Remain as Foam, Aphrodite (The lyrical “She/It” in Osip Mandelstam

The article approaches the problem of the correlation between the lyrical persons “I”, “You”, “She” in the poem Silentium by Mandelstam. Special attention is paid to the difference between the lyrical “She/It” (the original muteness, the first principle of life) and the lyrical “You” (the word, the heart, Aphrodite). The composition of the poem is remarkable for its mirror symmetry, both in terms of sound organization and semantics. The main idea of the poem is a return to the “first principle of life” through the acquisition of “initial muteness” by the lyrical “I”. In this situation, poetry turns out to be both paradoxical and transparadoxical reality, since the demand for “silence!” is implemented by means of the language (word).