Taking as a starting point Vyacheslav Ivanov’s poem Eden – the epilogue of the 5th book of “metaphysical lyric poetry” Rosarium as well as his critical and philosophical works – the article proposes a culturological interpretation of the key topoi of the poet’s artistic thought: his poetic anthropology. The principal point in these considerations is conceptualisation of the category of paradise/Eden in Ivanov’s writings and the notion of happiness as “metaphysical and religious feeling” connected with a person’s spiritual life in its vertical dimension (relation man – three-personed God). Moreover, the article presents intertextual relationships between Ivanov’s poetry and cultural texts (St Augustine, Petrarch, and others) being the source of European understanding of the concepts: soul, memory, oblivion, paradise.

Balmont’s only contribution to Russian Symbolist Drama is discussed in the forthcoming article as an attempt of quitting narcissistic “lyrical solitude”, which parallels Blok’s situation upon staging the play Balaganchik. Motifs of the mythologeme of Narcissus scattered all over Balmont’s poetry and prose, given narcissistic features of his individual character seem to reinforce that a subtle decoding of the myth as a sujet of semiosis, constitutes one of the chief constructive principles of the play. By means of contrasting allusions to the Blue Flower of Novalis Balmont accentuates metamorphosis via dematerialisation and transmutation coded in the myth. The pattern of colour and fl oral imagery juxtaposing the complementary yellow and blue is meant to reveal the harmony of universal correspondences shown through the omnipresent principle of the Eternal Feminine.