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

Abstract
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Russian symbolists began to pay
consistent and particular attention to the organization of their individual poems into
integral collections. In this dissertation, I examine the organizing principles behind three
post-symbolist books of poetry.
My first two chapters deal with texts from the first half of the century: Vladislav
Khodasevich’s Way of the Grain (1920; 1921; 1927) and Zinaida Gippius’s Radiances
(1938). The third chapter addresses a more recent work: Elena Shvarts's The Works and
Days of the Nun Lavinia (1987). In all three instances, the poets consciously and
deliberately approach the construction of their books. Khodasevich rewrites his book
twice, fundamentally changing it in the third edition. Gippius breaks away from her
earlier chronologically organized “diaries” and creates a final summational book. Shvarts
publishes the poems of a fictional character, thus creating a novel in verse, of sorts.
In identifying the organizing principles underlying each of these individual books,
I draw on previous scholarship on the Russian lyric cycle—a form often distinct from the
book of poems but one that raises similar questions of composition and influence. The
formal approaches proposed by Ronald Vroon, I.V. Fomenko, and M.N. Darvin to the
poetic cycle can be applied to the book of poems as well: close attention to titles,
subheadings and epigraphs; framing of opening and closing poems; repetition of key
words, phrases and images; similarity or juxtaposition of formal features such as meter;
marked non-chronological ordering of poems.
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