SOURCE: Sandler, Stephanie. “Elena Shvarts.” In Russian Women Writers, Vol. 2, edited by Christine D. Tomei, pp. 1459-464. New York: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1999.

In the following excerpt, Sandler considers the religious, historical and corporeal themes in Shvarts's work.

Elena Andreevna Shvarts was born 17 May 1948 in Leningrad. She is a prolific, compelling contemporary poet whose work mixes the skepticism of postmodern sensibilities with the haunted primitivism of ancient Slavic folk belief. Standard biographical accounts seem unusually inept when it comes to this poet. Shvarts has been quite private about her own life experiences and has never written what could crudely be called “confessional” verse. Her upbringing seems to have offered her great freedom but little structure. In a short statement about herself, she stressed her unconventional education, which eventually included a year of study at Leningrad University in the Philological Faculty and graduation from the Theater Institute, where she was...