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

According to Khodasevich's notes "Золото" was written on January seventh, 1917
in the space of ten to fifteen minutes: "Никогда ни до этого, ни после, не писал так
легко. Это в сущности «экспромпт»." 33 While the epigraph comes from the Polish
tragedy "Iridion" which is set during the fall of the Roman empire under Emperor
Elagabalus, Khodasevich's poem predates the fall of the Russian empire. He is concerned
with individual, rather than national fates. In the opening couplet the poet describes a
ritual applied to others (твоих земных забот), 34 but the poem quickly becomes personal.
The "я" of the poem asks to be treated not as a Roman, a member of a national culture,
but as an individual with strong personal desires (Хочу...Хочу.) His body will follow the
inescapable natural path of decay, in turn fertilizing new life. His skeleton, however, will
remain and eventually be rediscovered along with the gold coin in his mouth—a trace of
his everlasting soul.
By directly following "Золото" with the title poem in the first editions of Путем
зерна, Khodasevich appears to reapply the notion of death and reemergence of an
individual life, which came to him so naturally and quickly in early 1917, to the
aftermath of the events of October 1917. He equates the golden grain not only with the
poet's soul, but also with his entire nation. Over the course of the poem Khodasevich
moves from the impersonal "он" of the sower, through the "я" of the poet's soul, to the
incorporation of the "ты" of his country and people into the ultimate "мы" of the final
stanza. All of Russia will follow the way of the grain.
This collective, historical nature of "Путем зерна" is further emphasized by the
poem Khodasevich chooses to follow it in the first editions: "2-ого ноября," a
33 Khodasevich, Sobranie sochinenii, vol. 1, 311.
34 The gold coin is most likely a reference to the ancient Greek custom of putting a coin in the mouth of the
deceased to pay his way across the river Styx.
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