Calvary

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the subject of the crucifixion in Russian lyric poetry of 19th –21st centuries. It studies five poems that present different images of Calvary. Analyzing A.S. Pushkin’s “Worldly power” we discover a lexical connection of the poem to prayers and liturgical texts. The poem “When rowan leaves are dank and rusting…” by A.A. Blok requires consideration from two angles: among his other Christological poems and in the light of a general among symbologists tendency of eroticizing Christian images. We demonstrate that the subject of co-crucifixion is natural for Blok, that it was slowly emerging in his lyric poetry of the 1900s. The article analyzes O.E. Mandelstam’s poem “The implacable words…” in the context of his lyric poetry of the 1910s, as well as in comparison to the later variation of the image (“Like chiaroscuro’s martyr Rembrandt…”). The research reveals “maternal projection” of the subject of Calvary on the example of the poem “Mother” by V.V. Nabokov, passages from A.A. Akhmatova’s poem "Requiem” and I.A. Brodsky's poem “Still-life.” El.A Shvarts’s poem “Rembrandt’s etching — Christ and the thieves” represents ekphrastic versions of the biblical story.