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

poet of "Акробат" must make his way through, along his destined path. This strong
resonance with the title poem as well as the connections to the excised "Авиатору" make
"Акробат" a fitting addition to the final version of Путем зерна.
Conclusion
In this chapter I have shown how the final edition of Путем зерна represents a
new stage in Khodasevich's poetic career. Thanks in part to its publication history (three
different editions over the course of seven years), the book is distanced from its initial
biographical sources. This distance allows Khodasevich to reconceptualize the book—to
organize it around a belief in the cyclicity of life and death rather than an individual
journey along this cycle. He breaks from the highly emotional, personal poetry of his
previous books and finds a more epic poetic voice.
The first two editions of Путем зерна remain linked to his early work. The
opening poem, "Ручей," resonates with the opening poem of his previous book of poems,
Счастливый домик. "Путем зерна," the first poem in the final edition, severs this tie
and in fact provides a polemical response to the opening poem of his first book of poetry,
"В моей стране." Khodasevich rejects this past, claiming Путем зерна as his first book
of poetry in his 1927 Собрание стихов and presenting the message of "Путем зерна"—
the continual renewal of life through death—as the structural motif of the book.
Khodasevich's various additions to and excisions from the 1921 and 1927 editions
all support this general movement away from the personal toward the universal truth of
the "way of the grain."
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