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

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."
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