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

"And so we people too are like wild beasts,
I don't want your savage help!
Let an Angel stand at the door."
The offended Lion threatens not to return, but while he does become invisible to Lavinia,
he never actually abandons her; she can still sense him in the sun's warmth and in her
dreams, soothing her soul. He makes a final appearance at Lavinia's literal grave in the
book's last poem, "Скит."
With the transformation of the wolf into a lion, Lavinia introduces the central
Buddhist concepts of karma and reincarnation. The wolf has died and been reborn as a
lion, while still retaining the karmic past of his wolf self. This particular transformation
suggests a movement toward spiritual enlightenment—the angel is transformed from the
warlike wolf into a higher creature. In the Christian church, lions are considered to have
divine strength; they symbolize both constancy and greatness. The lion is one of the
signs of Christ, prophesying the Resurrection. In Buddhism, the lion suggests an
enlightened soul. The Buddha himself was incarnated as a lion. 238
This combination of Buddhist and Christian symbolism will play a central role in
Lavinia's book. In the ecumenical order of the circumcision of the heart, Lavinia's
journey toward God takes the form not only of an imitation of Christ, but also of a
Buddhist quest for nirvana—an ultimate state which will require no new incarnations and
238 Svetlana Ivanova, "Nekotorye aspekty izobrazheniia flory i fauny v proizvedeniiakh poetov 'vtoroi
kul'tury,'" in Istoriia leningradskoi nepodtsenzurnoi literatury, ed. B.I. Ivanov and B.A. Roginskii (Saint
Petersburg: DEAN, 2000), 180.
179