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

even dangerous—the lips are cunning, sly. 84
The line breaks off with an ellipsis, and the
poem concludes with an abrupt statement of time: only sixteen years have passed since
that kiss.
At first, the last line appears to emphasize the immediacy of the encounter. The
persona remembers the physical details and emotions of the event extremely clearly.
Only sixteen years have passed—it seems like yesterday. Yet these sixteen years separate
his youth, encapsulated in a frenetic kiss, from a calm, retrospective maturity. Only
sixteen years have passed, yet life is completely different now. The poem, while
expressing the immediate emotion accompanying the kiss, is tempered by the distance of
time which separates the poetic persona from his previous self. As in "Брента," a break
has been made, bridgeable only through memory.
"Мельница"
Khodasevich places "Мельница" (1920-23), another poem dealing with the
passage of time, immediately after "Брента" in the final edition of Путем зерна. In this
poem, however, he does not recall a period from his own life, but rather describes the
deterioration of an agrarian scene over time—a theme which clearly resonates with the
book's title poem and "Дом":
Мельница забытая
В стороне глухой.
К ней обоз не тянется,
И дорога к мельнице
Заросла травой.
84
The description of the kiss recalls the image of the crafty Carmen at the end of "За окном…": Ах, из
роз люблю я сердцем лживым/Только ту, что жжет огнем ревнивым,/Что зубами с голубым
отливом/Прикусила хитрая Кармен! It also suggests a link to Muratova, a Carmen-esque figure with
whom Khodasevich broke in 1911, roughly 16 years before the publication of this poem.
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