The Buddhist string in D. Merezhkovsky's poetry
Out of Merezhkovsky' special series of Buddhist verses and poems (original works, translations and poetic arrangements) one should highlight the poem «The Song of Bayadere» which is a translation of «Lalitavistara» -the ancient Indian sutra about Buddha's life. Also semantically close to the Buddhist theme is the poem «The Victim», the plot of which is borrowed by the author from the third book «Mahabharata» and has significant parallels in Buddhist jatakas, for example, in the Tibetan «The sutra about wisdom and stupidity». All of the above-mentioned works were written during 1886-1888 and represent interesting patterns of an artistic interpretation of Buddhist motifs.