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

Closer to his home, the poet encounters a group of children playing loudly. One,
however, sits alone on a stone with hands spread wide, looking up and quietly smiling:
Но, заглянув ему в глаза, я понял,
Что улыбается он самому себе,
Той непостижной мысли, что родится
Под выпуклым, еще безбровым лбом
И слушает в себе биенье сердца,
Движенье соков, рост... Среди Москвы,
Страдающей, растерзанной и падшей,—
Как идол маленький, сидел он, равнодушный,
С бессмысленной, священною улыбкой.
И мальчику я поклонился тоже,
Как-будто поправляя шляпу… 35
But, having looked into his eyes, I understood,
That he was smiling to himself,
At that incomprehensible thought that is born
Beneath a convex, still browless forehead
And he was listening to the beating of his heart,
To the movement of juices in his body, to his growth… In the middle of Moscow,
A struggling, torn apart and fallen city—
He sat, indifferent, like a little idol,
With a senseless, sacred smile.
And I bowed to the boy also,
As if adjusting my hat…
Again the poet discovers a sign of the grain's way—a child who, oblivious to his
immediate surroundings, recognizes and takes pleasure in the palpable life of his growing
body. Even amidst the devastation of revolutionary Moscow new life continues to thrive.
In the final edition of Путем зерна, Khodasevich separates the title poem from
"Золото" and "2-ого ноября," making it the book's opening poem. Distanced from
"Золото," "Путем зерна" takes on a more independent, authoritative quality—instead of
simply developing the previously explored theme of the cycle of death and
rebirth/rediscovery, it now introduces this idea as the structuring element for the entire
book. In its new position, "Путем зерна" is still able to inform a reading of "2-ого
35 This line was excluded from the final edition of Путем зерна.
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