The Twelve

Though scholars agree that The Twelve was the last of Aleksandr Blok's great poems there is far less agreement over the meanings of the poem and the source of its greatness. One of the principal points of debate is whether this is a political poem or a personal poem about death and salvation. Reeve, for example, states bluntly that the poem "has no political theme" (208) while, according to Masing-Delic, "the energies released by historical dynamics are so powerful in The Twelve that a leap to the era of the Third Testament is imminent" (197). Strong arguments are made on both sides of the question. But the strength of the opposing positions should serve as an indication that there may be more to The Twelve than these somewhat limited points of view assume. As Stankiewicz notes, it is not surprising "that a poem built on such blatant contradictions" as are found in The Twelve should provoke heated discussion (345). But, as Stankiewicz attempts to show, the presence of apparent contradictions in a work of art might indicate that the work is designed to resolve the contradictions. The Twelve is, therefore, a poem in which the political events of the day were viewed by the poet in terms of what they meant for mankind (politically and on a broad historical scale) and what they meant for the individual, especially for Aleksandr Blok.

Though Blok wrote about the meanings of the poem on several occasions his remarks "were notoriously of little help" (Stankiewicz 345). Blo

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ute is sacrificed "for the salvation of man" (355). He concludes that the elements of the contemporary scene present contrasts between the old and new worlds (pre- and post-revolutionary) and that this is paralleled by the Christ story which, when Christ emerges at the poem's end "compels us to interpret . . . the entire text . . . as a story of "sacrifice, purification and redemption" (Stankiewicz 354). But Stankiewicz's, by adhering rather narrowly to the specifically Christian interpretation of Christ's redemption of humanity by means of sacrifice has produced a rather forced reading in which the underlying Christ symbolism does little more than create a parallel that holds the disparate elements of the poem together. He does not account adequately, for instance, for the role of the presumed sacrifice of Kat'ka in the revolutionary half of this parallel. Masing-Delic, however, rejects the notion of simple sacrifice and sees the story of Kat'ka and Petrukha as a culminating incident of the type that is the natural result of the Old World order. She argues that "future immortal mankind is built out of the raw material of present-day mortal mankind . . . out of Kat'kas and Petrukhas, or the people" (214). Thus their story i

Category: Literature - T