Each chapter of Tatyana Tolstaya’s novel The Slynx is assigned a Cyrillic letter in alphabetical order instead of the numbers used in the more traditional scheme, a deviation that makes sense considering The Slynx’s fixation on books and language. But instead of vaunting the power of literature to transcend time (the maudlin conclusion to which such fixations usually lead), Tolstaya advances a position of skepticism. Her protagonist Benedikt, experiencing literature in a world that shares nothing with the one in which that literature was written, experiences literature shallowly and selfishly because he is robbed of the necessary context, ultimately suggesting that literature is not a foolproof means of communion across time and cannot meaningfully enrich the lives of those who cannot access its cultural context. 
Benedikt’s initial reaction to the literature he copies is one of appreciative incomprehension. 
In the harsh post-Blast world, such a job is to be coveted. This is not to suggest that Benedikt derives no pleasure from the words themselves, but nonetheless his positive reactions are largely material, and he derives the same pleasure from a poem whether he understands it or not.
The contrast of Benedikt’s reactions to these poems illustrates his fundamental inability to comprehend the literature he copies. He believes that he understands the first poem, because it makes sense to him on a literal level; Benedikt knows about mountains and roads and dust, because these things exist in his world. If asked what the poem was “about,” he would answer that it is a poem about mountains and roads and dust, missing the poem’s thematic resonance completely. The second poem does not permit Benedikt the same illusion of comprehension. What, to Benedikt, is a Homer or a Hellas? He may squawk and scratch his beard but he simply does not have access to the knowledge that would allow him to understand the central allusion in Mandelstam’s poem. Thus while he may enjoy it, that enjoyment seems to be rooted more in an assumption that if he doesn’t understand it, it must be good. 

Benedikt realizes that the poem is about sex, but interprets the poem as an instruction manual. 

However, Benedikt is not totally representative of his whole society’s perceptions of literature. Varvara’s frequent glimmers of understanding suggest that perhaps Benedikt is not merely naïve but, frankly, stupid. (Perhaps that is Benedikt’s unspoken Consequence.) Varvara reacts to her own ignorance with curiosity rather than complacence. When she wonders about the word “steed,” which she has come across while copying, she comes to Benedikt for more information. But instead of enlightening her, Benedikt fits the concept of a steed into his narrow worldview, by rationalizing that it must refer to the homely, ever-present mouse. Varvara, to her credit, is unconvinced. She understands that a poem can refer to something that doesn’t exist in the world around her and thus, even though she can’t fill in those gaps, she recognizes them rather than explaining them out of existence as Benedikt does. She also has a deeper stylistic understanding.
