The Musical Motifs of Vladislav Khodasevich’s The Heavy Lyre

Abstract

This article analyzes the musical motifs of Vladislav Khodasevich’s fourth poetry book The Heavy Lyre (1922) and reveals what role those motifs play in the collection’s composition and signification. The music-related poems that bookend the collection are clues that hint at the relationship between earthly sounds and heavenly music. In the collection’s first poem, “Music,” a heavenly ‘symphony’ is suggested as something that can be felt indirectly in daily life in the form of humor. Likewise, in “Elegy,” closer to the middle of the collection, the sounds of life and the music of the soul are settled in a hierarchy, and the sounds of life are both the result of uncertain senses and a condition of existence from which the poet cannot escape. In the final poem of the collection, “Ballad,” sounds of life recede into the background for the arrival of music. So while “Music” addresses the relationship between daily life and music, the conflict between the two is deepened in the middle of the collection, and then “Ballad” presents daily life as a niche in which music can emerge. An analysis of such roles in The Heavy Lyre will serve as the basis for studying the structure of the poet’s monumental collected works, Collection of Poems (1927).