SOURCE: “Mystic Transformations,” in Russian Metaphysical Romanticism: The Poetry of Tiutchev and Boratynskii, Stanford University Press, 1984, pp. 174-83.

In the following excerpt, Pratt presents a detailed analysis of Boratynsky's “The Last Death,” exploring its themes, structure, and philosophical underpinnings.

… Three types of poetic material contribute to the underlying substance of [“The Last Death”]: a mystical visionary aspect, an archaic or biblical aspect, and a personal conversational aspect. All these are held together by a framework based on the imagery of time and vision. The framework itself breaks down into a series of two-stanza segments. The opening segment introduces the persona, who narrates the poem initially as an abstract third person (on: he; chelovek: man) and then as a first person who addresses the reader himself, and also introduces the key concepts of vision and time. The third and fourth stanzas portray a specific vision about a specific time...