SOURCE: Heldt, Barbara. “The Poetry of Elena Shvarts.” World Literature Today 63, no. 3 (summer 1989): 381-83.

In the following essay, Heldt provides a thematic and stylistic overview of Shvarts poetry.

She does not fit any category and would not know how to begin to try and fit in. Unlike most of Russian literature, her works are in no way politicized. The fact that much of her poetry is religious seems as natural as if she had grown up in a religious country (and, in a sense, she has), but her theology is a far cry from Orthodoxy both capitalized and uncapitalized—it stems from something deeply personal. Such feminine voices as hers have rarely been canonized by any church; indeed, they have been called blasphemous. Perhaps she is a descendant of the Gnostics, or of one of the Russian heretical sects stamped out long ago, but not quite.

Elena Shvarts...