Seminar: Arkady Dragomoshchenko and the Late Soviet Underground

Global Visions: Reo, Ahurea Research Seminar is presented this week by Evgeny Pavlov:  Arkady Dragomoshchenko and the Late Soviet Underground.

3pm, Friday 16th October, Elsie Locke 611

One of the most significant Russian poets of his generation, Arkady Dragomoshchenko was a unique figure in the Soviet and post-Soviet literary scene from the late 1960s until his death in 2012 and is now something of a cult figure with a prize bearing his name established for poets under the age of 27.

Unknown to a broader reading public in Soviet times, yet visible and present in the underground literary circles, he never joined literary schools or movements.

Always involved and engaged with others, he nonetheless stood apart, skirting the edges of canons, philosophical systems, national poetic traditions and trends, intently pursuing his own path.

Any attempt to inscribe him in the context of the underground culture of the late Soviet Union unavoidably limited and calls for a renegotiation of the very term “underground.”

 

Evgeny Pavlov is Associate Professor of Russian, German, and History.

His publications include  Shok  pamiati: avtobiograficheskaia poetika Val’tera Ben’amina i Osipa Mandel’shtama [The Shock of Memory: Autobiographical Poetics of Walter Benjamin and Osip Mandelstam], a number of edited volumes and numerous articles on Russian, comparative literature, and cultural history.

He translated into English Dragomoshchenko’s novel Chinese Sun and a number of essays and poems.