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- Title
SEEING BEYOND THE CYCLOPS: ELENA SHVARTS'S BIOGRAPHY OF GABRIELE D'ANNUNZIO.
- Authors
Bishop, Sarah Clovis
- Abstract
A central figure of the Leningrad underground of the 1970s and 1980s, Elena Shvarts became a widely published and publicly heralded poet in the post-Soviet period, producing six books of verse between 1995 and 2007. This new work, while continuing to explore themes from her Soviet-era verse, is more closely tied to her personal life, particularly after the death of her mother in 1998. This autobiographical turn is made explicit in her prose writings, particularly her 2003 memoir Vidimaia storona zhizni (The Visible Side of Life). Shvarts continued to write verse until the last days of her life, but her final book was a biography of Gabriele D'Annunzio, the Italian poet, war hero, and politician. A massive undertaking, Gabriele D'Annuntsio. Krylatyi tsiklop (Gabriele D'Annunzio: Winged Cyclops) was published posthumously in May 2010. In the biography, Shvarts focuses on D'Annunzio's life as a form of artistic invention and simultaneously contemplates her own creative journey. Initially drawn to his fearless, anarchistic nature, reminiscent of her own rebellious youth, she becomes increasingly disillusioned, even horrified, by his spiritual and physical demise. This essay examines the biography alongside her contemporaneous diaries and final poems, arguing that it extends the autobiographical direction of her late poetic and memoiristic work. It reveals her trepidation at her own poetic and physical mortality. Unlike D'Annunzio, however, Shvarts rejects the path of material indulgence and degradation and arrives at an unwavering conviction of faith.
- Subjects
BIOGRAPHIES of poets; D'ANNUNZIO, Gabriele, 1863-1938; SHVARTS, Elena, 1948-2010; ITALIAN women poets; RUSSIAN women poets; POETRY appreciation
- Publication
Slavic & East European Journal, 2022, Vol 66, Issue 3, p320
- ISSN
0037-6752
- Publication type
Article