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

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.
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