The Image of Byzantium in the Novel In Front of the Mirror by Veniamin Kaverin

Abstract

Veniamin Kaverin’s novel In Front of the Mirror, which was published in 1972, is based on the actual correspondence between the Soviet mathematician Pavel Bezsonov and the painter Lidia Nikanorova, which Bezsonov handed over to the writer. It is clear even from a superficial comparison that there is a large discrepancy between the source material and the text of the novel; moreover, it is evident upon a closer view that descriptive and ideological features that are connected with Christianity and Byzantium in the novel are close to the ideas and imagery that were typical for Kaverin’s contemporaries. From the perspective of the comparison between the text of the correspondence and the novel’s text, this paper attempts to show that the image of Byzantium in the novel is not similar to its image in the correspondence. Through an analysis of metaphors, images, and ideas connected with Byzantium in these texts, I intend to show that the image of Byzantium in the novel In Front of the Mirror is not only determined by the public sentiment of this period, specifically, by the second wave of the Soviet intelligentsia’s conversion to Christianity, but that it is also extremely personal and based on autobiographical experience.