 

Even though she is guilty, let her free! 

Your purifying cover 

Spread out over sinful Russia! 

And let me, a stubborn slave, 

See her, alive… 

Open! 

As long as she is in the grave, 

I will not leave my Father's door. 

Here, the poet's urgent call is not only for the salvation of Russia, but for her own 

salvation as well. She needs to see Russia revived; she needs to have her beloved land 

returned to her. The poet's cry to free Russia despite its guilt could just as easily be 

applied to herself, the stubborn slave. Her fate depends on the restoration of Russia. 

Gippius follows "Неотступное" with "Южные стихи," a short cycle of four 

poems written between 1923 and 1926 which describes the poet's displacement in a 

southern climate, far from home. By the end of the cycle, the poet has moved away from 

the desperate tone of "Неотступное." Initially disturbed by the foreign surroundings, 

particularly the heat and motionless, clear skies, she eventually finds relief in rain. 

A larger cycle of six "Южные стихи" was originally published in Современные 

записки in 1924. 149 

In Сияния, Gippius kept three of those six poems, changing the 

names of two, and added a fourth. These deliberate changes all contribute to the integrity 

of the cycle within Сияния as a whole, highlighting connections between the poems and 

to the preceding poem, "Неотступное." 

149 Современные записки 18 (1924): 100-103 

112

In the first poem, "За что?," Gippius juxtaposes the beauty of her surroundings 

with the anguish of her soul: 

Качаются на луне 

Пальмовые перья. 

Жить хорошо ли мне, 

Как живу теперь я? 

Ниткой золотой светляки 

Пролетают, мигая. 

Как чаша, полна тоски 

Душа—до самого края. 

Морские дали—поля 

Бледно-серебряных лилий... 

Родная моя земля, 

За что тебя погубили? 

Palm fronds 

Rock in the moonlight. 

Is it good for me to live 

The way I do now? 

Like a golden thread fireflies 

Fly by, flickering. 

Like a chalice, my soul 

Is full of anguish—to the very brim. 

The expanses of sea are fields 

Of pale-silver lilies… 

My native land, 

Why were you destroyed? 

Each of the three quatrains divides neatly in half—the first two lines describing the clear 

and calm beauty of the southern twilight; the second two lines expressing the poet's 

despair in the face of this beauty. The palm fronds are foreign to her, only accentuating 

the poet's distance from her beloved native land. The clear skies reflected in the southern 

seas provide a contrast to Russia's ruin. It is not only not good for the poet to live as she 

113

does now, in exile, but it is seemingly impossible. Her soul is tied to her native land, 

incapable of finding a place in the peaceful south. 

When initially published, the poem was titled "Сумерки," also suggesting the 

mixed nature of the poem—the light of the south and the darkness of Russia mingle 

together in the twilight, the convergence of day and night. The new title, however, 

focuses the reader's attention on the last lines of the poem which are concerned with the 

fate of the poet's native land. This emphasis on the final emotional, personal address 

connects "За что?" more directly with its antecedent, "Неотступное," and suggests that 

the poems which follow, while not making direct reference to Russia, are also informed 

by the poet's despair for her native land. 

In the second poem of the cycle, "Лягушка," the poet listens to a frog, imagining 

she might discover a new understanding of the world hidden in the frog's secret language. 

In the end, however, she rejects this foolish notion, blaming it on the murkiness of the 

southern night: 

Но я с досадой хлопаю окном: 

Всё это мара ночи южной 

С ее томительно-бессоным сном... 

Какая-то лягушка! Очень нужно! 

But with vexation, I slam the window shut: 

All this is just the murk of the southern night 

With its oppressively-sleepless sleep… 

Some frog! Very necessary! 

By slamming shut the window, the bridge between her internal and external worlds, 150 

the poet has, in effect, closed herself off to her spiritual life. 

150 Matich has described the image of the window in Gippius's poetry as a symbol of the poet's isolation or 

seclusion. It separates her from the rest of the world: "By virtue of the window, which is usually high 

above the ground, the poet is put into the position of a remote observer who looks at the outside world 

through her window-keyhole." Matich, Paradox, 89. While the window does indeed separate, it also 

114

The poet's spiritual weariness continues to be felt in the third poem of the cycle, 

"Жара." The unchanging clarity of the night sky oppresses her with its inevitability; the 

Milky Way is a stagnant river in the heat. The poet longs instead for the movement of 

clouds: 

О, тени Божьих мыслей,—облака! 

Я вас любил... И как о вас тоскую! 151 

Oh, shades of God's thoughts—clouds! 

I loved you…And how I long for you! 

In the context of this cycle, the absent, yet longed-for clouds can be seen as 

representative of the poet's native sky, turbulent yet alive, home to Gippius's dynamic 

faith. They will ultimately bring relief to the poet in the form of the rain of the cycle's 

final poem, "Дождь": 

И всё прошло: пожары, знои, 

И всё прошло,—и всё другое: 

Сереет влажно полог низкий. 

О, милый дождь! Шурши, шурши, 

Родные лепеты мне близки, 

Как слезы тихие души. 

And everything passed: fires, sultry days, 

And everything passed—and everything is different: 

The cover of night turns damply gray. 

Oh, dear rain! Babble, babble, 

Your native murmurs are close to me, 

Like quiet tears of the soul. 

In Сияния, Gippius replaced the poem's initial title, "Мелькнули дни," with "Дождь," 

highlighting the connections to the previous poem, "Жара." With the rain of "Дождь," 

the oppressive heat of "Жара" has been broken. The soul, filled to the brim with anguish 

provides an opening for communication between the poet's internal and external worlds. By slamming the 

window shut here, the poet cuts off this channel. 

151 These lines recall the opening lines of "Сиянья": Сиянье слов... Такое есть ли?/Сиянье звезд, 

сиянье облаков—/Я всё любил, люблю... 

115

in "За что?," can now release its quiet tears. The poet has discovered something familiar, 

even native in the sound of the rain. She has rediscovered her spiritual path, even in 

exile. 

Shortly after this cycle, Gippius placed the poem "Прорезы," originally written in 

1918 while Gippius was still living in Russia. In this poem, the poet again expresses her 

love for her native land: 

И я люблю мою родную Землю, 

Как мост, как путь в зазвездную страну. 

And I love my native Land, 

Like a bridge, a path to a country beyond the stars. 

Here, however, there is no hint of despair or desperation. The "native land" appears to 

have taken on a universal meaning—the land of her birth is the earthly world, a bridge or 

transition to the unearthly realm of heaven. By capitalizing the word "Земля," Gippius 

grants the literal land entry into the spiritual realm. 

While the title, "Прорезы," seems to suggest a break in this connection, Gippius 

treats these cuts or gaps as apertures that allow for movement between the two realms. In 

the opening stanza, she lists some of the "promises and signs" which are present "here," 

in mundane reality (Здесь—только обещания и знаки), specifically describing "A 

radiating gap, a cut in the gloom…" ("Сияющий прорыв, прорез на мраке…") By 

choosing a form of the book's central word, radiance, to modify the gap, Gippius 

highlights its positive, creative nature. This and other intangible and elusive signs 

promise to transport the poet from the earthly to the heavenly world. 

In the final stanza, Gippius points to yet another "gap," proclaiming her love for 

her "high window," which, like her native land, ultimately unites these two worlds: 

116

И чем доверчивее, тем безгрешней 

Люблю мое высокое окно. 

Одну Нездешнюю люблю я в здешней, 

Люблю Ее... Она и ты—одно. 

And the more trust I have, the more innocently 

I love my high window. 

The Unearthly alone I love in the earthly, 

I love Her… She and you—are one. 

For the time being, the poet has successfully maneuvered around the obstacle of her exile 

and embarked again upon her spiritual journey. New obstacles, of course, await her. She 

will return again, at the close of Сияния, to her despair for her literal homeland. 

The epiphanies: "Eternité Frémissante" and "Равнодушие" 

Towards the end of Сияния, Gippius included two poems, "Eternité Frémissante" 

(1933) and "Равнодушие" (1927), which clearly refer to earlier works. In the case of 

"Равнодушие," Gippius explicitly identified the poem's precursors, "В черту" (1906) 

and "Час победы" (1918), by citing them in two epigraphs; in "Eternité Frémissante," 

she revealed the shared title of its two antecedents, "Любовь—одна" (1896 and 1912), in 

the first line: "Моя любовь одна, одна." 152 

In both instances, Gippius moved distinctly 

away from the earlier poems, complicating and revising their messages and themes, and 

pointing toward an ideal future. This type of development, narrative in the case of 

"Равнодушие," is unusual for Gippius. Of the few poetic cycles found in Gippius's 

verse, these are the only two which play out over time, across books and decades. 153 

152 All three poems share the same form as well, albeit a common one—quatrains of iambic tetrameter with 

alternating rhyme. 

153 In fact, "Час победы," "Равнодушие" and the 1912 version of "Любовь—одна" (1912) are three of 

only four poems in which Gippius used poetic autocitations as epigraphs. Gippius cited two lines of the 

first "Любовь—одна" in an epigraph to the 1912 version; she cites the last stanza of "В черту" as an 

epigraph to "Час победы." (The fourth use of an autocitational epigraph is found in the uncollected poem 

"Петербург" (1919) which incorporates four lines from a 1909 eponymous poem.) 

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Through their links to the past and subsequent gestures toward the future, the third, final 

elements of these poetic triads add to the summational nature of Сияния. 

From "Любовь—одна" to "Eternité Frémissante" 

In the 1896 poem "Любовь—одна," the poet claims love as the one constant in a 

person's life, equating it with the soul (Душа одна—любовь одна). No matter what we 

do in our exterior lives, there is always a silence in our hearts, the home of love (Мы 

негодуем, иль играем,/Иль лжем—но в сердце тишина). It is in this constancy of 

love, our heart, our soul, that we discover eternity. Love can be painful, we pay for it in 

our blood (Любви мы платим нашей кровью), but it is ultimately as faithful and 

unquestionable as death (Любовь одна, как смерть одна). Gippius concluded each of 

the five stanzas with a mantra-like affirmation of the unity of love (любовь одна). 

Sixteen years later Gippius expressed an equal confidence in the constant, unified nature 

of love. In the poem's first lines, the poet proclaims the singularity of the soul and love: 

Душе, единостью чудесной,/ Любовь единая дана (To the soul, miraculous in its 

unity,/unified love is given). She follows this, however, with a complicating simile: Так 

в послегрозности небесной/Цветная полоса—одна (Just as, in the heavens after a 

storm/The colored stripe is one). As she describes in the second stanza, this eternally 

singular "colored stripe" contains within it seven colors: 

Но семь цветов семью огнями 

Горят в одной. Любовь одна, 

Одна до века, и не нами 

Ей семицветность суждена. 

But seven colors with seven fires 

Burn in one. Love is one, 

One for the centuries, and it is not by us 

That this seven-coloredness is granted to it [love]. 

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The "но" which begins this stanza, marks an apparent paradox within Gippius's notion of 

the unity of love. Love, like a rainbow, is simultaneously both uniform and manyfaceted. 

She resolves this by claiming ignorance: humans did not devise this sevencoloredness; 

it has been ordained by something higher, greater. Her acceptance is 

complete, finalized by a resolution of the rainbow metaphor in the final stanza: Она 

всецветна—и одна./Ее хранит, ее венчает/Святым единством—белизна. (It [love] is 

all colorful, and one./It is preserved, it is crowned/By whiteness, in its sacred unity.) 154 

In "Eternité Frémissante" 155 Gippius revisits the paradox of the unity of love, but 

this time, instead of returning at the end of the poem to the original theme, either by 

repetition or metaphor, she pushes forward to a discussion of the nature of time and 

existence: 

Моя любовь одна, одна, 

Но всё же плачу, негодуя: 

Одна,—и тем разделена, 

Что разделенное люблю я. 

О Время! Я люблю твой ход, 

Порывистость и равномерность. 

Люблю игры твоей полет, 

Твою изменчивую верность. 

Но как не полюбить я мог 

Другое радостное чудо: 

Безвременья живой поток, 

Огонь, дыхание «оттуда»? 

Увы, разделены они— 

154 Earlier in the poem, these seven colors are described as seven radiances (семь сияний). This recalls the 

plurality of radiances in the book's title and title poem. While ultimately Gippius strives toward the 

singular radiance of unified love, on earth she is limited to the multiple radiances/colors which that single 

truth encompasses—in the case of the book Сияния, the multiple poems with which Gippius futilely 

attempts to approach the singular Word of God. 

155 This poem may be considered another of Gippius's Christmas poems. It was originally dated December 

23, 1933, just one day before Gippius wrote the epigraph to Сияния and the poem "Ты." It was first 

published together with "Ты" in Современные записки, no. 54 (1934). 

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Безвременность и Человечность. 

Но будет день: совьются дни 

В одну—Трепещущую Вечность. 

My love is one, one, 

But all the same I cry, feeling indignant: 

It is one—but also divided by the fact 

That I love the divided. 

O Time! I love your course, 

Your explosiveness and evenness. 

I love the flight of your play, 

Your fickle fidelity. 

But how could I not love 

Another joyous miracle: 

The lively flow of timelessness, 

Fire, breath "from out there"? 

Alas, they are divided— 

Timelessness and Humanity. 

But the day will come: the days will wind 

together 

Into one—Trembling Eternity. 

The poem's title is purportedly a Bergsonian formula. 156 

When initially published in 

Современные записки in 1934, the title was followed by the names "Бергсон-Плотин"; 

in Сияния the poem is dedicated to Vladimir Varshavskii, an expert on Bergson. The 

"lively flow of timelessness" has been identified as a description of Bergson's "durée," 157 

a durational, eternal time largely understood by Russian modernists as the "constant flow 

of divine reality that can be apprehended only through an effort of intuition." 158 

Despite 

156 In the notes to the Novaia biblioteka poeta edition of Gippius's poetry, the title "Eternité Frémissante" is 

described as "философская формула А. Бергсона." Gippius, Stikhotvoreniia, 522. In her discussion of 

this poem in the context of Bergson, however, Fink does not attribute the title phrase to Bergson. Fink, 

Bergson, 59-60. 

157 Fink, Bergson, 60. 

158 Fink, Bergson, xviii. What seems to me an even clearer depiction of Bergsonian durée can be found in 

the poem "Веер," placed slightly after "Eternité Frémissante" in Сияния. The poetic persona looks into a 

familiar face, worrying about her fate. God has revealed eternity to them, opening it up like a veil, but the 

unidentified addressee has not accepted it, but instead has torn apart the living, durational time into 

forgotten, presumably dead, moments: Но ты спасительного дления/Из Божьих рук не приняла/И на 

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these seemingly abstract philosophical sources, the poem is intensely personal. Gippius's 

concern with love and time are intrinsically linked to her own life and fate. 

Unlike the steady, reasoned pronouncements of the "Любовь—одна" poems, 

"Eternité Frémissante," like "Вечноженственное," has an emotional force behind it. 

While the previous poems are largely impersonal, only occasionally referring to the 

generic pronoun, "мы," here, Gippius emphasizes the "я" of the poem. The very first 

word of the poem is "моя"—it is specifically the poet's love, not love in general which is 

being discussed. The first three stanzas are driven by descriptions of this love: my love, I 

love (three times), how could I not love. The exclamations "О Время!" and "Увы" 

which begin the second and fourth stanzas enhance this sense of personal involvement. 

Gippius begins the poem by repeating what she has proclaimed before (Моя 

любовь, одна, одна), but this first line seems rushed, as if she wishes to state the obvious 

in order to move beyond it. The crux of the poem lies not in this assertion, but in the 

resulting conflict, marked by the word "но" at the beginning of the second line. Despite 

the decades which have passed since she seemingly accepted on faith the unity of love, 

she cries all the same about an inherent paradox: her love is divided because she loves 

the divided. She loves human time, paradoxical in itself—both fickle and faithful, 

explosive and even—and she loves the timelessness of the heavenly world. Wishing to 

see these worlds reconciled, yet knowing the impossibility of such a reconciliation on 

earth, she relies solely on faith: the two will come together in Trembling Eternity one 

day. 

забвенные мгновения/Живую ткань разорвала... The poet fears what will become of her should the veil 

yet again close: И если веер снова сложится,/В нем отыщу ли я тебя? 

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The phrase "trembling eternity" perfectly resolves what Matich has identified as 

"the basic paradox of Gippius's spiritual and emotional life: the contradictory attraction 

to the timeless (the constant) and the temporal (that which is in movement)." 159 

Eternity 

trembles; the constant moves. Gippius acknowledges, however, that such a resolution is 

possible only in an unearthly future, on that day when all days will be entwined into one. 

Again she strives for unification—of love, of time, of heaven and earth. Again, despite 

the impossibility of realizing this unity in her earthly life, she continues on her faithful, 

yet difficult, journey toward God. 

The devil cycle: "В черту," "Час победы," and "Равнодушие" 

Like "Eternité Frémissante," "Равнодушие" completes a triad of poems—this 

time a corrupted trinity that presents a continuous narrative about the poet's encounters 

with the devil. Gippius explicitly acknowledges the earlier poems, "В черту" (1905) and 

"Час победы" (1918) by citing them in epigraphs to "Равнодушие." 160 

In "В черту" Gippius describes the first encounter with the devil. After drawing a 

ring around the poetic persona, 161 the devil dares him to break the ring, comprised of the 

poet's own sin, and stretch it out into a line. The devil leaves him, still trapped helplessly 

in the ring, fearing his return: Что мне делать, если он вернется?/Не могу я разорвать 

кольца. The devil does indeed return in "Час победы." Gippius cites the final stanza of 

"В черту" as an epigraph to the new poem, beginning and ending it with ellipses, clearly 

159 Matich, Paradox, 79. 

160 Matich has discussed the need to approach the individual devil poems as "part of a whole cycle in which 

Gippius symbolically describes her spiritual fall, followed by her final victory." Matich, Paradox, 94. She 

includes as part of this "cycle" two additional poems about encounters with the devil, "Дьяволенок" (1906) 

and "А потом...?" (1911). For my purposes, however, these poems do not have a direct bearing on my 

reading of "Равнодушие." I am interested in Gippius's explicit designation of a group of three poems (by 

means of the epigraphs), rather than a comprehensive picture of Gippius's devils. 

161 As is typical in Gippius's verse, the poetic persona in this poem is marked as grammatically masculine. 

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indicating that "Час победы" is a continuation of a single narrative begun in "В черту." 

In the second poem, the devil returns after a long absence, amused by the poet's 

inaction—the rings are still whole; the poet appears to have been biding his time in long 

meditations or dreams (долгие мечтания). After the devil threatens to make the still 

unbroken links of the ring even stronger, the poet slaps him in the face with the devil's 

own glove and cries that only blood can forge and break his ring. The devil's cloak is 

blown away revealing his previously hidden face. The poet looks into his familiar eyes 

and watches as he fades into emptiness. By the end of the poem, the poet's victorious 

ring has unbent itself into a fiery line: В этот час победное кольцо мое/В огненную 

выгнулось черту. 

The images of the ring and line suggest the contradictory patterns in Gippius's 

spiritual life—striving to attain a direct path to God (the line), she often finds herself 

trapped in an alternating cycle (ring) of doubt and faith. By the end of "Час победы" she 

has declared victory over this seemingly endless cycle. Having recognized the devil (Я 

взглянул в глаза его знакомые), she has claimed the ring as her own (победное кольцо 

мое), and succeeded in straightening it into a line. This appears to be a final victory. By 

themselves "В черту" and "Час победы" create a complete narrative—the goal set out in 

the title of the first poem is reached in the last line of the second. 

Gippius, however, resists such finality. The emphasis on the hour of victory in 

"Час победы," both in the title and in the final lines (В этот час) raises the possibility 

that this is only a temporary victory. After the hour has passed, the devil may yet return. 

This potential return is further suggested by the identical description of the devil's exit in 

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oth "В черту" and "Час победы": in each poem he fades off into emptiness (Уходя, 

сникая в пустоту; И сник он в пустоту.) 

The narrative is continued and concluded with the description of the devil's third 

visit in "Равнодушие." The epigraphs to this third poem highlight the two previous 

poems' similarities to each other. They both introduce the same key facts—the arrival of 

an unknown male figure in a cloak: 

…Он пришел ко мне, а кто—не знаю, 

Он плащом закрыл себе лицо... 1906 

Он опять пришел, глядит презрительно, 

Кто—не знаю, просто, он в плаще… 1918 

…He came to me, who, I don't know, 

He had covered his face with his cloak. 

He came again, looking condescendingly, 

Who—I don't know, simply the one in the cloak… 

In the first epigraph, Gippius altered the original text of "В черту," putting the 

first and fourth lines of the first stanza together in order to create a more complete 

parallelism with the epigraph from "Час победы." 162 

The only significant change 

suggested by the epigraphs is the passage of time, explicitly marked by the dates 1906 

and 1918 and by the adverb "опять" in the second epigraph—the devil has come again. 

There is no hint of the victory which the poet had achieved over the devil in "Час 

победы," no real sense of narrative development. These two virtually identical epigraphs 

instead serve as a point of contrast to the first lines of "Равнодушие": 

Он приходит теперь не так. 

Принимает он рабий зрак. 

He comes now in a different way. 

162 The original stanza reads, "Он пришел ко мне,—а кто, не знаю,/Очертил вокруг меня кольцо./Он 

сказал, что я его не знаю,/ Но плащом закрыл себе лицо." 

124

He takes on a slave-like look. 

The devil indeed comes in a different way in "Равнодушие." He is accompanied by a 

dol'nik meter instead of the trochees of the epigraphs; he arrives in the present tense as 

opposed to the past. The devil's slave-like look, which replaces his previously 

condescending gaze, suggests a shift in power—it is now the poet who is command. This 

reversal of roles is evident throughout the poem. In the third line, the devil bends 

submissively (Изгибается весь покорно), recalling the ring which once entrapped the 

poet. Now that the ring has been straightened out into a line, it is the devil who curves 

and bends. In the fifth stanza, Gippius describes the devil as "жалкий," an adjective used 

by the devil in "В черту" to describe the poet. Having achieved victory, the poet is 

dealing with an entirely different, "grotesque and petty" 163 devil—one who sits quietly on 

the floor in the corner, snickering affectedly (похихикивая притворно) instead of 

mockingly laughing at the poet. His speech, full of colloquialisms and diminutives, is 

distinct from the powerful, challenging language of the earlier poems. 

Nonetheless, the devil tries once more to tempt the poet, offering her the chance 

to step inside the skin of another human being: 

Хочешь в ближнего поглядеть? 

Это со смеху умереть! 

Назови мне только любого. 

Укажи скорей, хоть кого, 

И сейчас же тебя в него 

Превращу я, честное слово! 

На миг, не навек!—Чтоб узнать, 

Чтобы в шкуре его побывать... 

Как минуточку в ней побудешь— 

Узнаешь, где правда, где ложь, 

Всё до донышка там поймешь, 

А поймешь—не скоро забудешь. 

163 Matich, Paradox, 96. 

125

Do you want to look into your neighbor? 

You'll die laughing! 

Name just one for me. 

Tell me quickly, it could be anyone, 

And right this very minute into him you 

I will turn, on my word of honor! 

For an instant, not forever! So that you can find out, 

So that you can spend a bit of time in his skin… 

As soon as you've been there for just a minute— 

You'll know what is truth, what is falsity. 

Everything to the very bottom you'll understand there, 

And when you understand, you'll not soon forget. 

In the second poem of Сияния, "Идущий мимо," Gippius expressed this very desire to 

see inside another's soul, to discover the secret histories hidden behind every passerby. 

Once she has discovered their truths, she can then reward or punish them accordingly: 

Как Бог, хотел бы знать я всё о каждом, 

Чужое сердце видеть, как свое, 

Водой бессмертья утолять их жажду— 

И возвращать иных в небытие. 

Like God, I would like to know everything about each person, 

To see another's heart as my own, 

To assuage their thirst with the water of immortality— 

And return others to non-existence. 

Gippius recognizes this desire as something beyond her reach. Only God has the right to 

see into each soul, to grant immortality or death. In "Равнодушие" the devil thus tempts 

her with a blasphemous gift, one that would result in the poet's fall. Unlike Eve, 

however, Gippius is not swayed by this devil. She has already overcome him and is 

unresponsive and indifferent to his offer: 

От работы и в этот раз 

На него я не поднял глаз, 

Неответен—и равнодушен. 

Уходи—оставайся со мной, 

126

Извивайся,—но мой покой 

Не тобою будет нарушен... 

И растаял он на глазах, 

На глазах растворился в прах, 

Оттого, что я—равнодушен... 

But this time from my work 

I did not raise my eyes to him, 

Unresponsive—and indifferent. 

Go ahead and leave, stay with me, 

Wriggle—but my peace 

Will not be disturbed by you… 

And he melted before my eyes, 

Before my eyes he dissolved into dust, 

Because I am indifferent. 

Makovskii considered "Равнодушие" the most terrifying of the three devil poems, 

viewing the poet's indifference as a capitulation, a loss of the emotional power found in 

"Час победы." 164 

Matich too has written of the danger of indifference in Gippius's 

worldview, associating it with apathy and irresoluteness—a refusal to engage in the 

spiritual journey, to participate in dynamic faith. Indifference results from a loss of will 

required by traditional Christian humility. 165 

In "Равнодушие," however, the poet has achieved an ultimate victory. The devil 

does not fade away into emptiness, but dissolves into dust—there is no possibility of 

return. Here, instead of "indifference" the poet appears to have reached a more literal 

164 Makovskii recalls the willful slap in the face the poet gives the devil in "Час победы," but incorrectly 

attributes the disdainful look (глядит презрительно) to the poet instead of the devil. Makovskii, Na 

Parnase, 160-1. 

165 "[I]t is the devil, the evil spirit, who tempts Gippius by offering her the easy escape into a 'willless' state 

which leads to indifference." Matich, Paradox, 54. See also Marietta Shaginian, O blazhenstve 

imushchego (Moscow: Al'tsion, 1912), 20-23. Zlobin, too, addresses this poem, calling Gippius's 

indifference a "sham" without further explanation. Zlobin, A Difficult Soul, 140. In general, Zlobin's 

readings of the devil poems take many liberties. 

127

state of "равнодушие"—an equilibrium of the soul. 166 

Her struggle is over, she has 

achieved the spiritual balance which she has sought throughout her life. 167 

As Gippius wrote in the third poem of Сияния, "Мера," this sense of balance or 

measure is only attained by God: 168 

Всегда чего-нибудь нет,— 

Чего-нибудь слишком много... 

На всё как бы есть ответ— 

Но без последнего слога. 

.......................... 

Ущерб, перехлест везде. 

А мера—только у Бога. 

Always something is lacking— 

There is always too much of something… 

It is as if there is an answer for everything— 

But without the final syllable. 

………………. 

Decline, overflow is everywhere. 

But only God has measure. 

The lyrical "я" of "Равнодушие," like God, has achieved this sense of measure. His 

spiritual journey is over. Gippius's, however, is not. In the seven poems which follow 

"Равнодушие," the poet will continue to struggle with the same issues of eternity, faith, 

and despair. The poet will encounter difficulties in "Сложности"; she will experience a 

166 In the rough draft of the poem, Gippius offered a variation on the sixth line of the sixth stanza, later 

scratched out, which supports this positive reading of "равнодушие": instead of "Неответен—и 

равнодушен," she wrote "Безболезненно-равнодушен." 

167 Matich claims the poem as a final victory over the devil but does not explicitly address the issue of 

indifference. Matich, Paradox, 94. She does address the theme of indifference to death in relation to 

Gippius's final poem, dictated to Zlobin on her death bed: По лестнице...ступени все воздушней/Бегут 

наверх иль вниз—не все ль равно!/И с каждым шагом сердце равнодушней/И все, что было—было 

так давно. Matich claims that such indifference "is a product of Gippius's inability to struggle, desire or 

accept. It is a state which, as we know, Gippius feared the most because it is associated with the abrogation 

of her will." Ibid, 107. According to Matich, Gippius is not reconciled with her death. In my opinion, this 

final poem expresses neither reconciliation nor indifference to death, but rather the actual experience of 

death. The poet is, in fact, dying, and as she dies her heart becomes more and more balanced, coming 

closer and closer to heavenly equilibrium. Her past is a distant memory because she is entering into 

another form of existence. 

168 For more on Gippius's notion of balance, see Zinaida Gippius, "Выбор?," Vozrozhdeniie 222 (June 

1970): 58-77. 

128

gamut of emotions—a "fiery desire for death" (пламенное желание—смерти) in 

"Когда"; a capricious love of play in "Игра"; angry spite in "Лазарь" ("Ты, Строитель, 

сам пустоглазый,/ну и добро!"). 

It is not a surprise that Gippius and the lyrical persona of "Равнодушие" are not 

in agreement. This poem, like "В черту" and "Час победы," has none of the personal 

markers found in "Eternité Frémissante" or "Вечноженственное." In her only narrative 

poetic cycle, Gippius has created a fictional persona, one whose successful spiritual 

journey, like Saint Teresa's, can act as a model and inspiration. 

Journey Homewards 

With "Eternité Frémissante" and "Равнодушие," Gippius provides two distinct 

conclusions to two disparate cycles. Despite their differences, both poems direct the poet 

from her conflicted past and present toward an ideal future. Their placement next to each 

other near the end of the book creates a sense of spiritual climax. The following poems 

which conclude the book bring the poet back to earth. Knowing that the ideal future can 

only be attained after her earthly life, the lyric persona first desires and anticipates her 

own death—the necessary step toward rebirth or resurrection. Encountering difficulties 

which evoke the earlier theme of exile and the book's spiritual guide, St. Thérèse, she 

resorts to a desperate plea for home in the final poem of the book, "Домой." 

In "Когда?," the first poem to follow "Равнодушие," the poet longs for death: 

В церкви пели Верую, 

весне поверил город. 

Зажемчужилась арка серая, 

засмеялись рои моторов. 

Каштаны веточки тонкие 

в мартовское небо тянут. 

Как веселы улицы звонкие 

129

в желтой волне тумана. 

Жемчужьтесь, стены каменные, 

марту, ветки, верьте... 

Отчего у меня такое пламенное 

желание—смерти? 

Такое пристальное, такое сильное, как будто сердце готово. 

Сквозь пенье автомобильное 

не слышит ли сердце зова? 

Господи! Иду в неизвестное, 

но пусть оно будет родное. 

Пусть мне будет небесное 

такое же, как земное... 

They sang the creed in church, 

The city came to believe in the spring. 

The gray arch turned pearly, 

the swarms of cars began to laugh. 

The chestnuts stretch out their thin young branches 

into the March sky. 

How joyous are the sonorous streets 

in a yellow wave of fog. 

Shine with your pearls, stone walls, 

have faith in March, branches… 

Why do I have such a burning 

desire for death? 

Such a clear, such a strong desire, is if my heart is ready. 

Through the song of the automobiles 

doesn't my heart hear its call? 

Oh, God! I am going into the unknown, 

but let it be familiar. 

Let the heavenly be for me 

The same as the earthly… 

This poem, originally titled "Etoile," was written in Paris on the first of March, 1924 and 

is set in the early spring. Two explicit references to March and one to spring are made in 

the twenty-line poem, leaving no doubt as to the time of its setting. The poem, in a 

superficial way, then, explicates the title question, "когда?" In the context of Сияния, 

however, this new title adds a sense of urgency to the poem. Fourteen years have passed 

since the poem was written, and yet death has still not come. The poet seems to be 

130

asking when she will finally be released through her desired death. This sense of urgency 

is also evident in a change in the first line of the final quatrain. The initial 1924 

publication reads, "Господи! Я пойду в неизвестное." In the Сияния version, Gippius 

changed the tense to the present, emphasizing her current journey towards death: 

"Господи! Иду в неизвестное." 

This unexpected combination of death and spring, typically a time of new life, is 

paralleled by the surprising mixture of spiritual, natural, and urban imagery in "Когда?" 

As the city finds faith in the spring, swarms of cars laugh and church-goers sing. Both 

chestnuts and streets, stone walls and branches are called upon to greet the spring. 

Ultimately, the poet hears the call of death, perhaps of God, through the song of traffic. 

Once again, the poet attempts to unite seemingly opposed worlds. As in "Eternité 

Frémissante," she hopes to find the multiplicity of the earthly world in the unity of 

heaven. 

The poet continues to anticipate death in the next poem, "Игра." Here, again, the 

poet is not afraid of death, but looks forward to the wisdom which will result from it: 

Совсем не плох и спуск с горы: 

Кто бури знал, тот мудрость ценит. 169 

Even the descent from the mountain isn't bad at all: 

One who has known storms values wisdom. 

The poet's only fear is that heaven will not be playful: 

Пускай! Когда придет пора 

И все окончатся дороги, 

Я об игре спрошу Петра, 

Остановившись на пороге. 

И если нет игры в раю, 

169 Zlobin cites these lines to describe Gippius's illness and descent into death. Zlobin, A Difficult Soul, 

188. 

131

Скажу, что рая не приемлю. 

Возьму опять суму мою 

И снова попрошусь на землю. 

So be it! When the time comes 

And all roads end, 

I will ask Peter about play, 

Stopping on the threshold. 

And if there is no play in heaven, 

I'll say that I won't accept heaven. 

I'll take my bag once more 

And again set off for earth. 

This refusal to accept a heaven without play is characteristic of Gippius's dynamic faith. 

She seeks a "trembling eternity," not a static realm of unchanging wisdom. As in 

"Когда?," she wishes to find in heaven earthly joys—a poet's play with words, a kitten's 

game with a ball (Котенок возится с клубком...Играет с рифмами поэт). She strives 

to combine the earthly with the divine, to unify the spiritual and the everyday. 

Gippius's expectations for death become more complicated in the subsequent 

poems. She longs not only for death, a passage from the earthly world to the spiritual 

realm of heaven, but also for resurrection—a return to an original, sinless state. This 

notion of resurrection as return is evident earlier in Сияния. In a discussion of the nature 

of memory in the book's fourth poem, "Над забвеньем," the poet defines resurrection as 

the "backward flight of moments" (воскресенье,/Мгновений обратный лет)—the literal 

reestablishment of an earlier existence. 170 

In "Сложности," the poet wishes to return to 

simplicity, an original pure state reminiscent of the "enfance spirituelle" Gippius admired 

170 In the final lines of "Идущий мимо," cited above, a God-like Gippius wishes to offer other souls the 

choice of immortality or a return to nonexistence. It is possible that this return, seemingly a negative 

opposite to immortality, is in fact an alternative reward for those who, tired of earthly existence, wish to 

return to an original simplicity. 

132

in Saint Teresa. Already in the title, however, she recognizes her inevitable failure to 

achieve such spiritual simplicity. Simplicity and complications are irreconciliable: 

К простоте возвращаться—зачем? 

Зачем—я знаю, положим. 

Но дано возвращаться не всем. 

Такие, как я, не можем. 

Сквозь колючий кустарник иду, 

Он цепок, мне не пробиться... 

Но пускай упаду, 

До второй простоты не дойду, 

Назад—нельзя возвратиться. 

Why return to simplicity? 

I know why, let's assume. 

But not everyone is destined to return. 

People like me are unable to. 

I walk through thorny bushes, 

They are prickly, I can't make my way through… 

Even if I fall, 

I will not make it to my second simplicity, 

It is impossible to go back. 

While the poet does not explain in "Сложности" why "people like her" are unable to 

return, the opening lines of the next poem, "Лазарь," suggest that it is due in part to her 

ties to Russia. An exile from a decaying nation, she can never return to her land of birth, 

her literal childhood home: 

Нет, волглая земля, сырая; 

только и может—тихо тлеть; 

мы знаем, почему она такая, 

почему огню на ней не гореть. 

No, the damp, raw earth; 

all it can do is quietly rot; 

we know, why it is this way, 

why fire can not burn on it. 

133

This stanza echoes "Сложности" in a number of ways. The opening interjection, "Нет," 

appears to continue the negative tone of the preceding poem's final lines: не дойду, 

нельзя. The "я" of "Сложности" and the nation of "Лазарь," both aware of their 

predicament (я знаю; мы знаем), are nonetheless limited: the poet cannot return; the 

land can do nothing but rot. As in "Неотступное," the poet's fate seems hopelessly tied 

to her native land's. Once again, the poet calls for the resurrection of her home, this time 

the city of Petersburg, sprayed with blood by an empty-eyed young girl with a red 

watering-can. Even the legendary builder, Peter, is unable to revive his creation: 

…………………………… 

Петр чугунный сидит молча, 

конь не ржет, и змей ни гу-гу. 

Что ж, любуйся на ямы вольчи, 

на рыжее кружево на снегу. 

Ты, Строитель, сам пустоглазый, 

ну и добро! Когда б не истлел, 

выгнал бы девочку с лейкой сразу, 

кружева рыжего не стерпел. 

Но город и ты—во гробе оба, 

ты молчишь, Петербург молчит. 

Кто отвалит камень от гроба? 

Господи, Господи: уже смердит... 

Кто? Не Петр. Не вода. Не пламя. 

Близок Кто-то. Он позовет. 

И выйдет обвязанный пеленами: 

«Развяжите его. Пусть идет». 

…………………….. 

Cast iron Peter sits in silence, 

his horse doesn't neigh, there isn't a sound from the snake. 

Go ahead, admire the trous-de-loup, 

the red lace on the snow. 

You, Builder, yourself empty-eyed, 

so it is! If you hadn't rotted 

you would have driven out the girl with the watering-can immediately, 

134

you wouldn't have endured the red lace. 

But you and the city are both in the grave, 

you are silent, Petersburg is silent. 

Who will push the stone off the grave? 

Lord, Lord: it already stinks… 

Who? Not Peter. Not water. Not flame. 

Someone is near. He will call. 

And out will come the one wrapped in shrouds: 

"Loose him. Let him go." 

Like "Eternité Frémissante" and "Равнодушие," "Лазарь" suggests the passage of 

a considerable amount of time. The poem was first published under the title "Рыжее 

кружево (о Петербурге)" in 1923 and dated 8 November (Gippius's birthday), 1922. In 

Сияния, however, Gippius not only changed the title to the more universal "Лазарь," but 

she included the dates 1918-1938 at the end of the poem, making it one of only two 

"dated" poems in the book. While Gippius made a few minor changes to the 1923 

version in addition to the new title, the poem is largely the same. The dates thus do not 

reflect a twenty-year period of work on the poem, but rather suggest the poem's lasting 

effect from 1918 to 1938—from the fall of Russia to the Bolsheviks to the current year, 

the time of the publication of Сияния. "Лазарь" thus spans the entire period of Сияния, 

marked as both its youngest and oldest poem. All this time, Petersburg has been slowly 

decaying; Peter has been rotting away silently on his horse, incapable of resurrecting his 

city, covered with the red lace of blood; the poet continues to beg God for the 

resurrection of her native land. Russia and the poet still require a spiritual revolution—a 

return to the simple truth of Christ who will come and call for all of Petersburg to be 

released, as Lazarus was. 

135

Gippius employs two "sacred" texts in "Лазарь": the biblical story of Lazarus 

and Pushkin's "Медный всадник." The poem is framed by explicit references to the 

biblical story, beginning with the title "Лазарь" and ending with the words of Martha and 

Jesus. When Jesus asks Martha to take the stone away from her brother Lazarus's tomb, 

Martha resists, saying "Sir, by now there will be a stench; he has been there four days" 

(John 11:39; cf. Gippius's lines: Кто отвалит камень от гроба?/Господи, Господи: 

уже смердит). Gippius's description of Lazarus's resurrection and release (Близок Ктото, 

Он позовет./И выйдет обвязанный пеленами:/«Развяжите его. Пусть идет») 

comes directly from John 11:43-44: Then [Jesus] raised his voice in a great cry: 

'Lazarus, come out.' The dead man came out his hands and feet bound with linen 

bandages, his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said, 'Loose him: let him go.' 

Pushkin's poema is invoked in the fourth stanza of "Лазарь" with the description 

of the statue of the Bronze Horseman: the cast-iron Peter sits on his horse, trampling on a 

snake. Just as the inhabitants of the city come out to marvel at the furious waves in 

Pushkin's "Медный всадник" (Поутру над ее брегами/Теснился кучами 

народ,/Любуясь брызгами, горами/И пеной разъяренных вод [In the morning along 

her shores/The people crowded around in clusters,/Admiring the splashes, mountains/And 

foam of the furious waters]), Gippius commands the silent Peter to "admire" the bloody 

destruction surrounding him in his devastated city: Что ж, любуйся на ямы волчьи,/на 

рыжее кружево на снегу. Like the hero of Pushkin's poema, she challenges Peter, but 

now, in place of Evgenii's threatening, "miracle-working builder" (Добро, строитель 

чудотворный!), she encounters an "empty-eyed" Builder, (Ты, Строитель, сам 

136

пустоглазый, ну и добро!). Peter, like the land, has rotted. Blind and mute, he is in the 

grave alongside his creation. 

By invoking the story of Lazarus and "Медный всадник," Gippius 

simultaneously substitutes herself for those narratives' heroes, Martha and Evgenii. Like 

Martha, she depends fully on Christ for salvation while, like Evgenii, she rejects the false 

god, Peter. No one but Christ, not even the legendary Peter, and no earthly force, neither 

water nor flame, can revive the decaying land. 

This rejection of the earthly world, previously viewed as a bridge to heaven, 171 

culminates in the final poem of Сияния, "Домой" ("Homeward): 

Мне— 

о земле— 

болтали сказки: 

«Есть человек. Есть любовь». 

А есть— 

лишь злость. 

Личины. Маски. 

Ложь и грязь. Ложь и кровь. 

Когда предлагали 

мне родиться— 

не говорили, что мир такой. 

Как же 

я мог 

не согласиться? 

Ну, а теперь—домой! домой! 

I was told 

fairy tales 

about the earth: 

"There is humankind. There is love." 

171 "И я люблю мою родную Землю,/Как мост, как путь в зазвездную страну" ("Прорезы"). In its 

initial 1923 publication in "Окно," "Лазарь" preceded the poem "Прорезы," perhaps suggesting the 

continuing strength of Russia, despite its decay. Now placed amidst the closing poems of Сияния, 

"Лазарь" is followed by no such hope. 

137

But there is 

only malevolence. 

Guises. Masks. 

Lies and filth. Lies and blood. 

When I was offered 

birth 

I wasn't told that the world was like this. 

So how 

could I 

not agree? 

But now, home! home! 

The poet no longer wishes to combine the earthly and the heavenly; she wants only to 

escape the world and return home. This journey home does not lead the poet to the pure 

simplicity of "Сложности," but rather demonstrates a blasphemous arrogance. She 

claims that life was offered to her; she had the right to refuse it. In fact, she would have 

refused it had she not been lied to about its nature. 172 

As a result, the poet rejects not 

only the falsity of the world, but also those who tricked her into being born, presumably a 

deceitful God or devil. The hopeless task which the poet set out for herself in the 

opening poem of Сияния—to create radiances of words on earth—has, indeed, been 

proven impossible. Not only have her own words failed her, but she has lost sight of 

God's Word. 

While the book ends in retreat, the poet's spiritual journey is not over. The final 

poem's title and closing word, "домой," points to the continuation of the journey—most 

likely a return to the cycle of despair with which the devil once entrapped her, but 

nonetheless movement. In this most summational of Gippius's books, there is still no 

room for finality. 

172 The poet's superhuman nature here is reminiscent of the poet's willingness to give up the radiance of 

sainthood (святости блаженное сияние) in "Сиянья." 

138

Conclusion 

In this chapter I have attempted to show that, with Сияния, Gippius has moved 

away from her earlier diaristic books of poetry to a more retrospective account of the 

poet's spiritual journey. The goal of this journey was to unite the heavenly and the 

earthly, to find unity within multiplicity. In Сияния, Gippius set out to express this unity 

in a unified form, a book of poems brought together under one title and dedicated to one 

individual in order to express the single truth of God's Word. 

While recognizing this task as impossible even in the opening poem, she never 

abandons the journey. Through her careful placement of poems throughout the book, she 

highlights the dynamic nature of faith—the constant shifts between hope and despair, the 

inevitable falls that follow spiritual epiphanies. While the book ends in despair, the 

spiritual journey is not finalized. The poet continues her journey, albeit in the form of a 

retreat. 

139

Chapter Three: Elena Shvarts's Works and Days of the Nun Lavinia 

Critics have commented on the coherence of Elena Shvarts's verse throughout her 

career. Andrei Anpilov claims that she emerged as a poet entirely formed. Her poetry 

does not show a typical progression from early to late verse, addressing new themes or 

exploring new forms. Instead, her later poems more clearly define elements which are 

present in her earliest work. 173 

Similarly, Valery Shubinsky has described her 

development as that of a tree giving off new shoots: she revisits themes across decades, 

revealing their new and more complicated possibilities. 174 Together, these themes and 

formal elements make up the unique world of Shvarts's verse, a world which displays 

remarkable interdependence and integrity: Каждый из элементов этого мира связан с 

другими. Все они—часть сложной системы, Сада, в котором ни одного цветка 

нельзя сорвать, не изменив непоправимо целого. 175 

While such a statement may seem hyperbolic in describing a poet's entire oeuvre, 

it certainly applies to the more local level of Shvarts's individual poems. Shvarts herself 

has described the complicated, interconnected nature of her poetry. To her, a poem is a 

living organism, a whole entity: "живой организм, цельный." 176 

Consisting of many 

separate, discernable parts, it comes together like a living structure or building. 177 

This 

organic combination of separate parts is clearly apparent in her self-proclaimed favorite 

173 Andrei Anpilov, "Svetlo-iarostnaia tochka," Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie 35 (1999): 363-4. 

174 Valerii Shubinskii, "Elena Shvarts (Tezisy doklady)," in Istoriia leingradskoi nepodtsenzurnoi 

literatury, ed. B.I. Ivanov and B.A. Roginskii (Saint Petersburg: DEAN, 2000), 110. 

175 Valerii Shubinskii, "Sadovnik i sad: O poezii Eleny Shvarts," Znamia 11 (2001): 201. 

176 Valentina Polukhina, Brodsky through the Eyes of his Contemporaries (Saint Petersburg: Zvezda, 

1997), 209. 

177 Elena Shvarts, Opredelenie v durnuiu pogodu (Saint Petersburg: Pushkinskii fond, 1997), 71. 

Similarly, in her 1990 interview with Valentina Polukhina, Shvarts describes the complex architectural 

nature of a poem, "with columns, roofs, beams and all." Polukhina, Brodsky, 208. 

140

genre, the "маленькая поэма" (small poema). 178 

For Shvarts, the small poema is a cycle 

of discrete yet linked short lyrics. 179 

The "plot" is revealed not through continuous 

narrative progression, 180 but through the musical intersections and collisions of the 

various parts: Повествование более скрыто, в нем есть сюжет, но внутренний, не 

прямой. Для меня важно сопряжение разных мотивов, сведение их в единую 

гармонию. И полное совпадение с какими-то смыслями, сюжетными линиями. 181 

The different parts of the poema acquire meaning only through their relation to and 

confrontation with each other. Once broken apart, they lose their coherence. 182 

Within this complicated structure built on the principles of polyphony, 183 Shvarts 

claims an entire world can be created—a world over which the poet no longer has 

complete control. She has coined a new generic term for this type of verse: визьёнприключения 

(vision-adventures). 184 

A "complicated baroque form" inspired by a 

supernatural force, it takes on a life of its own: Когда поэт впадает в некое 

сверхнатуральное состояние, ему является видение, и дальше оно творит само себя, 

178 Polukhina, Brodsky, 207. Shvarts gives as examples her own short poetic cycles, "Черная пасха" and 

"Хоррор эротикус," and points to Kuzmin as an originator of the form. 

179 In the Предуведомление to her "Маленькие поэмы," a collection of "small poemas" written between 

1974 and 1996, Shvarts distinguishes the "small poema" from the traditional poema: От собственно 

«поэмы» она отличается крайне прерывистым развитием фабулы. Сюжет обычной поэмы течет как 

река, маленькой—то скрывается под землей, то неожиданно низвергается с высот, то возвращается 

к истоку. При этом часто и сам сюжет состоит из борьбы метафизических идей, видений, 

чувствований, причудливо смешанных с мелкими происшествиями жизни. Контрапункт 

противоречий всегда находит гармоническое разрешение. В этом смысле она—маленькая трагедия: 

в ней есть завязка, апофеоз и катарсис, монологи и хоры. Elena Shvarts, Sochineniia (Saint Petersburg: 

Pushkinskii fond, 2002), v. 2, 62. 

180 Andrei Anpilov has described the non-linear nature of Shvarts's long poems: Мне кажется, каждое 

длинное стихотворение этого поэта имеет несколько зачинов, кульминаций и развязок. Текст 

развивается не «линейно», а мечется за «добычей» во все стороны, продвигаясь тем не менее 

вперед. Anpilov, "Svetlo-iarostnaia tochka," 364. 

181 Polukhina, Brodsky, 207. 

182 When Polukhina asked if she could choose one of Shvarts's poems for her book, Brodsky through the 

Eyes of his Contemporaries, Shvarts made only one request: если это отрывок из поэмы, то укажите, 

пожалуйста, иначе он будет звучать, как проигрыш между двумя темами. Polukhina, Brodsky, 211. 

183 For a discussion of Shvarts and polyphony, see Aleksandr Skidan, "Summa poetiki," Novoe literaturnoe 

obozrenie 60 (2003): 285-92. 

184 Polukhina, Brodsky, 207. 

141

приключается. Поворачивает куда хочет. 185 

At the outset, the poet herself does not 

know the final destination of the vision, and the lyrics themselves are better off without 

her: Стихи буквально живы, они—Существа, они улетают, и очень далеко. Им 

безразличен их Творец. Без него им даже легче, после его смерти они наливаются 

кровью, они—еще живее. 186 

Shvarts's 1987 book of poetry Труды и дни Лавинии, монахини из ордена 

обрезания сердца serves as the fullest example of a визьён-приключение in Shvarts's 

work. Her longest poetic cycle, Lavinia consists of seventy-eight short poems written 

from the perspective of a fictional nun, at times deeply religious, at times heretical. The 

poems are gathered together by a "sister" of Lavinia and published by a specialist in 

contemporary psychology. The sister's letter to the publisher and the publisher's 

foreword precede Lavinia's actual verse, as do ten epigraphs. Shvarts has produced a 

number of other poetic cycles where she takes on the voice of a fictional poetic 

persona, 187 but Lavinia remains the most important to her. 188 Distinguishing it from her 

"small poemas" and collections of poetry, she has described it as a "novel in verse, 

185 Shvarts, Определение, 71. 

186 Ibid., 84. 

187 Shvarts's appropriately titled 1996 collection of poetry, Mundus imaginalis, includes all of the 

fictionalized cycles except for Lavinia: the two books of Cynthia, the legendary Roman poet; gypsy verses; 

the works of Arno Tsart, an invented Estonian poet; a diary of the soul, "Лестница с дырявыми 

площадками"; and a miracle-play about Moses. In the poet's afterword ("Необязательные пояснения") 

she describes the unifying characteristic of the book as this feature of speaking through another's voice: 

загримированность, говорение из-под маски, переодетый (или перерожденный) автор. Elena Shvarts, 

Mundus imaginalus: Kniga otvetvlenii (Saint Petersburg: EZRO/Utkonos, 1996), 108. 

For a discussion of Shvarts's use of ventriloquism and questions of poetic identity see Stephanie Sandler, 

"Elena Shvarts and the Distances of Self-Disclosure," in Reconstructing the Canon: Russian Writing in the 

1980s, ed. Arnold McMillin (Amsterdam: Harwood Academic Publishers, 2000), 79-105. 

188 Shvarts, Mundus imaginalis, 108. In Shvarts's introduction to her 1999 collected works she reiterates 

the primary nature of Lavinia, reprinting the entire book and calling it a book within a book (книга в 

книге). By way of contrast, she puts the other ventriloquized cycles ("Кинфия," "Сочинения Арно 

Царта" and "Цыганские стихи") in a section titled "Приложения" and describes them as "«боковыми», 

игровыми, скажанными из-под маски." Elena Shvarts, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (Saint Petersburg: 

INAPRESS, 1999), "От автора", [5]. 

142

perhaps" (роман в стихах, может быть). 189 

Critics have addressed the novelistic nature 

of Lavinia in similarly qualified terms. 190 

In this chapter I will try to understand the 

nature of Shvarts's "perhaps"—to explicate more fully the novelistic and other generic 

and formal qualities of the book. First, I will explore the book's introductory material 

(the title, epigraphs, publisher's foreword and sister's letter)—a fictional structure within 

which the reader approaches Lavinia's verse. I will pay special attention to the title 

which provides the ecumenical mission of Lavinia's convent (the circumcision of the 

heart), and to the subtitle, "От Рождества до Пасхи," a literal and spiritual timeframe 

which Lavinia's poetry follows. I will discuss the fictional world created within Lavinia's 

book and the characters who populate it. I will then look at lyric connections made 

between non-narrative poems which make whole an otherwise "fragmentary novel." 

Finally, I will show how the final poem, "Скит," provides a resolution to the many 

seemingly disjointed threads of the book. 

Title 

Shvarts provides a tremendous amount of "introductory" material in Труды и дни 

Лавинии, монахини из ордена обрезания сердца. The title itself is packed with 

references to multiple traditions: the poetic ancestry of Hesiod's Works and Days; the 

apparent pagan ancestry of the heroine, Lavinia; and the biblical source of the 

189 Ibid. See also the short autobiography written for Barbara Heldt in December, 1988. Barbara Heldt, 

"The Poetry of Elena Shvarts," World Literature Today 63, no. 3 (Summer 1989): 381-2. 

190 Sandler writes, "Lavinia proceeds as a novel—and very much a twentieth-century novel. Affinities with 

the novel mark both its psychological intensity and its evocative yet utterly earthy language." Stephanie 

Sandler, "Elena Shvarts," in Russian Women Writers, ed. Christine Tomei (New York: Garland, 1999), 

1462. Darra Goldstein has described it as "like a fragmentary novel in verse." Darra Goldstein, "Shvarts, 

Elena Andreevna," in Dictionary of Russian Women Writers, ed. Marina Ledkovsky, Charlotte Rosenthal, 

and Mary Zirin (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, 1994), 599. Heldt calls it a "sort of diary novel," "a 

modern novel in verse, with no plot, but rather a central character who changes daily." Heldt, "The Poetry 

of Elena Shvarts," 382-383. 

143

circumcision of the heart. This combination of traditions is typical of Shvarts's verse as a 

whole, and particularly her book Lavinia. 191 

By titling the book Труды и дни, Shvarts suggests an affinity to or descendance 

from Hesiod's poem, an example of "exhortation to wisdom" poetry which provides 

advice on how to live. This suggestion is reinforced by the book's first epigraph, an 

imperative first bit of advice on how to be wise: "Хочешь быть мудрым в веке сем, 

будь безумным." Already in the title, Shvarts has provided a reference point for 

Lavinia's book within the poetic tradition. Throughout the book she will continue to 

explore Lavinia's role as poet and the role of poetry itself. 

The choice of the non-Russian name Lavinia emphasizes the heroine's exceptional 

nature and seems to provide her with a pre-Christian heritage. 192 

In Roman legend 

Lavinia was the daughter of King Latinus, the wife of Aeneas, and the ancestor of the 

Roman people. Lavinia also suggests a feminine inversion of the name Livanii 

(Ливаний), the Russian equivalent of Libanius, a pagan fourth-century rhetorician from 

Antioch who wanted to pass on his school to his prized pupil, Ioann Zlatoust, "еслибъ 

его не похитили христiане." 193 

Both Antioch and Ioann are important to Shvarts: she 

cites Ioann in her third epigraph and makes frequent reference to Paul, whose missionary 

work in Antioch opened up the Christian church to the Gentiles. Paul's ecumenical vision 

191 It is difficult to know to what extent Shvarts endows her many references with particular meaning. She 

has described herself as an autodidact who has read widely but not in depth. Heldt, "The Poetry of Elena 

Shvarts," 381. Catriona Kelly has described her use of "head-spinning mosaics of citations" as "patchwork, 

rather than appliqué." They are "not hierarchically ordered in terms of either values or perspectives." 

Catriona Kelly, A History of Russian Women's Writing 1820-1992 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 413. 

Similarly, Sandler does not consider Shvarts's references to have the kind of intricate subtextual patterning 

typical of the Acmeists; rather, "Shvarts relies on more fleeting associations, and typically mixes sources 

very freely." Sandler, "Elena Shvarts and the Distances of Self-Disclosure," 102. This said, when 

contained within a novel-like structure, the references have more resonance and interplay within the 

fictional, mythical world which Shvarts creates. 

192 This is not unique in Shvarts's verse. She has previously taken on the persona of a legendary Roman 

woman poet in her cycle "Kinfiia." 

193 Entsiklopedicheskii slovar', vol. 34, (Moscow: Terra, 1990-94), 644. 

144

is extremely important to Shvarts's conception of Lavinia's convent which includes not 

only Jews and Gentiles, but Buddhist monks, demons, angels and animal-protectors. 

The third part of the title, the order of the "circumcision of the heart," invokes Paul 

directly, referring to his letter to the Romans (2:29) in which he annuls the Jewish law 

which requires physical circumcision and calls instead for a metaphorical circumcision of 

the heart—a spiritual cleansing and acceptance of Christ. 194 

This passage is cited directly 

in the book's fourth epigraph: "То обрезание, которое в сердце, по духу, а не по 

букве." On a practical level, Paul's stance on circumcision both opens the church to noncircumcised 

Gentiles and generally lessens the authority of Jewish law (to which Paul 

had been a strict adherent prior to his conversion). In Lavinia, Shvarts frequently 

expands these moves toward a universal church and away from a code of laws to the 

point of what would normally be considered blasphemy. Thus, Shvarts's heroine, like 

Paul, provides a radical, new interpretation of religious life. She not only accepts Paul's 

metaphorical concept of the "circumcision of the heart," but she realizes the metaphor, 

most explicitly in Lavinia's nineteenth lyric, "Обрезание сердца": 

Значит, хочешь от меня 

Жертвы кровавой. 

На, возьми—живую кровь, 

Плоть, Любовь и славу. 

Нет, не крайнюю плоть— 

Даже если была б—это мало, 

А себя заколоть 

И швырнуть Тебе в небо. 

Хоть совсем не голубица— 

Захриплю я голубицей. 

Миг еще пылает Жизнь, 

194 Goldstein cites the following figurative definition of circumcision from the Oxford English Dictionary: 

"spiritual purification by, as it were, cutting away sin." Darra Goldstein, "The Heart-Felt Poetry of Elena 

Shvarts," in Fruits of Her Plume, ed. Helena Goscilo (Armonk, New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1993), 250 n.1. 

145

Плещет, пляшет и струится. 

Думала я—Ангел схватит 

В миг последний лезвие, 

Но Тебе желанна жертва— 

Сердца алое зерно. 

So, you want from me 

A bloody sacrifice. 

Here, take it—living blood, 

Flesh, Love and glory. 

No, not the foreskin— 

Even if I had some, it wouldn't be enough, 

Instead I'll stab myself 

And hurl myself up in the sky to You. 

Even though I'm far from an innocent young thing, 

I'll wheeze like a little dove. 

Life still blazes for a moment, 

Splashes, dances and streams. 

I thought the Angel would grab 

The blade at the last minute, 

But Your desired sacrifice— 

Is the scarlet seed of my heart. 195 

In this poem, Lavinia returns Paul's notion of spiritual circumcision to its physical 

literalness; her heart becomes the actual site of circumcision. As a woman, she has no 

foreskin to offer—even if she did, such "outlying flesh" (крайняя плоть) would not be a 

worthy sacrifice. The very core of her heart (зерно сердца), her life source, must be cut 

away. 196 

Throughout the book, Lavinia returns to her heart as the literal location of her 

physical and spiritual pain. Once circumcised, her heart is no longer whole, but can be 

195 Unless otherwise noted, all translations are my own. 

196 This image recalls Pushkin's poem, "Пророк," in which the six-winged seraphim cuts through the heart 

of the poet with a sword. Like the prophet, Lavinia spreads the word of her physical sacrifice through her 

poetry. 

146

invaded and tempted by various demons and alien forces. These "characters" constitute 

one of the book's major narrative threads. 197 

The first three stanzas of "Обрезание сердца" are filled with violent physical 

detail: repeated images of blood and flesh; the forceful actions of taking, stabbing, 

hurling (возьми, заколоть, швырнуть); and the frantic last gasps of her circumcised 

heart, blazing and streaming for one final moment before her imminent death. Combined 

with Lavinia's extremely conversational address to God ("значит," "на"), these details 

create an excruciatingly vivid portrait of self-sacrifice. 

In the final stanza, Shvarts compares her sacrifice to that of Abraham. Having 

shown her willingness to make the sacrifice, she expects an angel to take away the knife 

and reprieve her, as God reprieved Abraham. But such a spiritual offering of devotion is 

not enough, and God does not intervene. The literal circumcision of the heart is carried 

out, and a different model is suggested: Christ's self-sacrifice. Lavinia's familiar address 

to God reflects an intimacy typical of a literal child and parent, not a person and God. 

The imagery of physical torment recalls Christ's sufferings on the cross. The "living 

blood" and flesh (живая кровь, плоть) offered up in the first stanza recall the living 

blood and flesh of Christ offered to man in the Eucharist. 198 

Lavinia, like Christ, is God's 

chosen sacrifice (желанна жертва). 

This poem is typical of Lavinia's verse in many ways: the immediacy of its 

conversational tone and language; its violent, physical imagery particularly in describing 

self-mutilation; its specificity to the female gender; its emphasis on the physical and 

spiritual center of the heart; and, most importantly, its realization of metaphors, the 

197 For a discussion of the heart as the locus of Shvarts's poetry, see Goldstein, "The Heart-Felt Poetry of 

Elena Shvarts." 

198 See John 6:48-55. 

147

central one being the metaphor of Lavinia and Christ. I will argue below that this 

metaphor makes up the main narrative thrust of Lavinia's works and days; Lavinia's verse 

describes an attempt at a literal imitation of Christ's life. 

Here, I wish to single out the structural importance of the book's title. In the 

space of nine words Shvarts has introduced three major themes which will be explored 

and developed throughout Lavinia: the nature of being a poet, invoked by the poetic 

heritage of Hesiod's Works and Days and complicated by Shvarts's ventriloquism of 

Lavinia's verse; the notion of a universal church freed from a strict code of laws 

suggested by Lavinia's name and Paul's call for the circumcision of the heart; and the 

concept of self-sacrifice, developed within the (partial) title poem, "Обрезание сердца," 

to suggest a correspondence between Lavinia and Christ. 

Epigraphs 

The themes of the universal church and the role of the poet are recapitulated in the 

ten epigraphs which follow the title page. Placed before the publisher's foreword, the 

sister's letter and Lavinia's poems, the epigraphs seem to be Shvarts's personal selection 

rather than the choice of her fictional characters. The fact that there are ten epigraphs 

suggests that Shvarts is providing her own set of commandments—one not tied to strict 

religious law or a particular religious or ethnic tradition. The first epigraph, from Paul's 

letter to the Corinthians, supports such a reading. An imperative, it calls on the reader to 

disregard traditional ways of thinking. In order to be wise, one must be mad: Хочешь 

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быть мудрым в веке сем, будь безумным. 199 

The list of epigraphs which follows can 

be read as a highly personalized, "mad" set of guidelines or instructions for the book. 

In typical fashion, perhaps true to her autodidactic background, Shvarts takes the 

epigraphs from a variety of different sources and traditions: two from the bible (#1 and 

#4), two from apocryphal works (#2 and #3), one from a Rilke short story (#5), two 

apparently from Buddhist texts (#6 and #7), and the final three from poetry by her 

Russian contemporaries. They are not linked in any obvious way—in fact, when read in 

succession they seem more confusing than enlightening. In many cases the sources are 

not widely known (the religious poet Burikhin, the obscure Безумный Линь 200 ) and 

appear to be Shvarts's personal muses. She cites them with little or no context, often 

eliding critical information that would make them more accessible. For example, the 

second epigraph, "Да раздражу глубину сердечную" is cited from the "Lives of the 

Fathers" (из Патерика), but it is not clear to which Paterik it refers, who is speaking, or 

what is being discussed. It does, however, help prepare the reader for the disconcerting 

poetry which will follow—poetry which will agitate the reader's heart as well as 

strengthen it, both potential meanings of the verb раздражать. Again, Shvarts 

emphasizes the heart as the center of spiritual and physical torment and growth. 

The third epigraph is in the form of a riddle and solution: Иоанн рече: Что есть 

гроб хождаше, а в нем мертвец пояше? Василий рече: Кит в море хождаше, а Иона 

в чреве песнь Богу пояше. In the following epigraphs, no such resolution is provided. 

The fifth epigraph, like the third, begins with a question, «Но с чем же может 

199 The notion that madness can lead to spiritual wisdom recalls the tradition of holy fools in Russia. 

200 I have not been able to find a definitive source for the seventh epigraph attributed to "Безумный Линь." 

When asked via email, Shvarts wrote that Lin' was apparently a Daoist poet and thinker, but she could no 

longer recall where the citation came from (private email correspondence, August 16, 2002). 

149

граничить Россия с этих двух сторон?» A response, but no answer, is included: 

"«…Вы это знаете!»—вскричал больной." Taking this epigraph from a story in Rilke's 

Geschichten vom Lieben Gott, Shvarts not only elides crucial information, but even alters 

the original text. In Rilke's story, the question is asked by Evald, an invalid who is 

listening to the narrator's description of his trip to Russia. In response, the narrator tries 

to map out the geography of Russia in spiritual terms. He is not interested in the 

traditional measures of latitude and longitude, instead he asks Evald what borders Russia 

from above and below. Confused, Evald responds with the question cited in the 

epigraph: but what can border Russia from those two directions? In the story, the 

narrator, not the sick man, responds, "Sie wissen es." 201 

By changing the identity of the 

speaker, whether intentionally or not, Shvarts is granting a sick man knowledge. The 

word "больной" refers to Evald's physical paralysis, but following Shvarts's first 

epigraph it could also suggest a spiritually ill person (душевнобольной)—one of the 

madmen who possess true wisdom. 202 

In Rilke's story, Evald ultimately arrives at the 

answer the narrator is looking for: God borders Russia from above and below. By 

leaving out the answer in the epigraph, Shvarts leaves it for her reader to discover, just as 

the narrator of Rilke's story waits for Evald to come to the answer himself. Shvarts thus 

stresses the personal and unique nature of every individual's search for meaning. 

Shvarts's sixth epigraph comes from the Chuang Tzu, a central text of Zen 

Buddhism. Like the Rilke quote, it is broken in half by an ellipsis: Поймав зайца, 

забывают про ловушку... Где мне найти забывшего про слова человека, чтобы с 

201 Rilke, Rainer Maria. "Wie der Verrat nach Russland kam," in Geschichten vom lieben Gott (Leipzig: 

Im Insel-Verlag, 1920), 43. 

202 In Rilke's story Evald's illness also gives him a special spiritual presence. At times, he looks very 

young, almost boylike, at times he seems to turn into an old man. His questions are simple but sincere and 

ultimately reveal deep truths. 

150

ним поговорить? The two parts do not seem to fit together logically—the only thing 

which links them is the act of forgetting. The ellipsis points to the "forgotten" words of 

the original source. In a Russian translation of Chuang Tzu the passage reads: 

Ловушкой пользуются при ловле зайцев. Поймав зайца, забывают про ловушку. 

Словами пользуются для выражения смысла. Постигнув смысл, забывают про 

слова. Где бы найти мне забывшего про слова человека, чтобы с ним 

поговорить? 203 

Here the Daoist philosopher, unlike Shvarts, provides a clear parallelism 

between capturing the hare and capturing words. Just as the trap is forgotten once the 

hare is caught, so are the words forgotten once the meaning is grasped. The concluding 

question, "where can I find someone who has forgotten the words [and thus grabbed the 

meaning], in order to speak with him," poses an impossible situation: you can not speak 

to someone who has forgotten the words. While you may desire to have meaning given 

to you from someone who has already obtained it, you must discover your own words 

and your own path to truth. This message is obscured in the epigraph by the forgotten 

words of Chuang Tzu, just as the answer to Evald's question is held back in the Rilke 

epigraph. The technique of ellipsis thus points to a common theme in two epigraphs 

taken from radically different traditions—the individuality and nontransferability of 

spiritual knowledge and experience. 

The concepts of ellipsis and forgetting point also to the extraordinary, yet 

transitory power of words themselves. According to Chuang Tzu, words are needed to 

reach a truth, but once that truth is attained, they are forgotten. By citing this at the 

beginning of her book, Shvarts suggests that the many words and poems which follow are 

203 Chzhuan-tszy, chapter 26, translated by V.V. Maliavin. [http://skeptik.dp.ua/lib/fil/chu/26.htm] 

(accessed December 19, 2003). 

151

an attempt to attain spiritual enlightenment. As a poet, Shvarts has tremendous respect, 

even reverence for words, but her ultimate project is greater than language. 204 

In the 

end, it is not the words she seeks, but the revelation which can eliminate the need for 

those words. 

The final epigraphs to Lavinia deal with the poet's role as seeker of truth. The 

seventh epigraph, from Безумный Линь, suggests Shvarts's embarkation on her journey 

of discovery: У входа в пещеру/Играю с клубящимся туманом (At the entrance to the 

cave/I play with the swirling fog). The entrance to the cave can be read as a metaphor for 

the entrance to the book of poetry. At this stage, Shvarts is playing with swirling fog— 

the words have not yet provided an overall shape or meaning. The following epigraph, 

taken from Aleksandr Mironov's verse introduction to his Метафизические радости, 

predicts a ruinous end to the poetic journey. In the poem, Mironov describes the 

simplicity and purity of incorporeal poetic wanderings from silence to spiritual fruition: 

Как бестелесны и просты/плутанья наши—/от новой страшной немоты/до Новой 

Чаши. Once the Word of God has been corrupted by the flesh of letters and human 

language, however, the promised Chalice turns into a small, and hollow cup, the object of 

Shvarts's epigraph: И снова станет небольшой и полой чашей. Shvarts alters the 

original text slightly, replacing снова with скоро, again pointing out the incipient nature 

of her book. By citing Mironov's poem, she suggests that Lavinia's poems are not the 

204 When asked what language means to her, Shvarts responded: Для меня язык прежде всего слуга. Я 

очень люблю язык, его богатство, его возможности. К сочинению стихов я отношусь как к 

сакральному, священному акту, когда происходит слияние каких-то сил, идущих не только от меня, 

и даже в меньшей степени идущих от меня, а гораздо больше еще откуда-то. И постольку, 

поскольку действуют совсем какие-то другие силы, они пробуждают и языковые скрытые пласты и 

все, что угодно, другое, когда это нужно. Polukhina, Brodsky, 206. 

152

uncorrupted word of God, but rather that word filtered through her all too human 

experience, mired in flesh. 205 

Shvarts's metapoetic comments become explicit in the ninth epigraph which cites 

Olga Sedakova: Поэт есть тот, кто хочет то, что все/Хотят хотеть... This epigraph 

supports Shvarts's notion of the poet as a seeker of truth and meaning. The poet is not a 

prophet granted truth by default—she is privileged over the non-poet only in her ability to 

desire and to seek truth. The final epigraph is taken from the end of the religious poet 

Igor Burikhin's long poem "Февральский демон," which concerns itself with the same 

struggle between flesh and the spirit that will torment Lavinia. The lines Shvarts cites 

provide a concluding call to God: И все же силою любви/с гнездом подняться от 

земли./Сам Господи, благослови!.. (And with that same power of love/rise up from the 

earth with the nest./The very Lord, give your blessing!) With this request for a 

benediction, Shvarts embarks on Lavinia's spiritual journey toward God. 

While the epigraphs at first seem like a puzzling array of unrelated thoughts, they 

ultimately guide us into the book that follows. In their diversity of sources they support 

the ecumenical mission set out in Paul's "circumcision of the heart"; several address the 

central theme of the role of the poet and poetic work; the Rilke and Corinthians epigraphs 

are tied by their association of madness and wisdom; the Rilke and Chuang Tzu citations 

are connected through the technique of ellipsis. The epigraphs resonate not only with 

each other and with elements of the title, but also with the subsequent poems. Jonah will 

reemerge in Lavinia's poem, "Левиафан"; themes and images related to madness and 

205 Mironov's epigraph is hinted at in the seventy-fifth poem of the book, "Сатори," which will be 

discussed later in the chapter. 

153

forgetting will figure repeatedly in her verse; and Rilke's new kind of geography will 

provide a thematic focus for the book. 

After the ten epigraphs, Shvarts inserts two more voices before finally producing 

Lavinia's own verse. First comes a foreword from the fictitious publisher, identified 

grammatically as male. 206 

Primarily a publisher of contemporary psychological studies 

(труды по современной психологии), he makes an exception in the case of Lavinia's 

poetry, seeing in it an example of a psychological event—the spontaneous eruption 

(взрыв) of the unconscious within a modern consciousness. Lavinia confronts this 

eruption head-on, and, as a result, loses her mind. While the foreword is couched in the 

publisher's "mock-pompous tones" 207 and impersonal, pseudo-scientific language, it 

nonetheless guides the reader into Lavinia's verse. By referring at the outset to Lavinia's 

decline into madness, the publisher takes away some of the narrative tension. No longer 

concerned with "what will happen," he can focus his attention on the major themes in 

Lavinia's verse: organic ecumenism and unorthodoxy (неортодоксальность) combined 

with deep faith—issues not ordinarily attributed to academic works of psychology. The 

publisher emphasizes the separateness of Lavinia's poems, referring to them in the plural 

(произведения монахини Лавинии, присланные нам ее сестрой) rather than as one 

work or collection, but he recognizes their composite power to provide insight not only 

into one case study of a mad nun, but into the modern human condition as a whole. He 

concludes with an explicit wish that Lavinia's verse reach beyond his typical audience of 

206 Midway through the introduction, the editor writes, "я бы даже сказал." 

207 Heldt, "The Poetry of Elena Shvarts," 383. Heldt has suggested that the foreword might be in imitation 

of Dostoevsky's footnote to Notes from Underground. Here, however, Shvarts creates a fictitious character 

(the male publisher) to write the foreword, whereas Dostoevsky claims the footnote as his own. Also, 

while concerned with the predicament of "contemporary" man, her publisher ultimately seeks selfknowledge 

rather than the societal awareness Dostoevsky calls for in Notes. 

154

psychoanalysts and provide contemporary man with a better self-understanding: Мы 

надеемся, что эта причудливая смесь видений, фантомов, медитаций, простых 

признаний и непритязательных наблюдений даст пищу не только психоаналитикам, 

но и послужит к лучшему самопознанию современного человека. 

Such a goal recalls the spiritual project of Shvarts's poetry—to discover and 

express some sort of new reality, new knowledge. 208 

The publisher's description of 

Lavinia's verse as a "fantastic/odd mixture" more concretely echoes Shvarts's own 

description of the "маленькая поэма" genre: Сам сюжет состоит из борьбы 

метафизических идей, видений, чувствований, причудливо смешанных с мелкими 

происшествиями жизни. Контрапункт противоречий всегда находит 

гармоническое разрешение. 209 

Like the publisher, Shvarts aims to provide some 

greater understanding, a "harmonic resolution" of the dissonant, seemingly unconnected 

pieces of the whole. Thus it is largely Shvarts's voice that emerges in the foreword, 

disguised in the publisher's academic, anti-poetic language, to guide the reader into the 

text and into Lavinia's world. 

The foreword is followed by a letter from Lavinia's fellow nun to the publisher 

(Письмо сестры к издателю). 210 

Written in verse, it introduces Lavinia's poetry, 

describing the convent where Lavinia worshipped and Lavinia herself: 

Где этот монастырь—сказать пора: 

Где пермские леса сплетаются с Тюрингским лесом, 

Где молятся Франциску, Серафиму, 

208 У меня не столько эстетические задачи, сколько какие-то другие. Не хочу говорить духовные, но 

это какое-то постижение иной реальности через вещи, через людей, через себя саму, постижение 

чего-то иного. Это попытка получить знание, а какими средствами—мне более или менее 

безразлично. Polukhina, Brodsky, 201. 

209 Shvarts, Sochineniia¸ v.2, 62. Emphasis mine. 

210 These multiple letters and epigraphs which precede Lavinia's verse recall the vast amount of 

introductory material in Tsvetaeva's "Poema bez geroia." In both cases, the additional voices initially 

crowd out the central text and lyric persona. 

155

Где служат вместе ламы, будды, бесы, 

Где ангел и медведь не ходят мимо, 

Где вороны всех кормят и пчела— 

Он был сегодня, будет и вчера. 

Каков он с виду—расскажу я тоже, 

Круг огненный, змеиное кольцо, 

Подвал, чердак, скалистая гора, 

Корабль хлыстовский, остров Божий— 

Он был сегодня, будет и вчера. 

А какова была моя сестра? 

Как свечка в яме. Этого довольно. 

Рос волосок седой из правого плеча. 

Умна, глупа—и этого довольно. 

Она была как шар—моя сестра, 

И по ночам в садах каталась, 

Глаза сияли, губы улыбались, 

Была сегодня, будет и вчера. 

Where this nunnery is—it's time to say— 

Where the Permian forest blends with Thuringian forest, 

Where they pray to Serafim and Francis, 

Where lamas, buddhas, and demons worship together, 

Where the angel and the bear do not pass by, 

Where the ravens and the bees feed everyone— 

It was today and will be yesterday. 

What it looks like—I will also tell. 

A fiery circle, ring of snakes, 

Cellar, attic, sheer cliff face, 

Ship of the Khlyst sectarians, god's isle— 

It was today and will be yesterday. 

And what sort of a person was my sister? 

Like a candle in a pit. Enough of that. 

A grey hair grew from her right shoulder. 

Wise and stupid—that's enough of that. 

She was like a ball—my sister, 

At nights she would go rolling through the gardens, 

Her lips were smiling and her eyes were ardent— 

She was today, she will be yesterday. 211 

211 With one exception—the substitution of "demons" for "devils" in the fourth line—this translation is 

taken from Michael Molnar. Elena Shvarts, Paradise (London: Bloodaxe Press, 1993), 111. 

156

This poem can be read as an almost programmatic statement of Shvarts's ecumenical 

outlook. Apparent oppositions are synthesized within a universal church: the convent 

resembles both a cellar and an attic (подвал, чердак); nuns come together with lamas, 

buddhas and demons to worship saints from both the Eastern and Western Christian 

traditions (Serafim and Francis). Outside of the physical constraints of space and time, 

the convent represents the juncture of two geographically distant forests (Permian and 

Thuringian) and the intersection of the present and the past, the past and the future (Он 

был сегодня, будет и вчера). 212 

Similarly, opposites converge within Lavinia: she 

combines light and darkness, like a candle in a pit; she is both wise and stupid (умна, 

глупа). 213 

These oppositions within the convent and Lavinia herself find a "harmonic 

resolution" in spherical images of a ball (шар), a fiery circle (круг огненный), and a 

circle of snakes (змеиное кольцо), reminiscent of the ouroboros, the symbol of a snake 

with its tail in its mouth representing the eternal circle of life and the wholeness of being. 

In fact, the sister's poem provides the clearest moment of harmonic resolution to 

be found in the book. The very form of the sister's letter creates a harmony 

uncharacteristic of Lavinia's and Shvarts's verse. Written in consistent iambs with a lead 

rhyme which repeats in each of the poems three stanzas, the poem stands out in its 

normalcy from the shifting, often jarring rhythms typical of Shvarts's verse. 214 

This sense 

of harmony owes much to the sister's use of repetition: extensive anaphora in the first 

seven lines of the poem; the repetition of the phrase "этого довольно" in the final stanza; 

212 In Molnar's Paradise translation, poems excerpted from Lavinia are preceded by the following 

description of the convent of the Circumcision of the Heart: "На скрещении времен, пространств и 

религий стоит вообржаемый монастырь Обрезанья Сердца." (Shvarts, Paradise, 110) 

213 This second opposition recalls the equation of madness (signaled here by apparent stupidity) and 

wisdom in the first epigraph, and the suggestion by the publisher that Lavinia's record of her decline into 

madness will lead to a better understanding of the self. 

214 For a discussion of Shvarts's "polyrhythmic verse," see Skidan, "Summa poetiki," 285-7. 

157

and, most importantly, the repetition of the final line of each stanza (with a slight change 

in the third): Он был сегодня, будет и вчера. This line reinforces the eternal cyclicity 

suggested by the spherical imagery. It takes on the quality of a mantra, becoming natural 

through repetition, despite its temporal illogic and stands in sharp contrast to the 

explosive, unsettling nature of much of Lavinia's verse. Take, for example, the opening 

lines of "Ипподром," Lavinia's first poem which immediately follows the sister's letter: 

Слова копытами стучат. В средине дров 

Расколется пылающее сердце. 

Words thunder like hooves. In the middle of the wood 

The flaming heart will split. 

The soothing abstractions of the sister's letter are replaced by thundering words, 215 

enlivened like horses' hooves. A flaming heart takes the place of the convent's fiery 

circle, but, instead of symbolizing the eternal synthesis of opposites, it splits. The verb 

"расколоться," while the standard verb for "to split," here surely suggests the religious 

meaning of "раскол," schism. The whole heart, perhaps the ideal of the universal church, 

is split apart in the middle of the wood, just as the first line of Lavinia's verse is split 

apart by enjambment. 

In imagery, tone, and form, these lines depart dramatically from the harmony of 

the sister's letter. Throughout this poem and the book, Lavinia will continue to produce 

such volatile verse, providing no explicit resolution to her seemingly disparate poems. 

The reader, aided by the various introductory material of the epigraphs, the foreword and 

the letter, is left to try and synthesize her poems—to understand the wholeness of the 

book. 

215 It is noteworthy that Lavinia's "first word" as a poet is "words." 

158

The Geography of Lavinia. 

In the introductory material Shvarts sets out one of the central unifying features of 

Lavinia: the metaphysical location of Lavinia's world. Such a location is first suggested 

in the Rilke epigraph which proposes a new kind of geography: a physical space (Russia) 

bordered by a spiritual entity (God). Lavinia's world is described more specifically in the 

sister's letter to the publisher. Twelve of the poem's twenty lines are devoted to Lavinia's 

convent. The first stanza gives its location—a physical, temporal, and geographical 

impossibility; the second describes its various contradictory physical traits. Even though 

the letter's purpose is to introduce the publisher (and subsequently the reader) to Lavinia, 

she is not mentioned until the third stanza (as "сестра"). 

The poem's geographical focus points to the importance of the location of 

Lavinia's verse—where the events described in her verse take place and where that verse 

is produced. This location is both the convent and Lavinia's own body. Lavinia can not 

be understood or even approached without reference to the space she inhabits. Her 

similarity to the convent—a contradictory yet spherical shape, a strangely eternal 

presence—suggests an equivalence of personhood and location. It appears impossible to 

separate one from the other; the physical and the spiritual are wholly intertwined. 

This becomes more apparent in Lavinia's own verse, where she frequently equates the 

physical space of a church with the human body. Her first explicit description of a place 

of worship comes in her third poem: 

Храм тем больше храм, чем меньше храм он. 

Помню я—церквушечка одна 

Вся замшелая, как ракушка. Ночами 

В ней поет и служит тишина. 

Там в проломы входят утра и закаты, 

159

И луна лежит на алтаре, 

Сад кругом дичающий, косматый 

Руки в окна опускает в сентябре. 

Только голубь вдруг вкось 

Вспорхнет из колонны, 

На которой коростой свилось 

Спасенье Ионы. 

Пагода, собор или костел— 

Это звездный, это—Божий дом, 

Забредут ли волк или прохожий— 

Ветер напоит его вином. 

Ангел даст серебрянного хлеба. 

Ты, когда разрушишься,—тобой 

Завладеют тоже ветер, небо, 

Тишины неукротимый вой. 

The less a temple is like a temple, the more it is a temple. 

I remember—there was a little church 

All overgrown with moss like a cockle shell. At night 

Silence sings and worships in it. 

There mornings and evenings enter through its gaps, 

And the moon lies on the altar, 

Running wild all around, the shaggy garden 

Lowers its arms [loses heart] through the windows in September. 

Only a dove will suddenly off at a slant 

Take wing from the column 

On which like a scab is curled up 

The escape of Jonah. 

A pagoda, an Orthodox cathedral or a Catholic church— 

It is a celestial home—God's home, 

Whether a wolf or a passerby drops in 

The wind will intoxicate him with wine. 

An angel will give some silver bread. 

You, when you fall apart—you too 

The wind and sky will claim, 

The indomitable howl of silence. 

160

This poem echoes the sister's letter in several ways. The temple, like the sister's convent, 

represents a seemingly contradictory space: the less like a temple it is, the more it is a 

temple. The first and last stanzas end with oxymorons reminiscent of the impossible 

contradictions found throughout the sister's letter: singing silence; the indomitable wail 

of silence. Here, the feminine noun тишина appears to take the place Lavinia held in the 

sister's letter. Its contradictory nature—ability to sing, worship and wail—brings to mind 

Lavinia's split between wisdom and madness (умна, глупа) and her role as both 

worshiper and poet. The nighttime designation (ночами) recalls the image of Lavinia 

rolling through the gardens at night (по ночам) in the sister's letter. 

The poem's fourth stanza reiterates the importance of a temple as a universal 

space (here, Божий дом; in the sister's letter, остров Божий). Its form is unimportant, be 

it a pagoda, Orthodox cathedral or Catholic church, as long as it welcomes all those who 

wish to enter it: the mornings and evenings, the moon, the garden, the wolf and the 

passerby. The third line of the stanza, "Забредут ли волк или прохожий," most 

specifically recalls the angel and the bear who do not pass by the sister's convent ("ангел 

и медведь не ходят мимо"). 

The distant, mythical actions described in the sister's letter, however, become 

much more personalized and mystical in Lavinia's poem. In the sister's letter, crows feed 

everyone in the convent (вороны всех кормят) as, according to the bible, they fed the 

prophet Ilya. 216 In Lavinia's poem the ministration of food takes on a very particular 

character: the wind provides wine, the angel offers silver bread in a strange form of 

communion. Lavinia's description has a specificity and uniqueness not found in the 

sister's letter. 

216 3 Kings XVII, 4-6. 

161

Formally, the poem is quite distinct from the sister's verse as well: occasionally 

disrupted trochees take the place of steady iambs; sudden shifts and breaks replace 

frequent repetitions. Lavinia's poem opens with a consistently trochaic aphorism (Храм 

тем больше храм, чем меньше храм он) reminiscent of the sister's mantra "Он был 

сегодня, будет и вчера," but the calm sense of abstraction is quickly disturbed when 

Lavinia introduces her personal memory of a little church. In the third line (Vsia 

zamshélaia, kak rakúshka. Nochámi) she disrupts the meter and uses enjambment, never 

employed in the sister's letter, for the first time. 

The poem's most distinct break is found in the third stanza. After the steadily 

trochaic second stanza, the first two lines of the stanza are broken by enjambment. 

Trochees are suddenly mixed with spondees (vdrúg vkós') and iambs (vsporkhnёt). The 

lines, previously pentameter or hexameter, range from two to four stresses and six to nine 

syllables. The breaks in meter and line correspond to the explosive subject matter: a 

dove suddenly takes wing from a column around which is wrapped an image of Jonah 

being expelled from the whale. 

The final formal break in the poem takes place between the last two stanzas: the 

description of communion is split between the last line of the fourth stanza (the wine) and 

the first line of the fifth (the bread). While not technically an enjambment (both lines are 

complete sentences), such a break shakes up the previously stable stanzaic structure in 

which each of the first three quatrains is a self-contained unit. The final stanza is the 

most rhythmically consistent in the poem (trochaic pentameter throughout with 

alternating rhymes), but in terms of content it is the most diverse. The tail end of the 

communion is followed by a sudden address to an unknown "ты." A comparison is made 

162

etween the destruction of the temple and the future destruction of this addressee: both 

will inevitably be possessed by the howl of silence. 

All of these breaks and shifts unsettle the reader, yet they do not overpower the 

poem's overall structure. The poem consists of five clearly delineated quatrains with 

alternating rhyme. 217 

Largely symmetrical in form, it reaches a dynamic climax in the 

middle quatrain. The end of the poem returns the reader to its beginning by comparing 

the addressee of the final stanza to the overgrown little church of the first and by recalling 

the sonorous silence. The signs of disturbance within this whole seem to reflect the 

unsettled nature of Lavinia's internal world, a world which, like the poem, still retains a 

sense of coherence and has not yet collapsed into madness. Despite her unpredictability 

and idiosyncrasy, Lavinia is ultimately able to provide a powerful picture of her church 

as an open universal space, comparable to the body of an individual human being. 

This comparison of church and human body, already suggested in the parallels between 

the convent and Lavinia in the sister's letter, 218 evolves into an explicit equation in the 

thirty-fourth poem of Lavinia: "Весенняя церковь" ("Spring Church"): 

Печальное постное пенье 

Проникло легко под ребра 

И сердца лампаду 

Протерло 

Ладонью. 

Как будто я стала сама 

Мягкою белою церковью, 

И толпы детей и старушек 

Входили, крестясь и мигая, 

Мне в чрево и кланялись сердцу, 

А сердце дымящим кадилом 

Качалось, так мерно качалось. 

Когда же они уходили— 

217 The first rhyme in the first stanza is inexact, and the fourth stanza has only one rhyme. 

218 This connection is also suggested in the fifth poem which repeats images from the third poem to 

describe Lavinia's own body. I will discuss this poem later in the chapter. 

163

В буреющий снег полей 

Храм под дождем опускался 

И в сумерки растворялся 

Замерзшим забытым ягненком, 

Разорванной смятою грудой. 

Печальное постное пенье 

С врачебным презреньем вонзалось 

Мне в сердце—и там оказалось 

То же, что и у всех— 

Тьмы потоки, безмерности малость, 

Бог, завернутый в черный мех. 

Sad Lenten singing 

Lightly penetrated under my ribs, 

And the icon lamp of my heart 

It rubbed 

With its palm. 

As if I myself became 

A soft white church, 

And crowds of children and old women, 

Crossing themselves and blinking, entered 

My womb and bowed to my heart, 

And my heart like a smoking censer 

Rocked, so evenly rocked. 

But when they left— 

Into the browning snow of the fields 

The temple collapsed under the rain 

And dissolved in the twilight 

Like a frozen forgotten lamb, 

Like a torn, crumpled heap. 

Sad Lenten singing 

With medical scorn was piercing 

My heart—and there appeared 

The same thing that is in everyone— 

Streams of darkness, a bit of immensity, 

God, wrapped up in black fur. 

In this poem Lavinia describes her emotional and spiritual reaction to sad, Lenten singing 

in concrete, physical terms. She transforms the song into a physical entity which can 

exert its force on her literally as well as metaphorically: it enters her body, penetrating 

under her ribs and rubbing the icon lamp of her heart. The importance of the physical 

164

space is highlighted by the break in meter—the first twelve lines are entirely 

amphibrachic except for the seventh line: Мягкою белою церковью. 

Lavinia expands the image of the heart as icon lamp to a comparison of her entire 

body to a soft white church. Further realizing this metaphor, she describes the crowds of 

children and old women who physically enter her womb and bow to her heart. As in the 

sister's letter and Lavinia's third poem, she presents a church open to the outside—the 

children and old women are like the angel and the bear, the wolf and the passerby. 

This association of church and body recalls the equation of Christ's body with the whole 

Christian church, capable of uniting both Jew and Gentile. 219 

When the visitors leave 

Lavinia's body, however, the empty church dissolves in a heap. Her church-like body is a 

modest imitation of Christ's body; her heart, like everyone else's, contains only a bit of 

the immensity of Christ's love. This attempt to imitate Christ constitutes the narrative 

center of Lavinia's book. 

Several other poems in Lavinia's book focus on churches and temples, often 

highlighting the connection between the holy place and Lavinia herself. In the thirtieth 

poem, "Моя молельня," Lavinia describes her ability to create a place of prayer 

anywhere—even in the metro: 

Свою палатку для молитвы 

Я разбиваю где угодно— 

219 See Paul's Letter to the Ephesians, 2:13-22, 5:29-30. This letter, while possibly not written by Paul 

himself, shares his ecumenical viewpoint: "Gentiles and Jews, [Christ] has made the two one, and in his 

own body of flesh and blood has broken down the barrier of enmity which separated them; for he annulled 

the law with its rules and regulations, so as to create out of the two a single new humanity in himself, 

thereby making peace. This was his purpose, to reconcile the two in a single body to God through the 

cross, by which he killed the enmity" (2:14-16). In the next verses, the imagery shifts abruptly to describe 

Christ as a building rather than a body: "You are built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with 

Christ Jesus himself as the corner-stone. In him the whole building is bonded together and grows into a 

holy temple in the Lord. In him you also are being built with all the others into a spiritual dwelling for 

God" (2:20-22). This and future biblical citations are taken from The Oxford Study Bible (New York: 

Oxfod University Press, 1992). 

165

В метро, в постели или в бане— 

Где это Господу угодно. 

My tent for prayer 

I pitch anywhere— 

In the metro, in bed or in the banya— 

Wherever God pleases. 

Later in the poem, Lavinia creates a tiny altar out of her palms into which flies her 

double, no bigger than a cicada; 220 Lavinia is both worshiper and place of worship. 

Lavinia again describes herself as a place of peace in the thirty-seventh poem, "Чудище": 

Я—город, и площадь, и рынок, 

И место для тихих прогулок 

Для перипатетиков-духов 

И ангельский театр, и сад. 

Я—город, я—крошечный город 

Великой Империи. Остров 

В зеленых морях винограда. 

I am a city, and a town square, and a market, 

And a place for quiet strolls 

Of itinerant spirits, 

And an angelic theater, and a garden. 

I am a city, I am a tiny city 

Of a Great Empire. An Island 

In green seas of grapes. 

These lines recall Lavinia's earlier descriptions of churches and temples. Wanderers 

continue to enter her body and stroll within her. A microcosm of God's "Great Empire," 

she again seems to represent or imitate Christ's body, the Church. Lavinia's use of the 

word "island" evokes the description of the convent in the sister's letter as "God's island" 

(остров Божий); later on in the poem, Lavinia describes herself as round (круглый), 

again recalling the sister's depiction of the convent as a circle (круг) or ring (кольцо), 

and Lavinia as a sphere (шар). 

220 While not explicitly stated in the poem, the double imagery was confirmed by Shvarts: Лавиния 

создает маленького двойника (не больше цикады) и прячет в ладонях, в домике из ладоней (personal 

email communication of August 16, 2002). 

166

By the end of the book, Lavinia is forcibly thrown out of the convent. In the 

book's fifty-eighth poem, she resists, threatening to drag the convent along with her: Я 

поволоку с собою/…Монастырь весь. It is seemingly impossible to separate the 

person from the place—the nun from the convent. Ultimately, however, she is cast out 

and thrown into a ditch in the final poem, "Скит." As the poem's title suggests, she 

replaces the convent with a private hermitage, one which fits her perfectly. The 

longstanding issue of Lavinia's location and, by association, her very identity, is resolved 

in this final poem. 

От Рождества до Пасхи: An Imitation of Christ 

Already in the subtitle, Shvarts lays out a timeline for Lavinia's works: от 

Рождества до Пасхи. The poems do indeed follow this temporal progression from 

Christmas to Easter, both in seasonal and spiritual terms. In the fourth, seventh, and 

eighth poems Lavinia describes the snow and ice of the surrounding winter; Christmas 

arrives in the eleventh lyric, "Темная Рождественская песнь," and is celebrated in the 

twelfth, "Сочельник"; spring breaks in the twenty-first poem, "Капель." While time 

markers are absent in many poems, by the end of the book, as Easter approaches, the 

references become more specific and more frequent. Several poems refer to Lent, the 

fifty-second explicitly marking Lavinia's passage halfway through the Fast. The sixtythird 

lyric is titled "Последние минуты Страстной" ("The final minutes of Holy 

Week"), and by the seventy-first poem, "Ночь на Великую Субботу," Lavinia has 

reached the eve of Easter. 

167

Despite this seemingly straightforward progression through a single season, 

Lavinia perceives time as changeable and fluid. 221 

In the sixty-eighth lyric, she describes 

the days of Lent as expanding and contracting like an accordian (Дни перед Пасхой, дни 

Поста/Гармошкой со-разводятся). Three poems later in "Воскрешение апостолом 

Петром Тавифы и попытка подражания," time rolls itself up into a ball of incense 

(Скаталось время в дымный шар,/В шар фимиамный), allowing Lavinia to be present 

simultaneously at Peter's raising of Tabitha and at her own modern-day attempt at a 

resurrection. 

The book's subtitle similarly incorporates both biblical and "real" time: as 

Lavinia proceeds through the calendar year, marking the holidays of a single holy season, 

she invokes a sense of ritualized time associated with the repeatable, cyclical pattern of 

Christ's life and death. 222 

For Lavinia, this pattern is not simply repetitive, but 

cumulative. In "Ночь на Великую Субботу," she describes Christ's suffering as 

increasing with each year and each crucifixion: 

Две тыщи лет назад 

Он ранен был, 

Как треснул ад. 

Он так вопил, 

И мечется—ведь раны злее 

С годами, злоба тяжелее. 

Two thousand years ago 

He was wounded, 

As hell collapsed. 

He wailed horribly, 

And he tosses about—since the wounds are more terrible 

With the years, the malice more difficult to bear. 

221 This mutability of time was first suggested in the final lines of the sister's letter: Была сегодня, будет и 

вчера. 

222 Skidan has described Shvarts's poetry as "anachronistic" and based in "messianic time," juxtaposing it to 

Brodsky's verse which is grounded in chronology and history. Skidan, "Summa poetiki," 287. 

168

Throughout this poem, Lavinia shifts between the present, future and past tenses. Here, 

the seamless transition in tense from вопил to мечется allows the present and the past to 

overlap; Christ's suffering and Lavinia's experience of that suffering are simultaneously 

both divided by millennia and contemporaneous. 

This mutability of time is reflected in the mutability of the figures of Lavinia and 

Christ. Over the course of the book, Lavinia attempts to become closer to God and, in the 

process, imitates and at times seems to exchange herself for Christ. Thus, the subtitle 

"От Рождества од Пасхи" refers not so much to Christ's journey from birth to 

resurrection, as to Lavinia's own parallel journey. In the Christmas poems, for example, 

very little attention is paid to the actual birth of Christ. Instead, Lavinia becomes the 

focus—first as an awed witness and celebrant of birth in "Темная Рождественская 

песнь" and "Сочельник," then as the one being born in "Левиафан." 

In "Темная Рождественская песнь," Lavinia attempts to understand the very 

nature of birth—to reveal the origins of the Feminine, the source of life and multiplicity: 

Разъем я кислотою слов— 

Откуда Женское возникло, 

Откуда Множественность свисла 

Ветвями темных трех дубов. 

With the bitterness of words I will eat away at 

The place where the Feminine emerged, 

The place where plurality hung down 

Like the branches of three dark oaks. 

Lavinia first traces the Feminine to the terrible maiden (страшная Девица) Venus, but 

ultimately arrives at the Virgin Mary as a microcosm for the entire universe (Дева, 

Дева—Микрокосм). It is through her that all of humanity has come into contact with 

God. In order to become closer to God, a person must emulate the Virgin by accepting 

169

God into oneself and laboring to give birth to Him. In the poem, Lavinia literalizes this 

notion, granting even the three Magi the ability to conceive and give birth: 223 

Шли три царя. Не понимали, 

Куда идут и сколько дней. 

И только знали, что зачали, 

Что их самих родят вначале,— 

Но и они родят теперь. 

The three kings were on their way. They did not understand 

Where they were going or how long they had been traveling. 

They only knew that they conceived, 

That they gave birth to themselves in the beginning— 

And they even were giving birth now. 224 

By the end of the poem, Lavinia vows to watch and sing over these colorful angels who 

cry out in labor: 

И я лечу туда и буду 

Над теми, плача, петь полями— 

Над зимними, где апельсинами 

Лежат, измучены, как пахари, 

Цветные ангелы—и синюю 

Мглу рвут и охами и ахами. 

And I will fly there and will 

sing, crying, over those fields— 

Over the winter fields, where, like oranges 

Tormented, like ploughmen, lie 

The colorful angels—and tear the deep blue 

Gloom with their cries of Oh and Ah. 

In "Сочельник," Lavinia continues to focus on the feminine activity surrounding 

Christmas. She calls on her fellow nuns to retrieve the clothing of Christmas from a hole 

223 I am indebted to Shvarts for enlightening this "dark" poem in an email correspondence: Посколько 

ниже «Дева-Микрокосм», становится понятно, что все превращается в «женское», человек (в целом) 

становится Девой, поэтому и три царя тоже превращаются в женщин. И, как таковые, могут родить. 

Ведь человек (и человечество) в Христианском смысле вошел в соприкосновение с Богом (принял 

Его в себя) через Деву, женщину. И цари должны ими (женщинами) стать, чтобы приблизиться к 

Богу. И смысл жизни Лавинии тоже в приближении к истине, к Богу, насколько она может. Это 

написано в духе священного дионисийского безумия, вот как Пифия в Дельфах в Греции изрекала 

«темные» слова. 

224 Again, the expansion of time is evident. Birth is presented as an endlessly repeating event, both present 

and past, not the single event of Christ's birth. 

170

in the frozen river, and to throw it on the shoulders of Christmas Eve. Whatever the 

actual form Christmas takes—it may arrive as a child, a deer or an old man—the nuns 

will react in the same way, dressing Christmas Eve in the night: 

Пускай войдет Сочельник 

Младенцем в пеленах, 

Оленем в снежный ельник 

Со свечками в глазах. 

Приди хотя бы дедом, 

Проснувшимся в гробу, 

А мы тебя оденем 

В ночь со звездой во лбу. 

Let Christmas Eve arrive 

As a swaddled infant, 

As a deer enters a snowy fir-grove 

With candles in his eyes. 

Come even as an old man 

Having woken up in your grave, 

And we will dress you 

In the night with a star on your forehead. 

The next poem, "Левиафан," is not explicitly a Christmas poem (no references to 

the holiday or time markers are given), but it does describe a birth, this time Lavinia's, 

born of a leviathan: 

Левиафан среди лесов 

Лежит наказанный на суше 

Средь пней, осин и комаров, 

Волнуясь синей мощной тушей— 

Его я услыхала зов. 

Он мне кричал через леса: 

«Приди ко мне! Найди дорогу! 

И в чрево мне войди. Потом 

Я изрыгну тебя, ей-богу.» 

И я пришла. Он съел меня. 

И зубы, что острей кинжала, 

Вверху мелькнули. Я лежала 

171

Во тьме горящей без огня. 

Как хорошо мне было там! 

Я позабыла все на свете, 

Что там—за кожею его— 

Есть солнце, и луна, и ветер. 

И только шептала: «Отчаль! 

Брось в море свой дух раскаленный». 

И он заскакал, зарычал: 

«Ты лучше, ты тише Ионы». 

Я позабыла кровь свою, 

Все имена, и смерть, и ужас— 

Уж в море плыл Левиафан, 

Весь в родовых потугах тужась. 

О, роды были тяжкие. Несчастный! 

Кровавый небо сек фонтан. 

Когда я вылетела в пене красной, 

Как глубоко нырнул Левиафан! 

In the middle of the forests a Leviathan 

Lies punished on dry land 

Among stumps, aspens and mosquitos, 

Agitating with his massive blue body— 

I heard his call. 

He shouted to me through the forests: 

"Come to me! Find the way! 

And enter into my belly. 225 Then 

I will spew you forth, I swear." 

And I came. He ate me. 

And his teeth, sharper than a dagger, 

Glinted above me. I lay 

In the darkness which burned without a flame. 

How good I felt there! 

I forgot everything in the world, 

I forgot that there—outside his skin— 

Was the sun, the moon, and the wind. 

225 "Belly" is the more neutral translation, here, but чрево could also be translated as "womb," adding to the 

birth imagery found later in the poem. Like the Magi in "Темная Рождественская песнь," the masculine 

Leviathan is capable of giving birth. 

172

And I only whispered: "Cast off! 

Throw your scorching spirit into the sea." 

And he began to jump, to growl: 

"You are better, quieter than Jonah." 

I forgot my own blood, 

All the names, and death, and terror— 

Leviathan already swam in the sea, 

Straining with all his might in contractions. 

Oh, the labor was difficult. The poor creature! 

A bloody fountain beat the sky. 

When I flew out in the red foam, 

How deep Leviathan dove! 

In this poem, Lavinia radically rewrites the story of Jonah and the whale. Unlike Jonah, 

who attempts to run away from God, Lavinia immediately heeds the call of the 

Leviathan. Once she has entered into his belly, she finds an unearthly peace, forgetting 

the world around her and even her own self. It is as if she has readily journeyed toward a 

beckoning God, and, once she has arrived, experiences heaven—a utopia before the Fall. 

An innocent child of God, she is ultimately born, like Christ, into the world. This link to 

Christ is strengthened by the physical description of the Leviathan's labor in the final 

stanzas, recalling the strange birth imagery in "Темная Рождественская песнь." 

The Leviathan, however, is traditionally a symbol of chaos or Satan, not God. 226 

This could suggest that Lavinia is in fact being enticed by and born of the devil; 227 the 

poem as a whole, however, seems too positive for such a reading. 228 

Instead, Lavinia's 

relationship with the Leviathan highlights other Christ-like qualities in her, specifically 

226 "Leviathan, both in the Bible (Job 41; Ps 74.14; Isa 27.1; see also Job 7.12; Isa 51.9; Hab 3.8) and in 

other ancient Near Eastern literature, is a sea monster representing cosmic chaos." Michael D. Coogan, ed., 

The New Oxford Annotated Bible (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 730. 

227 Later in the book, the devil appears as a tempter in several poems, a few of which I will discuss below. 

228 Sandler describes Lavinia's experience of forgetting in this poem as inherently positive: "time spent 

inside the whale is comforting and revelatory to Lavinia; memories of death and horror are wiped away, 

and her own identity seems washed aside as well." Sandler, "Elena Shvarts and the Distances of Self- 

Disclosure," 103 n.29. By treating the Leviathan as simply a "whale," however, Sandler does not address 

its potentially negative force. 

173

the ability to show compassion for and to save the most wretched of creatures. She frees 

the Leviathan, punished (наказанный) on dry land for some unnamed guilt, and returns 

him with a gentle whisper to his natural habitat, the sea. She takes pity upon him 

(Несчастный!) as he suffers through labor. Ultimately, the Leviathan is soothed and 

dives deep into the water, cooling his scorching spirit. This immersion, inspired by 

Lavinia's quiet words, resembles a baptism; Lavinia, in effect, has helped to direct the 

Leviathan, a Satanic creature, toward God. 229 

At the same time as his spiritual rebirth, 

Lavinia is physically reborn. Once again the mutability of existence is highlighted: each 

gives birth to the other. 230 

Just as Christ's baptism was followed by his withdrawal into the wilderness, so 

the birth of "Левиафан" is soon followed by Lavinia's experience of Lent. In keeping 

with Christian tradition, Lavinia treats the Great Fast before Easter as an opportunity to 

imitate Christ's self-sacrifice in the desert, to resist temptation and become pure and 

clean. 231 

Lavinia, however, takes this imitation to a literal extreme. Her Lenten poems 

do not simply acknowledge spiritual cleansing metaphorically, rather they realize Christ's 

experience as described by Mark: "He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by 

Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him." (Mark 1:13) 

Actual demons, angels, and wild beasts populate Lavinia's book, alternately tempting and 

ministering to her. 

229 In Romans 6:3-4, Paul "likened baptismal immersion to personal sharing in the death, burial, and 

Resurrection of Christ." "Baptism," Encyclopædia Britannica. 2003. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 22 

Aug, 2003 ) Here, Lavinia could be 

seen as encouraging the Leviathan in his own imitation of Christ. 

230 In their phonic resemblance, the names Лавиния and Левиафан suggest that the nun and the leviathan 

are closely connected and potentially interchangeable. Shvarts previously wrote of the exchangeability of 

Jonah and the whale in the 1982 poem, "Книга на окне": Ночь Иона в Ките, через ночь Кит—в Ионе. 

231 See, for example, "В бане," "Вот праздник Поста гремит..." 

174

Like Christ in the wilderness, Lavinia is repeatedly tempted by Satan. He is first 

depicted in the book's twenty-fifth poem, titled "Соблазнитель" in the later editions. 

Here, Lavinia describes what happens when someone fails to pray before bed: Приляжет 

рядом бес—как бы супруг (a demon lies next to you, as if your husband). Upon 

waking, the victim is grabbed by the neck and, half-asleep, enters into carnal relations 

with the incubus (И в полусне с инкубом вступишь в связь). 232 

Unlike Christ, she is 

unable to resist; instead, like Eve, she is seduced by the tender words (Он шепчет на ухо 

так ласково слова) of the cold, ancient snake (холодный, древний змей). 233 

It is 

unclear in the poem whether this seduction actually takes place—whether Lavinia herself 

is seduced. Lavinia uses the generalized ты form throughout the poem to suggest that 

this is something that happens to anyone who goes to sleep without praying. The fact 

that it happens to a half-asleep victim adds to this sense of vague unreality. 

It is not until the twenty-ninth poem that Lavinia is actually captured by the devil, 

who describes her as an easy victim: 

Вы ловитесь на то же, что и все: 

Вино, амур, ням-ням, немного славы. 

Не надо вам изысканней отравы, 

Вы душу отдаете как во сне— 

Так старый бес мне говорил, зевая 

И сплевывая грешных шелуху, 

И за ногу меня в мешок швыряя. 

You are caught by the same things that everyone is: 

Wine, amour, yum-yum, a little bit of glory. 

You don't require a more refined poison, 

You give up your soul as if in a dream— 

So the old demon spoke to me, yawning 

232 As a nun, Lavinia's husband is Christ; here the demon is disguising himself as Christ, suggesting that he 

is indeed Satan, and not an "ordinary" incubus. 

233 In the book's fifty-ninth poem, "Стою ли на молитве или сплю," the devil again tempts her with 

forgotten, carnal love: Лукавый...шепчет про забытую любовь. This time Lavinia resists, pushing her 

"naked, fat love" (нагая, жирная любовь) back into its grave: я вниз/За плечи уложу покойницу уныло. 

175

And spitting out the skin of sinners, 

And hurling me by the leg into his bag. 

Despite this failure, Lavinia continues to resist the devil. In the thirtieth poem, 

"Моя Молельня," she hides from Satan in an invisible bag (Чуть Сатана во мне 

заплачет/Иль беса тянется рука—/В кулек невидимый я прячусь). She urges 

incessant prayer in the thirty-sixth poem in an attempt to create a cathedral without 

windows or doors, impenetrable by unclean spirits (Чтоб вырастал большой собор/Без 

окон и дверей. Ни щели). 234 

When the "Demon of Temptation" (Демон Соблазна) 

threatens her city in the thirty-seventh poem, "Чудище," she survives unscathed after a 

furious battle. 

In the forty-sixth poem, "Игра," Lavinia describes her battle with the devil as a 

game in which she is the goalie, hitting away the ball of temptation (мяч соблазна). 

Exhausted, she collapses into the grass and is thrashed, her face bloodied. All the same, 

she does not give up, but fends off the demons with her neck, her tongue, her eyes (шеей, 

языком,/Глазами отобью я—чем угодно). A lion comes to her aid: 

Тут мне на помощь выступает Лев, 

Он их пронзает золотой стрелою, 

Они кричат и корчатся, а Он 

Мне лечит раны жаркою слюною. 

Here the Lion comes to my aid, 

He pierces them with his golden arrow, 

They shout and contort, while He 

Heals my wounds with his hot saliva. 

234 This incessant repetition of a prayer suggests a Buddhist protective chant. I will discuss other Buddhist 

elements in Lavinia's verse later in the chapter. 

176

This lion is both a wild beast and a ministering angel. He inhabits Lavinia's Lenten 

world, just as beasts and angels lived alongside Christ in the wilderness. 235 

This guardian 

angel first appears in the form of a wolf in the seventh poem, "Ангел-Волк." 236 

After 

emerging out of a deep, dark ice-hole, perhaps even out of Lavinia's own heart, he 

embraces her, and together they wash away the horrors of the world with their wails (Мы 

двойным омыли воем/Бойни, тюрьмы и больницы). At the end of the poem, Lavinia 

asks him not to abandon her in the night: 

Ты меня в седую полночь 

Не оставь одну. 

In the gray midnight 

Don't leave me alone. 

The angel does indeed come to Lavinia at night, aiding her in various ways. In 

the tenth poem, "Уроки Абатиссы," he helps her with her lessons in the convent, 

drawing a map of heaven that the Abbess had requested. In the thirty-first poem, 

"Перемена хранителя," he appears after hearing Lavinia's plaintive cry, repeated 

throughout the night: 

Приди, мой Ангел-Волк. 

Слети, о серый мой, приди, 

О сжалься, сделай милость, 

Come, my Angel-Wolf. 

Fly down, o my gray one, come, 

Oh, take pity, do me a kindness, 

235 The wild beasts mentioned in Mark 4:13 could either represent the dangers of the wilderness, or they 

could suggest the harmony of the world before the fall. In Lavinia's world, the wild beasts and the angels 

are one, although Lavinia, too, will question this in the book's fifty-sixth poem, "Прощание со Львом," 

discussed below. 

236 This poem describes a wintry scene, and comes before the Christmas poems. Thus, the wolf appears 

before Lent, breaking any strict temporal alignment with the angels and wild beasts described in Mark 4:13. 

While Lavinia's experiences are often based on biblical sources, she reinterprets them freely (cf. her 

rewriting of the story of Jonah and the whale). 

177

This time, however, he takes the form of a Lion, again emphasizing the mutability of 

existence in Lavinia's world. The angel changes form because Lavinia herself has 

changed. When asked where the Wolf is, the Lion responds: 

Он умер, умер для тебя, 

Душа твоя сменила цвет, 

Сменилась вместе и судьба. 

He died for you 

Your soul changed its color 

And fate changed along with it. 

Lavinia, however, recognizes the Wolf in him—the Wolf has been transformed, not 

lost. 237 

The new "Wolflion" (Волколев) promises Lavinia that he will not abandon her— 

they are destined to be together, no matter what form they take: 

Сестра, мы изменились оба, 

Друг друга поднимая вверх, 

Ты—как опара, я —как сдоба. 

И вице верса. От двух опар 

До твоего, сестрица, гроба 

Во что, во что ни превратимся. 

Sister, we both changed, 

Lifting each other up, 

You are like leaven, I am like shortening, 

And vice versa. From two risings 

To your grave, sister, 

No matter what we turn into. 

The Lion remains true to this destiny, even when Lavinia rejects him in the fifty-fifth 

poem, "Прощание со Львом." Seeing in him only a wild beast, she demands that a real 

angel appear: 

«И так мы, люди, как звери, 

Не хочу я помощи дикой твоей! 

Пусть Ангел станет при двери». 

237 

Lavinia calls upon the angel again in the book's forty-ninth poem, this time summoning both the Wolf 

and the Lion: Братец Волк! Братец Лев!/Ох, держите меня под руки— (Dear brother Wolf! Dear 

brother Lion!/Oh, support me under my arms—) 

178

"And so we people too are like wild beasts, 

I don't want your savage help! 

Let an Angel stand at the door." 

The offended Lion threatens not to return, but while he does become invisible to Lavinia, 

he never actually abandons her; she can still sense him in the sun's warmth and in her 

dreams, soothing her soul. He makes a final appearance at Lavinia's literal grave in the 

book's last poem, "Скит." 

With the transformation of the wolf into a lion, Lavinia introduces the central 

Buddhist concepts of karma and reincarnation. The wolf has died and been reborn as a 

lion, while still retaining the karmic past of his wolf self. This particular transformation 

suggests a movement toward spiritual enlightenment—the angel is transformed from the 

warlike wolf into a higher creature. In the Christian church, lions are considered to have 

divine strength; they symbolize both constancy and greatness. The lion is one of the 

signs of Christ, prophesying the Resurrection. In Buddhism, the lion suggests an 

enlightened soul. The Buddha himself was incarnated as a lion. 238 

This combination of Buddhist and Christian symbolism will play a central role in 

Lavinia's book. In the ecumenical order of the circumcision of the heart, Lavinia's 

journey toward God takes the form not only of an imitation of Christ, but also of a 

Buddhist quest for nirvana—an ultimate state which will require no new incarnations and 

238 Svetlana Ivanova, "Nekotorye aspekty izobrazheniia flory i fauny v proizvedeniiakh poetov 'vtoroi 

kul'tury,'" in Istoriia leningradskoi nepodtsenzurnoi literatury, ed. B.I. Ivanov and B.A. Roginskii (Saint 

Petersburg: DEAN, 2000), 180. 

179

no more suffering. 239 

In the culminating poems of the book, Lavinia incorporates 

Buddhist elements into her experience of the Christian holy week. 240 

While the last explicit mention of an event in the Christian calendar comes in the 

seventieth poem, "Ночь на Великую Субботу," the poems which follow suggest links to 

Holy Week as well. The book's seventy-second poem, "В трапезной," recalls the Last 

Supper. 241 In her typical, unorthodox fashion, Lavinia reinterprets the biblical story, 

again placing herself at the center. She sits at a table shadowed by a decanter. The 

tablecloth is prophetically red (Скатерть/ Краснеет веще), apparently foretelling the 

blood that will soon be shed. A starling chirps ominously (чик-чик скворца зловеще), 

suggesting the cock's call which would signal Peter's betrayal. 242 

Like Christ, Lavinia 

herself does not eat or drink. Instead, she recalls her past births, directly invoking the 

Buddhist notion of Karma: 

Я хлеб крошу и вспоминаю 

Свои протекшие рожденья. 

Не дай Бог птицей—свист крыла 

Как вспомню и ночевку на волне. 

Боль в клюве и как кровь текла 

Скачками. Птичьего не надо мне! 

Была я пастором и магом, 

Мундир носила разных армий. 

Цыганкой... Больше и не надо! 

Сотлела нить на бусах Кармы. 

239 Peter Harvey has described the state of nirvana as "a timeless imperturbable state beyond change and 

suffering," "the ending of all suffering, rebirths and limitations." Peter Harvey, Buddhism (London: 

Continuum, 2001), 64 and 66 respectively. 

240 In addition to these final poems, Lavinia directly addresses Buddhism in the book's twenty-sixth poem, 

"Перед праздинком," in which she spins a Buddhist prayer wheel and watches the Buddhist quarter of the 

convent prepare for their holiday. Buddhas are also mentioned in the sister's letter to the editor and in the 

book's fourth, twenty-eighth, and fortieth poems. Other Buddhist references can be found in the second and 

forty-second poems. 

241 The Last Supper was previously invoked in the book's tenth poem, "Уроки Аббатиссы." 

242 In the gospels of Luke and John, Christ foretells Peter's betrayal at the Last Supper: "I tell you, Peter, 

the cock will not crow this day, until you three times deny that you know me." (Luke 22:34) The gospels 

of Matthew and Mark place this at the Mount of Olives. 

180

I crumble my bread and recall 

My past births. 

God forbid as a bird. The whistle of a wing 

Is enough to recall a night spent on a wave, 

The pain in my beak and how the blood flowed 

With my jumps. I don't need the bird life! 

I was a pastor and a wizard, 

I wore the uniform of various armies. 

I was a gypsy…I don't need any more! 

The thread on the beads of Karma has rotted. 

Just as Christ is reborn and crucified each year, so Lavinia has experienced multiple 

incarnations. Now, however, she desires to be released from this endless cycle. Her 

plaintive cry, "Больше и не надо," evokes Christ's plea in the Garden of Gethsemane: 

"My Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me" (Matthew 26:39). Lavinia is 

searching for the final resurrection—one which will put an end to her own, and by 

association Christ's, suffering, as well as break the thread of Karma. She seeks both 

eternal life in the Christian sense and the timeless Buddhist state of nirvana—her final 

resurrection is ecumenism exemplified. 

Lavinia again links Buddhist concepts to the Christian holy week in the seventyfifth 

poem, "Сатори." The poem's title is a Zen Buddhist term for a flash of sudden 

awareness. 243 

Here, the personal epiphany appears linked to the story of Christ's 

crucifixion. In the poem's fifth line, Lavinia marks the setting: Пятница. Солнце. 

Дождь. (Friday. Sun. Rain.) Placed only three poems from the end of a book subtitled 

"From Christmas to Easter" and following soon after "В трапезной," the poem seems to 

refer to Good Friday. The contrast of sun and rain also supports this possibility, recalling 

the shift in weather which took place during Christ's crucifixion. 244 

243 Shvarts provides a footnote to the poem with the definition, "внезапное просветление (япон.)." 

244 According to three of the four gospel accounts, darkness fell in the middle of the day for three hours. 

See Matthew 27:45, Mark 15:33, Luke 23:44-45. 

181

The poem also links Christianity and Buddhism by referring to two of Shvarts's 

epigraphs to the book, one Buddhist and one Christian, in the final lines: 

О, сестры! Духи! 

С туманом я играю! 

Духи! Мне весело, 

Я умираю. 

Душа моя, ты стала чашей, 

В которую сбирает нищий 

Слепой, живущий при кладбище, 

Пятак и дождь, и фантики пустые, 

Обломки солнца золотые— 

Объедки херувимской пищи. 

Oh, sisters! Spirits! 

I am playing with fog! 

Spirits! I am happy, 

I am dying. 

My soul, you became a cup 

In which a blind beggar 

Living next to a graveyard collects 

A five copeck piece and rain, and empty candy wrappers, 

Golden pieces of the sun— 

Leftovers of cherubic food. 

The book's seventh epigraph, "У входа в пещеру/Играю с клубящимся туманом," is 

clearly echoed in the second line of this excerpt. As discussed previously, this epigraph 

is attributed to a Daoist thinker and poet "Безумный Линь" and suggests the poet's 

embarkation on her journey of discovery. Placed again at the end of the book, it signals a 

new beginning. Having struggled through doubt and temptation, Lavinia is now ready to 

achieve true enlightenment. She reaches this moment of sudden awareness through her 

death, again recalling Christ's physical death on the cross on Good Friday. The epigraph 

itself points to the Good Friday connection; Lavinia plays with fog "at the entrance to the 

cave," suggesting the cave in which Christ's body will be laid after his death. Again, 

Buddhism and Christianity converge. 

182

The description of Lavinia's soul as an empty cup, filled by a beggar with various 

fragments and leftovers, recalls the book's eighth epigraph, "И скоро станет 

небольшой/И полой чашей." As discussed in the beginning of this chapter, the 

epigraph, taken from the poet Aleksandr Mironov's Метафизические радости, suggests 

a corruption of God's word—a fall from the New Chalice of the Christian faith to a small 

and hollow object. Here, however, the empty cup can be seen as a positive symbol— 

Lavinia has succeeded in her Lenten task of emptying herself entirely; she has achieved a 

purity of soul worthy of resurrection. 245 

This emptiness—complete detachment from 

worldly desires and objects—is a Buddhist goal as well. 

The moment of enlightenment in "Сатори" is fleeting, however. In the next 

poem, "Медведь," Lavinia is again reborn, this time in the form of a bear. In Buddhism, 

human lives are considered higher stages of moral and spiritual development than animal 

lives; 246 Lavinia appears to have regressed. Alongside this Buddhist reincarnation, 

suggestions of the Christian holy week are again present. Lavinia has dug herself up 

(Вот вскопала себя), perhaps linking herself to Christ, whose body disappears from his 

tomb. She cries out to God, expressing a sense of abandonment: "Дай мне знак!/...Я 

дождусь/От Тебя—хоть рогатины." ("Give me a sign!/…I await/ From You at least a 

spear." Any sign from God—even one of violence—is welcome. In the following poem, 

"Кормление птиц," Lavinia expresses this abandonment even more explicitly: 

О Боже, я Тебе служу 

Который век, который лик. 

Кричу, шепчу. Не отозвался 

На писк, на шепот и на крик. 

О, на кого меня оставил? 

245 This self-emptying recalls kenosis (самоопустошение), a key concept in Russian Orthodox belief. 

246 Harvey, Buddhism, 72. 

183

O God, I have been serving You 

For countless centuries, in countless forms. 

I shout, I whisper. You didn't respond 

To my squeak, my whisper or my shout. 

O, to whom have You abandoned me? 

Again, Lavinia refers to the Buddhist notion of reincarnation—she has lived many lives 

in many forms and desires to be released from this endless cycle of rebirth. Here, 

however, she addresses a Christian God—one capable of both abandoning her and 

ultimately saving her. 247 

This plaintive cry recalls Christ's own desperation on the cross: 

Боже Мой, Боже Мой! для чего Ты Меня оставил? (My God, my God, why have you 

forsaken me? Matthew 27:46, Mark15:34). 

Earlier in the poem, Lavinia's description of her abandonment by God recalls the 

book's central metaphor of the crucifixion of the heart: 

Печаль!—о вдруг 

Меня печаль пронзила, 

Когда тарелку подносила 

К несытым тяжким небесам, 

Как будто край этой тарелки, 

Полуобломанной и мелкой, 

Вонзился в грудь мне 

И разрезал, 

И обнажил 

Мою остваленность Тобою— 

Всю, всю. 

Grief!—o suddenly 

Grief pierced me 

When I carried the plate 

To the weighty unsatisfied heavens, 

As if the edge of this plate, 

Half-broken and small, 

Penetrated my breast 

And cut 

And bared 

247 In Buddhism, there is no God who determines a person's karmic path, who sets out "rewards" or 

"punishments." The individual "is seen as the determiner of his or her own destiny—a destiny defined by 

the actions which he or she chooses to perform." Harvey, Buddhism, 67. 

184

Your abandonment of me— 

Entire, entire abandonment. 

As the book comes to a close, Lavinia explicitly returns to the central aspects of 

the book first invoked in the title, epigraphs and title poem. She revisits the metaphor of 

the circumcision of the heart, describing God's violent penetration of her breast; she 

highlights the extreme ecumenism of her convent by combining Buddhist and Christian 

elements in her final poems. In the next and last poem, "Скит," she will move beyond 

this sense of violent abandonment and provide something of a resolution. 

Роман воспитания: the Abbess's lessons 

In her 1997 book Определение в дурную погоду, Shvarts describes the bible as a 

"гигантский роман воспитания" (giant bildungsroman); it demonstrates the growth of 

God, via the sufferings of Job, from the terrible Yahweh of the Old Testament to the 

merciful Christ of the New Testament. 248 

In a similar way, Труды и дни Лавинии can be 

seen as Lavinia's small роман воспитания—it describes a mad nun's spiritual 

development through temptation and suffering toward a unique state of enlightenment 

modeled both on Christ's resurrection and the Buddhist state of nirvana. 

Lavinia undergoes an explicitly formal education in the book. Just as Lavinia's 

encounters with her guardian angel provide a sequential, if fragmented, narrative thread 

across the book, so does her series of lessons with another central character, the abbess of 

her convent. 249 

The Abbess's lessons are described in three of the book's poems: the 

248 Shvarts, Определение в дурную погоду, 54. 

249 Abbesses played an important role in Buddhist as well as Christian tradition. Cloistered Buddhist 

communities (samghas) revolve around the authority of its abbot or abbess who is enlightened enough to 

lead the others. For a discussion of monastic orders in Buddhism, see Christopher Lamb's chapter, "Rites 

of Passage" in Harvey, Buddhism, 156-162. 

185

tenth, "Уроки Аббатиссы," the twentieth, "Еще Урок Аббатиссы," and the forty-third, 

"Огненный Урок." 250 

In "Уроки Аббатиссы," the abbess sets out three tasks for Lavinia. She first asks 

her to draw a map of the heavens, but Lavinia has the Angel-Wolf do it for her, afraid to 

test herself and face her own ignorance. The second task requires Lavinia to look at 

herself from within as upon one crucified. Lavinia again fails, immediately imagining 

stigmata, instead of experiencing true pain or love. In her aspiration to achieve and prove 

her enlightenment, she in fact falls victim to this same desire for enlightenment, a typical 

Buddhist trap. The Abbess is only satisfied with Lavinia's performance in the third task 

in which she is told to travel in her mind to the Last Supper in Jerusalem. When asked if 

she saw the Savior, Lavinia finally replies truthfully, expressing her inability to see Him: 

«Его я не видала. 

Нет, врать не буду. Стоило 

Глаза поднять—их будто солнцем выжигало, 

Шар золотой калил. Как ни старалась— 

Его не видела, почти слепой осталась». 

"I did not see him. 

No, I will not lie. I only needed to 

Raise my eyes—it was as if they were scorched by the sun, 

The golden sphere roasted them. No matter how much I tried— 

I did not see Him, I was left almost blind." 

It is still early in Lavinia's journey toward Christ. She is still finding her way, learning 

how to approach Him; she is just beginning to understand that this journey requires the 

250 While this is the last of the Abbess's formal lessons, Lavinia receives instruction later in the book as 

well. Having swallowed a needle in her soup, she rushes to a medical elder in the sixtieth poem, 

"Старица." As treatment, the nun gives her both honey and advice: "[…] В обрезанное сердце льется 

Жизнь,/Любовь и дух, и царствие, и сила,/А что-то колет—плюнь и веселись". ("[…] Into the 

circumcised heart pours Life,/Love and spirit, and kingdom, and strength,/But if something pricks—spit 

and rejoice.") 

186

complete relinquishment of worldly attachments and desires, including the desire to be 

Christlike. 

In the next lesson, the Abbess makes a cross between the sun and the moon and 

tells Lavinia to crucify herself. Lavinia babbles her reply: 

«Нет, еще я не готова, 

Не готова я еще, 

Не совсем еще готова». 

Лепетала, лепетала. 

"No, I am still not ready, 

I am still not ready, 

I am still not quite ready." 

I babbled, babbled. 

In response, the Abbess laughs: 

Аббатисса засмеялась: 

«То-то, дети, 

Как до дела—вы в кусты! 

Будьте же смирней, смиренней. 

The Abbess broke out laughing: 

"Oh, you children, 

As soon as it comes down to it, you run to the bushes! 

But be quieter, more humble. 

The Abbess's laughter suggests that she was not serious in asking Lavinia to crucify 

herself. Instead, she wants her to realize the magnitude of Christ's sacrifice and to be 

humble in the face of it. Lavinia, however, takes her request literally. In her extreme 

desire to be Christ-like, she expects to imitate him in every way. At this point she is not 

yet ready, but, as we have seen, she will undergo a type of crucifixion in the seventy-fifth 

poem, "Сатори." 

In the Abbess's final lesson, "Огненный урок," Lavinia complains that she has 

not been able to forget the world completely (я/Все плакалась и хныкала, и ныла/…/О 

187

том, что не совсем я мир забыла.) In response, the Abbess throws her into the "liquid 

core of a fire" (в сердцевину жидкую огня) and instructs her to burn: 

"Терпи, терпи, миг—пустяк! 

Гори—дитя, гори—старушка. 

Расчесанной души 

Бинтом огня перевяжи 

Все язвы, зуды, 

Намажься жаром, 

Огня тоской". 

Bear with it, bear with it, an instant is nothing! 

Burn, child, burn, old woman. 

Dress all of the sores and itches 

Of your scratched soul 

With the bandage of fire, 

Massage yourself with heat, 

With the sorrow of fire. 

This lesson again suggests the Buddhist nature of Lavinia's spiritual journey. The goal of 

a Buddhist life is to extinguish all desires, a goal which is often expressed in images of 

fire—blowing out the candle of desire, or burning one's desire. 251 

Lavinia momentarily 

achieves such a state in this fiery lesson, enduring the flames like a salamander. 252 

By the 

time the Abbess pulls her out of the fire she has become new and strong: 

Я стала крепкой, золотой, 

Какими идолы бывают, 

Когда они вдруг забывают, 

Что сами были—Бог простой. 

Когда, на взгорьях средь лесов 

Стоят, упершись лбами низко, 

Забытые. […] 

I became strong, golden, 

The way idols are 

When they suddenly forget 

251 The notion of burning one's desire is found in Hindu yogic practice, a precursor of Buddhism. 

252 Traditionally, a salamander represents a spirit or person who can live in fire. An obsolete association, 

which seems particularly appropriate here, is "a woman who (ostensibly) lives chastely in the midst of 

temptations." Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition, 1989. In this fiery lesson, Lavinia attempts to resist 

both desire and temptation. 

188

That they themselves were simple God. 

When on the hillocks amidst the forests 

Stand, resting their foreheads low, 

The forgotten ones. […] 

Instead of aspiring to a godly nature, Lavinia has forgotten that she is "simple God." She 

has managed to achieve godliness by forgetting it. 253 

This achievement is fleeting, 

however. In the final lines of the poem, signaled by an enjambment which follows 

"Забытые," she is brought back to the world, suddenly aware of a field vole dashing by: 

[…] Вдруг из боков 

Полевка прыснет с тихим писком. 

[…] Suddenly from the sides 

A field vole spurts with a quiet chirp. 

By the end of the book, however, Lavinia begins to assimilate these lessons, no 

longer requiring the external instruction of the Abbess. In the seventy-fourth poem, 

"Воспитание тихих глаз," Lavinia herself describes the training of quiet, monastic eyes: 

О, монастырские глаза! 

Как будто в них еще глаза, 

А там еще, еще... И за 

Последними стоят леса, 

И на краю лесов—огни. 

Сожжешь платочек, подыми. 

Они горят и не мигают, 

Они как будто составляют 

Бок треугольника. Вершина 

Уходит в негасиму печь. 

Там учатся томить и жечь. 

Окатные каменья вроде, 

От слезной ясные воды. 

В саду очей, в павлиньем загороде 

Они созрели, как плоды. 

O, monastic eyes! 

As if in them were other eyes, 

253 This paradox of forgetting recalls the book's sixth epigraph: Поймав зайца, забывают про ловушку... 

189

And there still more, and more… 254 And behind 

The last are forests, 

And on the edge of the forests—fires. 

Burn a handkerchief, raise it up. 

They burn and do not flicker, 

They seem to form 

The side of a triangle. The peak 

Goes out into an everburning stove. 

There they learn how to stew and burn. 

Like rounded stones, 

Clear from the water of tears. 

In the garden of eyes, in the peacock's enclosure 

They ripened, like fruits. 

While a flickering flame would evoke disruption and turmoil, the constant fires described 

in this poem suggest the same sort of strength and solidity found in "Огненный урок." 

The eyes, which learn how to languish and burn, are eventually rounded off and made 

clear by the water of tears. They mature, as Lavinia does, on their way to enlightenment. 

This poem is immediately followed by "Сатори,"—Lavinia's experience of a "sudden 

flash of enlightenment." After a series of lessons, she achieves a true revelation of 

Christ's suffering, as opposed to her earlier vain attempt in "Уроки Аббатиссы." While 

this experience is again transitory, it leads the way for a more lasting resolution in the 

book's final poem, "Скит." 

From "Ипподром" to "Скит": the lyric links 

While the narrative thrust of the book is found in Lavinia's imitation of Christ, 

several of Lavinia's poems fall outside of this narrative. Instead, they are linked to other 

254 These additional eyes could be a reference to the Buddhist concept of the vertical third eye, which, 

unlike the horizontal physical eyes, is the vehicle for true sight and enlightenment. Lavinia explicitly 

mentions the "third eye" in the book's forty-second poem: С тела жизни, с ее рожи/Соскользну—зовут. 

Сейчас!/Как ошметок наболевшей кожи,/Под которым леденеет третий глаз. Here, too, Lavinia 

emphasizes the eternal nature of the third eye which is frozen solid beneath the temporary, mortal covering 

of her sore skin. 

190

poems in the book in lyric terms. Lavinia repeats key images and words throughout the 

book, contributing to the sense of unity in a seemingly "fragmentary" book. 

Lavinia explicitly announces such links in the titles of two pairs of poems, the only 

designated "cycles" in the book: "Два стихотворения о вдохновении," "Два 

стихотворения, кончающиеся словом, «слепой»." The first cycle addresses the theme 

of poetic inspiration, providing the book's most explicit discussion of Lavinia's role as a 

poet. In the first poem, a whole host of spirits listens to her, a pathetic victim, read her 

poetry in her cell. In the second poem, the poet's mind is compared to a frigate, 

overcome by the surf and the sea foam. 

The second cycle brings together two seemingly disparate poems: the first about 

a monk; the second, individually titled "Прощание с Львом," about Lavinia herself. The 

monk is described as a gentle, hardy, blind mule, fulfilling his monastic duties stubbornly 

and without hesitation. This blind devotion is contrasted to Lavinia's inconstancy in the 

following poem. She rejects her guardian angel, the Lion, causing him to disappear. 

Nonetheless, she recognizes her future need of him when she will become a hieroglyph of 

blind bone (Иероглифом кости слепой). In both poems, blindness appears to be a 

positive trait—the result of emptying oneself of worldly ambition, reaching the absolute 

core of being. 255 

In addition to these explicitly linked poems, other sequential poems are connected 

by the repetition of a particular word. For example, the twenty-first lyric, "Капель," 

describes the coming of spring and ends on the title word, "капель." In the following 

lyric, "Воспоминание," Lavinia pleads to be let into a rural church. She is refused, told 

255 Blindness is mentioned in three additional poems in the book—"Так свет за облаками бьется...," 

"Уроки Аббатиссы," and "Сатори"—and hinted at in "Последние минуты Страстной" ("глаз мой 

плох). Each of these poems describes a moment of enlightenment either fully or partially achieved. 

191

that it will drive her mad. While the poem at first seems unrelated to "Капель," the final 

lines invoke it with the repetition of the title word: 

Ну а так-то—по капле, по капле... 

Лучше б сразу всю чашу до дна. 

But this way it is drop by drop… 

It would be better to drink the cup in one gulp. 

The thaw which is just beginning in "Капель" continues to drag out slowly in 

"Воспоминание." Lavinia is not granted a quick fall into enlightened madness; instead, 

she must make the full, slow journey, drop by drop, word by word. 

Repeated images and words not only appear in sequential poems, but also carry 

over across considerable gaps. For example, the central image of the "circumcision of 

the heart" links the title poem and nineteenth lyric, "Обрезание сердца," discussed 

above, to the book's fifth poem, "Свое мучение ночное..." In this fifth poem, as in 

"Обрезание сердца," Lavinia literalizes the metaphor of the "circumcision of the heart," 

describing the physical action of cutting out the heart: 

[…]Ангел сердце мне 

Вдруг вырезал концом кинжала. 

И вот оно сквозит—пролом 

My heart the Angel 

Suddenly cut out with the edge of a dagger. 

And look there is a draft—a gap 

Not only does this dagger point forward to the blade which cuts out the heart in 

"Обрезание сердца," but the notion of a gap also links this poem to Lavinia's 

descriptions of various temples and churches in the book. Mornings and sunsets enter 

through the gaps in the small, rundown church described in the third lyric; in the thirty- 

192

sixth poem, only incessant prayer is capable of building up the walls of a cathedral to 

make it impervious to thieves and demons. 256 

In addition to opening Lavinia up to possible invasion, this gap also allows for her 

full entry into the world. The fifth poem concludes with the following lines: 

И смотрит Ангел милосердный— 

Как чрез него хрипя, с трудом 

В мир выезжает Всадник бледный. 

And the merciful Angel watches 

As through [this gap], wheezing, with difficulty 

The pale Rider exits into the world. 

These final images point back to the book's opening poem, "Ипподром," which describes 

a horse, wheezing and grown pale: 257 

Слова копытами стучат. В средине дров 

Расколется пылающее сердце. 

Как машут крыльями, свистят 

Ночные демоны, мои единоверцы. 

Вот я бегу меж огненных трибун 

Подстриженной 258 лужайкой к небосклону, 

И ставят зрители в сиянье и дыму, 

Что упаду—один к мильону. 

На черную лошадку—на лету 

Она белеет и тончает, 

Хрипит, скелетится, вся в пене и поту, 

И Бог ее, как вечер, догоняет. 

Words thunder like hooves. In the middle of the wood 

The flaming heart will split. 

As they wave their wings, 

The night demons, my fellow-believers whistle. 

Here I run among the fiery stands 

256 Goldstein has described this vulnerability to outside forces in Goldstein, "The Heart-Felt Poetry," 242. 

See also my previous discussions of these poems. 

257 The image of the pale rider also recalls the apocalypse. 

258 The word "подстрижженый" refers not only to the clipped lawn, but also suggests Lavinia's monastic 

vows. 

193

Along the clipped lawn toward the horizon, 

And the audience, in radiance and smoke, set the odds 

That I will fall at a million to one. 

A bet is placed on the little black horse—in her flight 

She grows white and thin, 

She wheezes, becomes skeletal, all covered in foam and sweat, 

And God, like the evening, overtakes her. 

This poem can be read as a microcosm of Lavinia's entire spiritual journey. At the outset, 

she is a strong, black horse who associates with night demons; she begins her journey in a 

hippodrome, seemingly incapable of falling. In the middle of this journey, however, "the 

flaming heart will split"—Lavinia will undergo a transformation, a circumcision of the 

heart, which will cause her to grow weak and white. This apparent weakness, however, 

conceals a spiritual strength previously unknown to her. By falling, she will discover a 

true God—one who will replace her demonic fellow-believers. 259 

Over the course of the book, we witness this fall—Lavinia's physical suffering, 

her descent into madness, her expulsion from the convent. In the book's final poem, 

"Скит," she has reached an ultimate low; thrown by her sisters into a ditch, she feels 

entirely abandoned by God: 

Куда вы, сестры, тащите меня? 

Да еще за руки и за ноги? 

Ну пусть я напилась…была пьяна… 

Пустите! Слышите! О Боже, помоги! 

Но раскачали и швырнули в ров, 

Калитка взвизгнула и заперлась, 

И тихо все. Я слизывала кровь 

С ладони и скулила—грязь 

Со мной стонала. Пузырилась ночь, спекаясь, 

Шуршали травы. 

259 In a personal email correspondence, Shvarts equated the horse's fall and capture with a spiritual victory: 

"этот ипподром—как бы во сне и зрители ставят на того, кто проиграет. И в этом смысле проиграть 

в жизни на самом деле может означать выгрыш с точки зрения зрителей (например ангелов, если 

они следят за нашей жизнью и спорят о нас; поэтому они ставят на проигрыш черной лошади. И 

Бог ее догоняет—с нашей точки зрения—she is lost, and from the angel's point of view, she won." 

194

Лежала я, в корягу превращаясь, 

Господь мой Бог совсем меня оставил. 

Мхом покрываясь, куталась в лопух. 

Where are you dragging me, sisters? 

And even by my hands and feet? 

So I had a bit to drink, was drunk… 

Let me go! Do you hear? O, God, help! 

But they swung and hurled me into a ditch, 

The gate whistled and locked, 

And everything was quiet. I licked the blood 

Off my palm and whimpered—the dirt 

Moaned with me, night bubbled, curdling, 

The grasses rustled. 

I was lying down, turning into an uprooted stump. 

My Lord God had entirely abandoned me. 

Covering myself with moss, I wrapped myself in burdock. 

Here, Lavinia resembles the crucified Christ. She licks real blood from her palm, true 

stigmata which she had falsely claimed in her first lessons with the Abbess. She again 

bemoans her complete abandonment by God, once more recalling Christ's cries on the 

cross. Like Christ, however, she has not been truly forsaken; in the second half of the 

poem, she is resurrected, born into eternal life: 

Вдруг слышу я шаги, звериный дух, 

И хриплый голос рядом говорит: 

"Раз выгнали, пойдем поставим скит". 

—"Ох, это ты! Ты, огненный, родной! 

Меня не бросил ты, хмельную дуру!" 

Мы в глухомань ушли, где бьется ключ, 

Лев лес валил и тотчас его шкурил. 

Мы за три дня избенку возвели 

И церковь, полый крест—как мне приснилось— 

В мой рост и для меня, чтоб я вошла, 

Раскинув руки в ней молилась. 

Пока работали, к нам приходил медведь— 

Простой медведь, таинственный, как сонмы 

Ночных светил,— 

И меду мутного на землю положил, 

Он робкий был и так глядел—спросонья. 

Лев мне принес иконы, свечек, соли, 

Поцеловались на прощанье мы, 

195

Он мне сказал: "Коль будет Божья воля, 

Я ворочусь среди зимы". 

Встаю я с солнцем и водицу пью, 

И с птицами пою Франциску, Деве, 

И в темный полый Крест встаю, 

Как ворот, запахнувши двери. 

Текут века—я их забыла 

И проросла травой-осокой, 

Живой и вставшею могилой 

Лечу пред Богом одиноко. 

Suddenly I heard footsteps, a beast's spirit, 

And a hoarse voice next to me said: 

"Since they kicked you out, let's found a hermitage." 

"Oh, it's you! You fiery one, my kin! 

You haven't abandoned me, a drunken fool!" 

We went off into the wilderness, where a spring flows, 

The lion felled the forest and immediately skinned the trees. 

We raised a little hut in three days 

And a church—a hollow cross, just as I dreamed it— 

My own height and for me, so that I could enter, 

And pray in it, arms outstretched. 

While we worked, a bear came to us— 

A simple bear, mysterious, like the multitudes 

Of night stars— 

And he put some clouded honey on the earth. 

He was timid and looked at me, half-awake. 

The lion brought me icons, candles, some salt. 

We parted with a kiss. 

He said to me: "If it be God's will, 

I will return in winter." 

I rise with the sun and drink water, 

And I sing with the birds to Francis and the Virgin, 

And I stand up in the dark hollow Cross, 

Like a gateway with its doors slammed shut. 

The centuries pass—I have forgotten them 

And I have grown a layer of sedge grass, 

Having become a living tomb, 

I fly before God alone. 

196

In this final poem, Lavinia's spiritual journey reaches a resolution; the path from 

Christmas to Easter is completed. On the third day (за три дня), she, like Christ, 260 is 

raised again and enters into eternal life, where the centuries pass unnoticed. 

Her search for the ideal place of worship also comes to an end. With the help of her everfaithful 

guardian angels, she builds a hermitage which perfectly fits her body; Lavinia has 

finally achieved the Christ-like equation of body and church. This church is 

impenetrable; "like a gateway with its doors drawn shut," Lavinia can no longer be 

invaded by the demons who tempted her throughout her journey. Like the "hollow 

cross," she has emptied herself of desire and now resides in a Buddhist state of nirvana. 

The hermitage also provides a distinct ending point for the journey which began in the 

hippodrome; Lavinia, who set out from a public, pagan space, ends up in a private, holy 

space. God has indeed overtaken the white horse of the opening poem. As in the 

opening poem, Lavinia flies, but God alone replaces the demonic observers of 

"Ипподром": Лечу пред Богом одиноко. 

Thus, the final poem brings together the book's multiple threads—the imitation of 

Christ's life, the Buddhist quest for nirvana, the unique geography of Lavinia's spiritual 

world, and the characters who populate that world. Lavinia's "fragmentary novel," like 

the collection of seemingly disparate epigraphs which introduce it, is ultimately united in 

the final poem, "Скит." The race, set out in the opening poem, is completed, and Lavinia 

triumphs in her fall. 

260 Matthew 17:22-23: "They were going about together in Galilee when Jesus said to them, 'The Son of 

Man is to be handed over into the power of men, and they will kill him; then on the third day he will be 

raised again.'" 

197

Conclusion 

While written in distinct places and time periods by very different poets, the three 

books I have studied all fulfill certain structural requirements of the lyric cycle as set out 

by theorists Vroon, Darvin and Fomenko. Each poet carefully chooses and highlights the 

book's title: Khodasevich and Gippius extend its reach by opening the book with a title 

poem; within her lengthy title, Shvarts guides the reader into her book generically (труды 

и дни), thematically (обрезание сердца), and temporally (от Рождества до Пасхи). 

Both Shvarts and Gippius incorporate epigraphs into their works: Gippius cryptically 

calls upon the muse and central figure of Сияния, St. Thérèse of Lisieux; Shvarts invokes 

several disparate sources to reflect Lavinia's ecumenical madness. Khodasevich's use of 

the title biblical metaphor, while not explicitly expressed as an epigraph, provides the 

same sort of extratextual center. All three poets use form and meter to connect and 

juxtapose individual poems in their books: Khodasevich links the title poem "Путем 

зерна" to "Золото" through the use of rhyming iambic couplets; Gippius emphasizes the 

dramatic shifts in her lyric hero's mood by contrasting the rising iambic line of 

"Рождение" with the falling metrical line of "Женскость"; Shvarts demonstrates 

Lavinia's erratic behavior by introducing a sudden break in her opening poem which 

follows the regular iambic meter of her sister's letter. The ordering of the poems in each 

of the books is driven not by chronology, but by a progression specific to each individual 

book: in the three distinct versions of Путем зерна, Khodasevich shifts the position of 

several poems, ultimately leaving out the dates of composition; Gippius makes an 

exception to her previous chronologically arranged books, reordering the poems and 

198

eliminating their dates; Shvarts's book consists of previously uncollected poems whose 

specific dates have not been recorded. 261 

The books share a common thematic center as well, each describing the lyric 

hero's journey toward resurrection. In Khodasevich's Путем зерна, this path is modeled 

on the biblical metaphor of the grain which must die in order to produce fruit. In 

Gippius's Сияния, the hero strives for a similar rebirth, but ultimately fails to realize it, 

longing instead for a return home, to a pre-birth state. In Shvarts's Труды и дни 

Лавинии, the heroine follows the path of Christ to discover her own unique 

resurrection—entry into the Buddhist state of nirvana. 

While these similarities connect all three books to the tradition of the lyric cycle, 

Shvarts's book departs from the earlier two in very significant ways. Perhaps the best 

way to highlight these differences is to recall Edward Stankiewicz's discussion of the 

centripetal and centrifugal types of lyric poetry. According to Stankiewicz, it is the 

"precarious balance between the whole and parts and the tension between openness and 

completeness…that imparts to a work of art its dynamic character and the qualities of a 

process, rather than of a finished and immutable object." 262 

He identifies two distinct 

types of poetic works: "works with a dominant centripetal, homogeneous, and tight 

structure, and works with preponderantly centrifugal, heterogeneous, and loose 

patterns." 263 

Stankiewicz argues that modern lyric poetry has moved away from the 

261 Shvarts, however, claims that she wrote the entire book between Christmas and Easter. It appears that 

she wrote the poems in the sequence in which they appear in the book. When asked if she initially 

conceived all of the poems as the verse of the fictional character Lavinia, she responded that in the book's 

first nine lyrics (up until "Уроки Аббатисы") she was still getting a hold on Lavinia's character; the rest of 

the book comes fully from Lavinia's voice. (Private email correspondence of January 1, 2004.) 

262 Stankeiwicz, "Centripetal and centrifugal structures in poetry," 219. 

263 Ibid., 221. 

199

centripetal types toward more centrifugal forms which leave out the step by step 

connections which centripetal structures provide: 

The centripetal texts of 'classical' literature were based on the principle of ordered and 

goal-directed succession, and on the principle of completeness that the idea of a goal 

implies. The autonomy of the parts and of the text as a whole was formally marked 

by elements of closure (rhymes, refrains, a strong final close) that served not only to 

define the composition, but also to integrate the disparate parts into a self-contained 

and meaningful whole. Modern poetry has weakened or done away with both of 

these principles: in place of ordered and goal-directed succession it has tended to 

create loose aggregates of parts, and in place of completeness it has emphasized the 

multidimensional and open character of the text. The weakening of ordered 

succession has had as a corollary the loss of emphasis on a central theme and the 

breakdown of traditional compositional form. 264 

According to Stankiewicz, the lyric cycle is exemplary of this move toward 

centrifugality. Individual poems are brought together without explicit linkages to create 

an open-ended whole. 265 

Critics such as Vroon, however, point not to the inherently centrifugal nature of 

the lyric cycle, but instead emphasize the need for a successful lyric cycle to remain in 

constant balance between centripetal and centrifugal forces: 

If the former dominate over the latter, the result is a coalescence of texts to the point 

where they are no longer viewed as independently viable entities. If the latter 

dominate the fact of seriation is not only likely to be ignored, but to be subverted. 

One can point to scores of instances where poems set in an explicit series by their 

author are subsequently broken up or reconstituted into different series, either by the 

author himself or by some later editor. In such cases the centrifugal tendencies 

within the series are so strong that the series itself cannot be sustained. Where the 

balance between centrifugal and centripetal tendencies is maintained, the potential for 

cyclization always exists. 266 

While all of the books I have studied are considered modern, there seems to be a 

significant distinction between the degree of centripetal and centrifugal elements in the 

264 Ibid., 225. 

265 Ibid., 231. See also Olga Hasty's article "Poema vs. cycle in Cvetaeva's Definition of Lyric Verse" 

which outlines Tsvetaeva's distinction between the centrifugal nature of the lyric cycle and the centripetal 

nature of the poema. 

266 Vroon, "Prosody," 476. 

200

first two books as compared to Shvarts's Труды и дни Лавинии. Khodasevich and 

Gippius, heavily influenced by the cycles of the early twentieth century, particularly 

Blok's trilogy, strive for the balance Vroon describes between centrifugal and centripetal 

forces. Paradoxically, the most contemporary of the three books, Shvarts's Труды и дни 

Лавинии, is the least centrifugal in the group, seemingly contradicting Stankeiwicz's 

claim of the modern trend toward centrifugality. 

Structurally, Khodasevich's Путем зерна appears to be the most centripetal of 

the books in my study. The prominence of the title metaphor and the circular frame of 

the opening and closing poems provide a closed structure that contains the poet's journey 

from despair to hope. Gippius's book has a somewhat looser design, although it too 

attempts a return, via resurrection in the second-to-last poem, "Лазарь," and in the final 

poem, "Домой." Formally, Shvarts's Труды и дни Лавинии, seems to be the most 

centrifugal of the three books. Following a strictly defined linear path (from Christmas to 

Easter), it ultimately breaks away from the cyclical repetition of the Christ story and 

results in the final resurrection of her heroine—the achievement of the state of nirvana. 

As a result, the book concludes in an open-ended state, typical of the modern trend which 

Stankiewicz outlines. 

After further consideration, however, Shvarts's book emerges as the most 

centripetal, goal-oriented text. The end, while opening outward, is final; the ultimate 

goal (nirvana) has been achieved; no further development is possible. While 

Khodasevich's and Gippius's lyric heroes will continue to repeat the cycle of despair and 

hope, experiencing again and again the pattern of death and resurrection, Shvarts's 

heroine is once and for all released from this struggle. Her story is complete. 

201

While the "endless cycle" of despair and hope described in Khodasevich's Путем 

зерна and Gippius's Сияния may seem to be constricting, in fact it too exhibits a 

centrifugal force. Khodasevich purposefully designed the final version of his book to be 

an epic, universal statement about the poet in general, not a biographical account of his 

own spiritual struggle. His lyric hero can be extended outside of the text to all poets and 

all humanity. Gippius personalizes her hero more than Khodasevich does. She opens the 

book with a very private address to her personal muse, and she incorporates certain 

aspects of her biography into the text, most notably her androgyny. This specificity is 

balanced, however, by her exploration of the universal themes of faith and home. 

Gippius does not limit her book to a specific time, place, or physical persona. In 

"Лазарь," for example, she directly links her hero's personal fate to that of Russia and 

Lazarus, expanding the focus beyond the lyric "я." 267 

Shvarts does the opposite, taking the universal story of Christ's life and death and 

transforming it into the personal story of a very particular nun, Lavinia, in a very specific 

convent of the circumcision of the heart. She creates a fictional character around which 

the entire book, including epigraphs and letters, is focused. Stankiewicz has pointed to 

such extratextual elements as a typical sign of centrifugal texts. 268 

In Труды и дни 

Лавинии, however, these outside references have a centripetal effect. They do not direct 

267 Lydia Ginzburg points to this same extension of the lyric persona in Blok's trilogy: строя лирическое 

я, он строил не психологическую целостность частной личности, но эпохальное сознание своего 

современника в полноте и многообразии его духовного опыта. Ginzburg, O lirike, 244. Similarly, 

Aleksandr Kushner points to the potential universalization of the lyric hero in his article "Книга стихов": 

Книга стихов, на мой взгляд, дает возможность поэту, не обращаясь к условным персонажам, 

создать последовательное повествование о собственной жизни, закрепить в стихах процесс, 

историю развития своей души, а следовательно, и души своего современника. Книга стихов—это 

возможность для лирического поэта в обход большого жанра создать связный рассказ о времени. 

Aleksandr Kushner. Apollon v snegu: zametki na poliakh. (Leningrad: Sovetskii pisatel', 1991), 47. 

268 "[E]xpansion of the text by commentaries and explanations (which are not meant to explain, but to 

diversify the text) has also found expression in the increased tendency towards transtextuality, i.e., towards 

the use of the more or less explicit references of a given text to other texts." Stankiewicz, "Centripetal and 

centrifugal structures," 228. 

202

the reader outward toward the original sources, but rather are focused on defining the 

eccentric interior world of Lavinia. By providing so many outside layers to her heroine's 

verse, Shvarts distances Lavinia, making her more specific and remote—separate from 

the reader, from Shvarts herself, and from any notion of a universal poet. 

By pointing to the centripetal nature of Shvarts's book, I am in no way arguing 

that the book of poems as a whole has shifted away from the centrifugal to the 

centripetal. However, it does seem possible that the balance between centripetal and 

centrifugal forces is no longer as important as it was to the poets of the first half of the 

twentieth century. Gippius and Khodasevich, inspired by the "diversity within unity" 269 

of Blok's trilogy and other "classic" modernist cycles, tried to achieve this balance. 

Shvarts, no longer feels this need. Instead, she continues to push the limits of the lyric 

cycle—an incredibly diverse form, always difficult to define. In her "novel in verse, 

perhaps," she herself is unsure what she has created. The boundaries between the book of 

poems, the poema, and the novel in verse remain elusive. 270 

269 See Ginzburg, O lirike, 244. 

270 Another recent book which would be interesting to explore in this light is Aleksandr Kushner's Apollon 

v snegu: zametki na poliakh. In his introduction, he describes it as a new kind of prose whose protagonist 

is poetry. Throughout the book he intersperses literary essays and lyric poems. 

203

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