This article examines the constructing of gender in the Russian Modernist literature based on the works and life-building practices of two authors: Alexander Blok and Marina Tsvetaeva. Both poets create new (though relying on the long mythological and philosophical tradition) concept of femininity, but, in the case of Tsvetaeva, this novelty is radical, and, in the case of Blok, it is more related to the tradition. Tertium comparationis for these two cases is the fact that the important integral part of both poets' artistic worlds was the gender-nonconforming figure of the female warrior. For Tsvetaeva, this image represents her alter ego (the main lyrical mask). For Blok, such a mask was the male warrior, and the female warrior was another fundamental plot actor. Thus, Blok's lyrical hero appears in the most traditional role of the patriarchal culture, that of the warrior. But much less traditional is the fact that the main plot of Blok's works, i.e. the Sophian myth with Gnostic origins, develops in two variants: not only of the imprisoned, enchanted and sleeping World Soul waiting to be rescued by the hero, but also of the hero which is kept by the forces of evil and ultimately released by the Sophia-like heroine. The traditional concept of male superiority is, therefore, partly overthrown in Blok's artistic practice, but, in his direct statements, the poet usually stresses the affinity between the "heroic" and the "masculine". It is also taken into consideration that Blok did not equate "masculine" with "male", "feminine" with "female" and believed that the birth of the "new man" would happen as a union of the "masculine" and "feminine" elements. Tsvetaeva constructs gender, in particular, feminine, in a much more radical way than Blok. Her lyrical heroine is gender-nonconforming, masculinized (while Blok's lyrical hero is rather conventional in gender sense) and not only infinitely superior to male characters who are, in turn, feminized and/or infantilized, but often does not need them at all: as a saint prophet, God's herald on Earth renouncing flesh in general or as an Amazon despising men but not women. Her favorite heroines are androgynous, possessing both masculine and feminine traits (same as Tsvetaeva herself did, in her own opinion and in the opinions of others). Thus, the texts of both poets reflect the idea of the creation of the new, androgynous human who would be the creature of a higher order transcending the earthly baseness: the idea which was in the air of the Silver Age.
