THE BOOK OF POEMS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY ... - TopReferat

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