| | Sedakova's poetry has been influenced by modern philosophy and music. In her extremely original irregular rhythms a sensitive ear detects the presence of strict underlying ground rules (for instance, everything may be divisible by three), whlist the attentive reader of her poetry will note the role rhythm plays in the general semantic conception of her verse. Thus, in her "Autumn Water's Elegy" the now long, now single-word lines portray the freedom of the waters cascading over the hills and refer back to the fountainhead of poetic inspiration, "the true, the blushful Hippocrene" produced at a stroke by Pegasus's hoof. Her rhythmical sensitivity ia allied with a frugal ascetic use of metaphor. In Mikhail Epstein's view, instead of comparison and correspondence, Sedakova's poetry is governed by an amalgamation and transformation of the essence, e.g. "The Wild Dogrose" is an image of the whole universe where a throny road leads to a paradise, suffering brings salvation, a wounded heart turns out to be a blossomed rose. Sedakova's verse is reticent and yet full of allusions to the mythical, philosophical and theological origins of our culture; thus, her "silk of time" stands for poetry, language and for the life of the spirit. It seems she shares the belief that poets were the inventores of civilization. Her vast knowledge of European poetry and her love of the classics help her to form the foundation of her own poetic vision. One senses an ethical and aesthetic self-restraint which can only be welcomed in our age, with its lack of feeling for the right word in the right place, its blustering irony and its modish belief in God.
Dr Valentina Polukhina |
|
