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

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..."
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