Information about the author: 

Abstract:

This article examines Vladimir Gippius’s poem «The Human Face», which was only partially published by the author in 1922; most of it remains in the archives. A study of the poem has shown that antithesis and antinomy served as important tools for its organization. The poetics of antithesis organizes a poetological plot in the work, the center of which is the traditional romantic conflict between the poet and the crowd. The poetics of antinomy contribute to another narrative thread, connected to Gippius’s phenomenology. Its central theme is the experience of the drama of human life, fundamentally antinomic (flesh vs. spirit), and, furthermore, the passionate thirst for communion with God. First of all, the lyrical subject is constructed antinomically, being simultaneously both the object of knowledge and the knowable subject. In addition, the poem artistically explores such antinomies as the existence and absence of a soul, and the existence and absence of death. The last antinomian opposition is removed by religious consciousness in the idea of immortality, in which the opposition between life and death is resolved. It is in this context that the theme of Nativity must be understood: in depicting the birth of the infant Christ, the author of the poem particularly emphasizes the dogmatic antinomy of his nature, which unites the divine and the human. The meaning of Nativity in the ideological composition of «The Human Face» is understood as a religious, mystical and symbolic promise of the immortality of the human soul.