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

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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