The Image of Christ the Beloved and the Problems of Subjectivity in the Women’s Lyrics of the Silver Age

The article analyzes the individual author’s incarnations of the image of Christ in the poetry of Z. Gippius, M. Lokhvitskaya, E. Dmitrieva (Cherubina de Gabriak), A. Herzyk, E. Kuzmina-Karavaeva and A. Barkova. Falling in love with Christ is colored in the women’s lyrics of the Silver Age with erotic tones, and his divine beauty becomes the subject of poetic description. The appeal to this image is closely connected with the problems of subjectivity and the search for a new author’s identity, which characterize women’s lyrics of the turn of the 19th–beginning 20th centuries. By reconstructing traditional ideas about femininity, female authors also destroy traditional ideas about love lyrics, about the “other” in relation to whom they define their “I”: Christ is put in place of the Romantic ideal lover. Submission to him does not deprive the female author of subjectivity, but on the contrary – allows one to prove the right to creativity. This is evidenced by the motive of the choice of the lyrical heroines of these authors. Implicitly, they relate themselves to such holy chosen ones as St. Teresa of Avila or St. Catherine of Siena, who became famous both as “beloved”, earthly “spouses” of Christ, and as writers, having gained the right to speak in the masculine culture of the late Middle Ages.