“A breed of mannish females”: women warriors and androgynes in the works of Liubov’ Stolitsa. Article 1

The first article of the two-part cycle, dedicated to exploring the images of the woman warrior and the androgyne in the works of a half-forgotten female poet of the Silver Age Liubov’ Stolitsa, raises the issue of the woman warrior as a gender nonconforming figure appropriating the most traditional masculine role of the patriarchal culture, i.e. that of the warrior. It is demonstrated that the woman warrior appears in Stolitsa’s work many times and in various forms (Amazons, goddess Athena, Russian warrior maidens of the steppe, or bogatyrka, Joan of Arc, women warriors of the imagined matriarchal society, Amazon-like daevas in The Song of Golden Olona, women volunteers of the World War One). The author argues that there is also “masculine” androgyne figure along with “female” androgynes in Stolitsa’s poetical work, and that the constant plot situation is love between the angel-like feminine youth and the “mannish” woman. Such features of Stolitsa’s work as gender roles reversal and representation of the feminine role as that of the “strong one” are analyzed. It is also established that the image of the female warrior appears in Stolitsa in relation to three main themes. First, this is “the woman question” and the poet’s reflections on the place and possibilities of women, which are, in her opinion, strongly underestimated. Second, this is the theme of women’s creative work and authorial agency, i.e. autometareflexive context. Third, this is utopian and eschatological thought: following A. Blok and A. Bely, the most important authors of Russian Symbolism for Liubov’ Stolitsa, she represents the woman warrior as one of the incarnations of the Soul of the World, Sophia saving the universe, whose image goes back to the Gnostic myth.