“The Verse about the Holy Mountain”by Vyacheslav Ivanov: A Close Reading. First Essay

Abstract

In the course of his literary career, Vyacheslav Ivanov repeatedly turned to the genre of spiritual verse (dukhovnyi stikh). This genre implies a specific poetic form, certain stylistic properties, performance, and circulation. Among Ivanov’s works, there are both: texts that reproduce traditional spiritual verse with some modifications and original works stylized as sacred poems. “The Verse about the Holy Mountain” (1900) belongs to the second group. Though the text is stylized as spiritual verse, both on the level of its poetics and content, it does not imitate any particular folkloric text. Semantic structure of the “Verse” is organized by two semantic fields. The first one is marked by words with the roots свет- “light” and свят- “saint.” In “The Verse about the Holy Mountain,” “light” and “holiness” are interrelated not only on the verbal level but also on religious and symbolic levels of the poem. Ivanov seemed to have intended his text to be perceived not only aurally but also as a unique verbal icon by the reader’s inner vision. The second group of words refers to a semantic field marked by the verbs видеть “to see” and ведать “to know.” Ivanov would repeatedly return to the images from “The Verse about the Holy Mountain” in the course of his later life. We encounter references to the poem’s plot in his articles “Living Tradition” (1915) and “The Face and Masks of Russia” (1917) as well as in his works The Russian Idea (1930) and Dostoevsky: Tragedy — Legend — Mysticism (1932) published in German. Certain images related to “The Verse about the Holy Mountain” may be found among the drafts of “The Tale about Tsarevich Svetomir,” a text Ivanov was working on from 1928 through 1949.

Keywords

• poetry of Vyacheslav Ivanov
• symbolism
• mysticism
• spiritual verse
• literary stylization
• New Jerusalem
• Apocalypse