SOURCE: Sandler, Stephanie. “Cultural Memory and Self-Expression in a Poem by Elena Shvarts.” In Reading Russian Poetry, edited by Stephanie Sandler, pp. 256-69. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1999.

In the following essay, Sandler examines “the literary precedents, linguistic texture, thematic interconnections, psychological slant, and religious underpinnings of Shvarts's poem ‘Kindergarten After Thirty Years’.”

Among contemporary Russian poets, Elena Shvarts stands out as a powerful voice that bespeaks fragility, a formerly underground poet who addresses the central concerns of her culture. Her short lyric poems and longer cycles range widely among themes of religious experience, aggressive conflict, alienated selfhood, and the inescapability of a Russian poet's cultural self-awareness.¹ Shvarts appears to take pleasure in shifting themes and rhythms unexpectedly, and she produces paradox at all levels of her work—theme, form, diction, and tone. She keeps to a narrow range of self-revelation but tells startling tales of pain...