The author gratefully thanks Elizaveta Mnatsakanova for providing unpublished materials and for permitting their publication as well as the publication of the images. Additional help from Gerald Janecek, John Malmstad, and from Slavic Review's reviewers is also much appreciated, as is superb assistance from Stuart Butcher in reproducing the images.

1. See Freidin, Gregory, A Coat of Many Colors: Osip Mandelstam and His Mythologies of Self-Presentation (Berkeley, 1987)Google Scholar. I do not mean to diminish the significance of Mandel'shtam's poetry, particularly as someone who gratefully came to understand whatever I know about Russian modernism through his poetry. My experience is perhaps more typical of graduate students trained before 1990, but consider the influential essays that still appear, for example, Averintsev, Sergei, “Tak pochemu zhe vse-taki Mandel'shtam?“ Novyi mir, no. 6 (1998)Google Scholar.

2. The term Silver Age has been called into question by Ronen, Omry, The Fallacy of the Silver Age in Twentieth-Century Russian Literature (Amsterdam, 1997)Google Scholar. See also Lavrov, Aleksandr, ‘“Serebrianyi vek’ i/ili ‘panteon sovremennoi poshlosti,'” Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie [hereafter NLO], no. 51 (2001): 240-47Google Scholar.

3. As recalled by Vladislav Kholshevnikov; cited in Gasparov, Mikhail, “Belyi-stikhoved i Belyi-stikhotvorets,” in Gasparov, , Izbrannye trudy, 3 vols. (Moscow, 1997), 3:424 Google Scholar.

4. Altieri, Charles, “The Sensuous Dimension of Literary Experience: An Alternative to Materialist Theory,” New Literary History 38, no. 1 (2007): 71–98 Google Scholar; Stewart, Susan, Poetry and the Fate of the Senses (Chicago, 2002)Google Scholar.

5. On perceptual fluidity, see Monson, Ingrid, “Hearing, Seeing, and Perceptual Agency,” Critical Inquiry 34, no. S2 (2008): S36–S58 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6. Milner-Gulland, Robin, “Khlebnikov's Eye,” in Kelly, Catriona and Lovell, Stephen, eds., Russian Literature, Modernism, and the Visual Arts (Cambridge, Eng., 2000), 200 Google Scholar.

7. Khlebnikov, Velimir, Doski sud'by (Moscow, 2000)Google Scholar. This volume includes Vasilii Babkov, “Konteksty Dosok sud'by,” the most detailed analysis of his mathematical dieories, including his views of time. See also Vroon, Ronald, “Metabiosis, Mirror Images and Negative Integers: Velimir Chlebnikov and His Doubles,” in Weststeijn, Willem G., ed., Velimir Chlebnikov (1885-1922): Myth and Reality: Amsterdam Symposium on the Centenary of Velimir Chlebnikov (Amsterdam, 1986), 243-90Google Scholar.

8. Perloff, Marjorie, “Numerical Symbolism: Yeats, Khlebnikov, and the Mathematics of Modernism,” in Perloff, , Poetic License: Essays on Modernist and Postmodernist Lyrics (Evanston, 1990), 71–98 Google Scholar; see also her essay “Khlebnikov's Soundscapes: Letter, Number, and the Poetics of Zaum,” in Perloff, Twenty-First Century Modernism: The “New“Poetics (Maiden, 2002), 121-53. In addition, Alexander Spektor has written a fine paper resonantly entided “V-Khlebnikov” (unpublished paper, 2003). On the larger Russian context for Khlebnikov's visual poetics, see Ian Chesley, “Handwriting, Typography, Illustration: The Visual Word of the Russian Avant-Garde” (PhD diss., Harvard University, 2007).

9. Khlebnikov made numbers a subject of some of his poems; see, for example, a short poem in praise of numbers, “Chisla“: Khlebnikov, Velimir, Sobranie sochinenii, ed. Duganov, R. V, 6 vols. (Moscow, 2000-2006), 1:239 Google Scholar; for a translation, see Velimir Khlebnikov, Selected Poems, trans. Paul Schmidt, ed. Ronald Vroon (Cambridge, Mass., 1997), 39. No contemporary poet produced a more radical extension of this idea than Dmitrii Aleksandrovich Prigov, in his fabulous performance of “Schitanie,” as recorded with the Mark Pekarskii Ensemble in 1990, released 2005 under the Otdelenie Vykhod label, entitled Prigov Pekarskii Rubinshtein.

10. Sedakova, O. A., “Kontury Khlebnikova: Nekotorye zamechaniia k stat'e Kh. Barana,” in Parnis, A. E., ed., Mir Velimira Khlebnikova: Stat'i, issledovaniia, 1911-1998 (Moscow, 2000), 574 Google Scholar. One could compare this observation to Sedakova's recovery of lost Old Church Slavic meanings in her own poetry. On that topic, see her comments in an interview with Dmitrii Bavil'skii, “V slovakh, a ne putem slov,” Topos, 15 March 2003.

11. For the poems, see Khlebnikov, , Sobranie sochinenii, 1:198 Google Scholar (“Bobeobi“) and 1:209 (“Zakliatie smekhom“). Translations appear in Khlebnikov, , Selected Poems, 30 Google Scholar.

12. See, for example, Hejinian's translations of his work, including his long poem that pays tribute to Khlebnikov, “Nasturtium as Reality,” in Dragomoshchenko, Description, trans. Lyn Hejinian and Elena Balashova (Los Angeles, 1990), 93-112.

13. Smith, G. S., “Bely's Poetry and Verse Theory,” in Malmstad, John E., ed., Andrei Bely: Spirit of Symbolism (Ithaca, 1987), 242-47Google Scholar.

14. Belyi, Most notably Andrei, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, ed. and introduced by Lavrov, A. V and Malmstad, John E., 2 vols. (St. Petersburg, 2006)Google Scholar. Smith's basic point about the relative lack of scholarship about the poetry was echoed and updated in a postscript Gasparov added in 1997 to his earlier study, “Belyi-stikhoved i Belyi-stikhotvorets,” 438. For a study of the intellectual environment of the poetry, rich with detail, see Lavrov, A. V, Andrei Belyi v 1900-e gody: Zhizn’ i literaturnaia deiatel'nosf (Moscow, 1995)Google Scholar.

15. See the judicious account of this history in Malmstad's introduction, “'Muki slova': Ocherk istorii formirovaniia i publikatsii stikhotvornykh knig Andreia Belogo,” in Belyi, , Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 1:41–73 Google Scholar.

16. Belyi, Andrei, “Magiia slov,” from his book Simvolizm, excerpted in Belyi, , Kritika, estetika, teoriia simvolizma, 2 vols. (Moscow, 1994), 1:231 Google Scholar. Here, and throughout, unless otherwise noted, translations from the Russian are mine. The essay has been translated by Steven Cassedy: see Selected Essays by Andrei Bely, ed. and trans. Steven Cassedy (Berkeley, 1985).

17. Benjamin, Walter, “The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility,“ Third Version, Selected Writings (Cambridge, Mass., 2003), 4:251-83Google Scholar; Agamben, Giorgio, Stanzas: Word and Phantasm in Western Culture, trans. Martinez, Ronald L. (Minneapolis, 1993)Google Scholar. See also Kaufman, Robert, “Aura, Still,” October 99 (Winter 2002): 45–80 Google Scholar.

18. Howe describes her work as a “vocalized wilderness format” in Souls of the Labadie Tract (New York, 2007), 17. In an interview, Howe said, “in spite of all my talk about the way the page looks … strangely the strongest element I feel when I am writing something is acoustic.” Frost, Elisabeth A. and Hogue, Cynthia, eds., Innovative Women Poets: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Interviews (Iowa City, 2006), 161 Google Scholar.

19. This similarity between Khlebnikov and Belyi is noted in Janecek, Gerald, The Look of Russian Literature: Avant-Garde Visual Experiments, 1900-1930 (Princeton, 1984), 92 Google Scholar.

20. Ibid., 25. In the introduction to the volume of Mnatsakanova's poetry forthcoming in Moscow, entitled “Dver’ v novoe iskusstvo,” Iurii Orlitskii also mentions Belyi's musical writing as an antecedent for her work.

21. Eagle, Herbert, “Typographical Devices in the Poetry of Andrey Bely,” in Janecek, Gerald, ed., Andrey Bely: A Critical Review (Lexington, 1978), 71 Google Scholar. Eagle goes on to comment, based on his reading of the two-part poem “Zolotoe runo” (The golden fleece) that “the diffusion of sound play throughout the verse rather than its concentration in the final end rhyme reduces the semantic dominance of that final rhyme” (76); “Bely's typography does foreground the intonational level of the poem's sound, creating an auxiliary rhythmic pattern which competes with the meter for dominance” (77).

22. See especially Janecek, , The Look of Russian Literature, 25–44 Google Scholar.

23. Janecek, Gerald, “Elizaveta Mnatsakanova,” in Tomei, Christine D., ed., Russian Women Writers, 2 vols. (New York, 1999), 2:1377-92Google Scholar; Janecek, , “Paronomastic and Musical Techniques in Mnacakanova's Rekviem,” Slavic and East European Journal 31, no. 2 (1987): 202-19CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The first Russian attention to the poetry came in the 1990s: Vadim Rudnev, “Stikhoslozhenie Elizavety Mnatsakanovoi,” and Sekatskii, Aleksandr, “Poema i mantra,” both in Mitin zhurnal, nos. 45-46 (May-August 1992): 115-26, and 127-37Google Scholar. NLO first published Mnatsakanova's work in 1995, one page of calligraphy entitled “Variatsii na temu N. S. Artmann,” with a prefatory note by Sergei Biriukov, “Zrimoe zvuchanie,” NLO, no. 16 (1995): 186-88. More recently, NLO made available both Janecek's work and some previously unpublished texts by the poet, as well as a republished and corrected version of her poem Rekviem, which had appeared in Paris in the 1970s. See E. A. Mnatsakanova, “Osen' v lazarete nevinnykh sester: Rekviem v semi chastiakh,” and Janecek, Gerald, “'Rekviem' Elizavety Mnatsakanovoi,” both in NLO, no. 62 (2003): 253-71Google Scholar and 272-79; E. A. Mnatsakanova and N. Khardzhiev, “'Prichastnost’ k sile bukv’ (perepiska 1981-1993 godov),“ NLO, no. 79 (2006): 248-66.

24. Mnatsakanova's self-published books in Vienna include Beim tode zugast / Usmerti vgostiakh (1986); Das Buck Sabeth: Knigavpiati chastiakh (1988); Metamorphosen: 20 Veranderungen einer vierzeiligen Strophe und Finale (1988); Das Hohelied: Bilderzyklus zu dem Gedichtband Das Buch Sabeth (1990). In addition, she has assembled a book of her criticism: Vorlesungen zur russischen Literatur (2001).

25. Mnatsakanova, , Vita breve: Jzpiati knig, izbrannaia lirika 1965-1994 (Perm', 1994)Google Scholar; Arcadia: Izbrannye raboty 1972-2002 (Moscow, 2004).

26. On the events in Petersburg, see the short announcement posted at www.russkyformat.ru/sections/russian_culture/osen_v_lazarete/view (last accessed 23 May 2008). Shemiakin was also the first to publish her great poem “Osen’ v lazarete nevinnykh sester: Rekviem v semi chastiakh” (Autumn in the lazaretto of innocent sisters: A requiem in seven parts) in Apollon-77 (Paris, 1977), 173-83, accompanied by his own striking illustration.

27. In 1980, when there were exhibits of her work in Vienna, Bregents, and Paris, she worked on a series of graphic works inspired by the writings of Khlebnikov, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Martin Lutiler. See Mnatsakanova, , Arcadia, 192 Google Scholar.

28. Mnatsakanova, , “Khlebnikov:Predelibespredel'naiamuzykaslova,“Sintaksis, no. 11 (1983): 102 Google Scholar. This essay is accompanied by calligraphic illustrations by die poet, using Khlebnikov's poetry as die basis for the calligraphy. The essay is the subject of Brian Reed, “Locating Zaum: Mnatsakanova on Khlebnikov,“/acAe< 27 (April 2005) at jacketmagazine.com/27/reed.html (last accessed 23 May 2008), which also places Mnatsakanova's reaction to Khlebnikov's theories of language into larger questions of avant-garde poetic production.

29. Mnatsakanova, , Arcadia, 117 Google Scholar.

30. Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, letter to the author, 15 November 2004; original in Russian.

31. In an interview on BBC, aired on 15 November 1991, this is said widi particular force. Mnatsakanova concedes that she learned from Khlebnikov to despise imitations and borrowings that essentially become forms of plagiarism. One can compare a statement written in German that appears on the back cover of Das Buck Sabeth where the poet insists that the poems have no models, indeed that every poet must create an individual and original sense of form.

32. Mnatsakanova, “O prostranstvakh vremen,” published on-line at magazines.russ.ru/project/bely/mnatsakanova_talk.htrnl (last accessed 23 May 2008). 33. Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, letter to the author, 22 February 2005; original in Russian. Mnatsakanova errs in saying that Belyi was educated as a mathematician—he was trained in the natural sciences—but her assertion valuably conveys her impression of his turn of mind.

34. Belyi, , Stikhotvoreniia i poemy, 1:264 Google Scholar. This is one of the poems Belyi produced in a stolbik version as well: compare 2:335. Mnatsakanova cites the better-known text with longer lines: “Dumoi veka izmeril, / A zhizn’ prozhit’ ne sumel.” Belyi regarded the poem as an epitaph for himself: see Belyi, Andrei, Stikhotvoreniia i poemy (Moscow-Leningrad, 1966), 600 Google Scholar.

35. The repeated epithet “flying” (letaiushchii) for the word poet is also probably an echo of the early Kotik Letaev by Belyi.

36. Mnatsakanova's writings often use bold lettering (as here) or all-capitalized words, or italic script, and in all instances this has been preserved in quoting here.

37. For a substantial analysis of Mnatsakanova's reliance on structuring principles from music, see Janecek, “Paronomastic and Musical Techniques.“

38. On that connection, see Lavrov's introduction, “Ritm i smysl: Zametki o poeticheskom tvorchestve Andreia Belogo,” in Belyi, , Stikhotvoreniia ipoemy (2006 ed.), 1:30–32 Google Scholar.

39. Gasparov, Mikhail, A History of European Versification, trans. Smith, G. S. and Tarlinskaja, Marina, ed. G. S. Smith with Leofranc Holford-Strevens (Oxford, 1996), 288-92CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Gasparov mentions Belyi's late work in passing as an example of poetry for the eye, but these pages deal principally with classical, Renaissance, and modern texts from outside the Russian tradition.

40. For a brief account of the range from purely graphic sign to near-musical notation, see Kulakov, V., “Vizual'nost’ v sovremennoi poezii,” NLO, no. 15 (1995): 253-54Google Scholar.

41. This mix of sound with sight is emphasized as well in Biriukov, “Zrimoe zvuchanie.“

42. Recall Belyi's widow's recollection of the moments when he would present variant layouts of a poem and ask that she compare them to decide which would sound the best. Bugaeva, Klavdiia, “Stikhi ob Andree Belom,” Novyi zhurnal, no. 102 (1971): 107-8Google Scholar, quoted by Eagle, “Typographical Devices,” 83.

43. The quotation comes from Monson, “Hearing, Seeing, and Perceptual Agency,“ S49. For pertinent cognitive theorists, see Johnson, Mark H., ed., Brain Development and Cognition: A Reader (Cambridge, Mass., 1993)Google Scholar; Edelman, Gerald M., Wider than the Sky: The Phenomenal Gift of Consciousness (New Haven, 2004)Google Scholar; Kosslyn, Stephen and Koenig, Olivier, Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience (New York, 1992)Google Scholar.

44. For one example of these stress marks, see “Krugovaia pechal'” in Das Buch Sabeth, 70; also, in this part of the poem, one frequendy senses the phrase, “Utoli moia pechali,“ which is present as the tide of this part of the poem but written in poetic lines only as word fragments. Gerald Janecek has noted that the missing words were excised because they arwere too private or important. See Janecek, “Elizaveta Mnatsakanova,” 1382. The disappearance of language in Russian and Ukrainian avant-garde poetry has been studied by Nazarenko, Tatiana in “Words Abandoned: Pictograms and Ideograms in Contemporary Russian Visual Poetry,” Canadian-American Slavic Studies 36, no. 4 (2002): 447-69Google Scholar; and Nazarenko, , “Re-Thinking the Value of the Linguistic and Non-Linguistic Sign: Russian Visual Poetry without Verbal Components,” Slavic and East European Journal 47, no. 3 (2003): 393-421CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

45. Four copies of these images, made by the poet, are held at Houghton Library, Harvard University. See also Mnatsakanova's postcards from Davos, seven of which are in Houghton; and the smaller Davos landscape series (originals in the Albertina, copies made by the poet of eleven images in Houghton).

46. The book artist and scholar Johanna Drucker has perhaps done most to show us the range of ways in which artists and writers have used alphabet letters. See her Alphabetic Labyrinth: The Letters in History and Imagination (London, 1995); and Figuring the Word: Essays on Books, Writing, and Visual Poetics (New York, 1998).

47. Charles Bernstein, ‘“Passed by Examination': Paragraphs for Susan Howe,” My Way: Speeches and Poems (Chicago, 1999), 100. Howe's work is firmly anchored in American history, including American religious history, which marks an important difference from Mnatsakanova's thematic orientations. But there are strong affinities in their conceptions of how visual signs make up poems. Howe's visual poetry can depend on the decomposition of words, sentences, and strophes, as we find in Mnatsakanova's work. See, for example, Howe's poem “Thorow,” Singularities (Middletown, 1990), 39-60, as well as die final section of Souls of the Labadie Tract.

48. Janecek, , The Look of Russian Literature, 47–55 Google Scholar.

49. One of these one-of-a-kind albums, which I have been able to study closely, is held at Houghton Library, Harvard University. Others are held at the Albertina Museum, Vienna; at the Paul-Klee-Stiftung in Berne; and in the poet's personal collection.

50. Gerald Janecek has observed that this format is inspired by a musical form: “Das Hohelied” “is particularly interesting in being in the unprecedented form of a musical passacaglia, in which a column of italicized words appears on the right or left to represent the repeating organ pedal line of the traditional musical form, while the center of the page provides variations consisting of a flux of everyday phrases. In Mnatsakanova's version of the form, the columns representing die pedal line do not remain constant, but change and evolve as well.” See Janecek, , “Elizaveta Mnatsakanova,” 1381-82Google Scholar.

51. This unique (for that time) mix of diagonally placed lines with horizontal columns has been studied by Gasparov, : “'Shut’ A. Belogo i poetika graficheskoi kompozitsii,“ Izbrannye trudy, 3:439-48Google Scholar.

52. Other poems in the third part feature this use of handwriting angled over columns of printed words; these are among the pages that would pose the greatest challenge to oral performance. The columns (also seen in some of the poems in the first part) are like the stolbiki pioneered by Belyi but here multipled in several columns across the page.

53. Latin, the language of Catholic ritual, also plays an important role in Das Buck Sabeth. This is signaled on the first page of the volume, before the first poems begin. The lines begin:

In another large-scale poem, El'moli (in press), Mnatsakanova produces a similar effect with Italian and Latin.

54. The biblical verse elsewhere recounts a tale of loss that feels similar to “Das Hohelied“: “I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called, but he gave me no answer. The watchmen that went about the city found me, they smote me, they wounded me; the keepers of the walls took away my veil from me. I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him, diatl am sick of love.“Song of Solomon 5:6-8.

55. Several, including the first poem, in which the two lovers first meet, are dated 12 March 1972, others vary the year (12 March 1974 or 1984), the month (12 September 1985 or 1987), or the day and year (14 March 1973, 14 March 1984).

56. As my teacher Omry Ronen used to say, with regard to the dating of Anna Akhmatova's poems, sometimes the dateline is the last line of poetic text. Mnatsakanova's datelines also provide information about the genealogy of the text, and their very presence suggests that the poem is anchored in an experience that can be dated. The poet has also given an account of the generation of Das Buck Sabeth in Mnatsakanova, , Arcadia, 183 Google Scholar.

57. Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, letter to the author, 4 December 2004; original in Russian. I have corrected a small mistake in the poet's letter, where she wrote that she began the poem the evening (vecher) of 12 March. Later in the letter, and in other phone conversations with me, she has said that the poem was begun at 8:00 in the morning.

58. Mnatsakanova, , “Slovo o slovakh” (typescript, dated 30 December 2005), 5 Google Scholar. This is the speech Mnatsakanova sent to Moscow to mark the publication of Arcadia. Typeface choices by the author are preserved here, as is the line break.

59. Mnatsakanova made several albums for Beim Tode Zugast / Usmerti vgostiakh, based on the published text (Vienna, 1986). Two of these are held in Houghton Library, Harvard University. The poet says some albums for this poem appeared as early as 1975; see Mnatsakanova, , Arcadia, 191 Google Scholar.

60. The contrast between continuation and cessation is also realized at the formal level of the poem, particularly in the finale to Das Buch Sabeth. Unlike her other long works, “Das Hohelied” is not broken into numbered one-page poems, and yet it is not presented as a single continuous whole: what look to be twenty-three single poems, one per page, without titles or separation markers, ask to be read separately, but without sharp breaks, without beginnings and endings. This formal trait was noted in an early response to Das Buck Sabeth by Aleksandr Sekatsii, “Poema i mantra.” Sekatsii wrote that he was not sure whether he was reading one long poema or individual lyric poems, but he was sure that this was one of the best books of poetry in the Russian language. His essay valuably concentrates on the theme of death in Das Buck Sabeth, particularly the linguistic transformations around that theme.

61. “Bukva, kak takovaia,” in Khlebnikov, , Sobranie sochinenii, 6.1:339-42Google Scholar. For a translation, see Khlebnikov, Velimir, The King of Time: Selected Writings of the Russian Futurian, trans. Schmidt, Paul, ed. Charlotte Douglas (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), 121-22Google Scholar.

62. Benjamin, , “The Work of Art,” 4:253 Google Scholar.

63. How a face emerges in poetry that works so hard to suppress conventional signs of the lyrical subject is itself a fascinating topic, one that is also important in studying Khlebnikov. See, for example, his famous zaum’ poem, “Bobeobi,” which suggests the creation of a face in its references to lips, brow, and so on and ends with the lineation of a face appearing on canvas: Khlebnikov, , Sobranie sochinenii, 1:198 Google Scholar.

64. These verbs include: “I drink,” “I am surprised,” and, in later pages, “I grow smaller,” “I swim off” ﹛upivaius', udivliaius', umen'shaius', uplyvaiu). They vary semantically, but the direction of moving is always as if in departure or toward diminishment.

65. Mnatsakanova, , Das Buck Sabeth, 129 Google Scholar.

66. For the English, I use the title brilliandy devised by Paul Schmidt in his translation of the play published in Khlebnikov, Velimir, The Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov, ed. Vroon, Ronald (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), 2:252-58Google Scholar. For the Russian, see Khlebnikov, , Sobranie sochinenii, 4:227-36Google Scholar. The play is dated 1915 according to the manuscript; it was first published in 1917. This play is conceptually important for Mnatsakanova's Beim Tode Zugastas well.

67. The act of smiling is also performed “impetuously” (bezuderzhno), another way of saying that the poet smiles to show her lack of restraint. That diminished sense of agency is found in two other verbs, “I drink” and “I am surprised” (upivaius', udivliaius’)—note that the “u” sound of these prefixed verbs is echoed in the stressed “u” sound of sudorozhno and bezuderzhno.

68. Newmark, Kevin, “Traumatic Poetry: Charles Baudelaire and the Shock of Laughter,“ in Caruth, Cathy, ed., Trauma:Explorations in Memory (Baltimore, 1995), 236-55Google Scholar. “Zakliatie smekhom” surely stands as a subtext to the spasms of laughter imagined on this page of poetry, and the intensity and rupture of the laugh account in turn for the violence of the skull split open.

69. Mnatsakanova, , Das Buck Sabeth, 152 Google Scholar.

70. At this stage oiDas Buck Sabeth, we have the shock of the encounter but not, perhaps, the shock of loss. That appears in the two poems added into “Laudes” (in pages that are dense with words that almost shout with outrage and loss). The fiercer tone, as well as the imperative “thou shall not forget” (nezabud1) mark these two poems as memorials, as the poet herself has noted. Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, telephone conversation with the author, 2 December 2004. It is entirely consonant with the poem's rejection of conventional temporality that Mnatsakanova would not have added in those poems at the end of Das Buch Sabeth, preserving “Das Hohelied” instead as a place where the beloved may be unattainable but he is not to be taken away.

71. Composed on a single day, from first thing in the morning until some twelve hours later. Elizaveta Mnatsakanova, telephone conversation with the author, 2 December 2004.

72. When the poem appeared in a Moscow journal publication, Mnatsakanova added a new preface and made some further changes. Gerald Janecek also translated this poem, in a photocopied edition of 2004 he created with the use of images provided by the poet, three of which are included here (see figures 8-10).

73. For examples, see Lavrov, “Ritm i smysl,” 35-37. This sense of revision could occur even within a poem, as Gasparov has shown in his analysis of the framing verses in the ballad “Shut“; but Gasparov concludes that Belyi's experiments with changing the visual look of poetry in order to communicate to readers information about the melody and intonation of a verse line were “tragically fruitless.” Gasparov, , “Belyi-stikhoved i Belyi-stikhotvorets,” 3:434 Google Scholar.

74. Aristov, Vladimir, “Prototipy epokhi, ee negativy,” in Inaia reka (Moscow-St. Petersburg, 2002), 5–6 Google Scholar.