Aleksandr Kushner

[David Vernikov]

Dear Elizabeth,

At 12:26 PM 5/18/01 +0200, you wrote:
>Reading Kushners poem 'Pod zanaves', one tends to see this curtain as the
>Iron Curtain, which separates him from another world, especially because in
>the second stanza appears the world 'iron'. But our Russian Literature
>professor rejected fully this interpretation, seeing this poem merely as a
>love poem, a farewell to the beloved one.

Your professor seems to be absolutely right.  "Pod zanaves" is a standard
idiom meaning "at the end of a performance" and this reading is fully
supported by the development of the metaphor of life as a play that
follows.  In this sense "zanaves" indicates the end of life and does
separate two worlds but in the metaphysical sence, not a political one.
Furthermore, one suspects that the phrase "zheleznyi zanaves" is not at all
a part of Kushner's poetic vocabulary, since the civic theme is not
something ever directly explored by him.

Best,
David Vernikov
UW-Madison

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