Abstract
Benedikt Livshits was a writer of transient poetics. His first three books of verse, as several critics have observed, trace a path through the major literary schools of his day: The Flute of Marsyas (1911) presents Livshits in his Symbolist phase, Sun of the Wolves (1913) reflects his revolutionary turn toward Futurism, and Out of the Swamp reveals his conversion to Acmeism.1 But Patmos, the fourth collection, is not so easily identified with a specific literary camp. Its prosodic conservatism, occasional preoccupation with the plastic arts and general ‘nostalgia for world culture’ give it an Acmeist aura, but its philosophical and metaphysical preoccupations place it beyond the bounds of a rigorously Acmeist aesthetic. Here, in short, Livshits demonstrates that he has graduated from the major literary schools of the Silver Age and has found his own muse.
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Notes
See, for example, E. Etkind, ‘Master poeticheskoi kompozitsii’, in Masterstvo perevoda: sbornik vos’moi (Moscow, 1971 ) pp. 187–230
A. Deich, ‘Den’ nyneshnii i den’ minuvshii. Literaturnye vpechatleniia i vstrechi (Moscow, 1969 ) pp. 234–7
Pavel Nerler, ‘Con Amore! Pamiati Benedikta Livshits’, Literaturnaia Gruziia, no. 11, pp. 149–55
V. Markov, Russian Futurism: A History ( Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968 ) p. 185
A. Urban, ‘Metafory ozhivshei materik’, Voprosy literatury, no. 12 (1987) pp.104–29.
reprinted with some changes in Benedikt Livshits, Polutoraglazyi strelets: Stikhotvoreniia, perevody, vospominaniia, ed. P.M. Nerler and A.E. Parnis (Leningrad, 1989) pp. 4–36; hereinafter PSSPV.
See also Livshits essay, ‘V tsitadeli revoliutsionnogo slova’, Puti tvorchestva, no.5 (1919/1920) pp. 43–6.
reprinted (abridged version) in Benedikt Livshits, U nochnogo okna. Stikhi zarubezhnykh poetov v perevode Benedikta Livshitsa (Moscow, 1970) pp. 183–6; the full text is appended to my article, ‘The Citadel of the Revolutionary Word: Notes on the Poetics of Benedikt Livsic’, Russian Literature, XXVII (1990) pp. 533–55.
W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 1: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans ( Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962 ) p. 182.
See S. N. Trubetskoi, Kurs istorii drevnei filosofii (vols V and VI of his Sobranie sochinenii, Moscow, 1912 )
S. N. Trubetskoi, Uchenie o logose v ego istorii (Moscow, 1906 )
I use the Greek term in particular because of its broader connotations: while applicable to music, it may also refer to order and symmetry in general. For a discussion of its connotations, see J.A. Philip, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism, Journal of the Classical Association of Canada, supplementary vol. VII ( Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966 ) pp. 123–8.
C.J. de Vogel, Pythagoras and Early Pythagoreanism ( Assen: Van Gorcum & Co., 1966 ) p. 163.
W.K.C. Guthrie, ‘Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism’, in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967) VII, p. 38.
See Joseph Wilson Trigg, Origen: The Bible and Philosophy in the Third-century Church (Atlanta: John Knox Press, 1983) p. 104.
G.R.S. Mead, Orpheus (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965) p. 162; as Guthrie also indicates (A History of Greek Philosophy, I,p. 299) ‘Late authorities frequently compare the Pythagorean cosmos to the hepta-chord or instrument of seven strings.’
See J.B. Friedman, Orpheus in the Middle Ages ( Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970 )
Quoted in G.R.S. Mead, Orpheus ( New York: Barnes & Noble, 1965 ) p. 188.
V.K. Afanas’eva, ‘Shumero-akkadskaia mifologiia’, in Mify narodov mira, ed. S.A. Tokarev (Moscow, 1988 ) II, p. 653.
David Fideler, ‘Introduction’, in The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, compiled by K.S. Guthrie (Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1987 ) p. 34.
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© 1992 International Council for Soviet and East European Studies, and John Elsworth
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Vroon, R. (1992). Benedikt Livshits’Patmos: The Cycle and its Subtexts. In: Elsworth, J. (eds) The Silver Age in Russian Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22307-7_6
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