Videos by Josephine von Zitzewitz
Interview with Ksenia Zheludova on the subject of social media publishing and working with transl... more Interview with Ksenia Zheludova on the subject of social media publishing and working with translators 2 views
One of the most talked-about Russian poems of 2020
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Papers by Josephine von Zitzewitz
The Oxford Handbook of Soviet Underground Culture
Leningrad was the centre of a boom in samizdat poetry in the 1970s and home to poets such as Vikt... more Leningrad was the centre of a boom in samizdat poetry in the 1970s and home to poets such as Viktor Krivulin, Elena Shvarts, Oleg Okhapkin, Aleksandr Mironov, Sergei Stratanovskii, and their older contemporary, Leonid Aronzon. Their work is now recognized as one of the key currents in Russian postmodernism. This article surveys the points that unite the poets of this current, with particular emphasis on their intertextual relationship with Modernist poets, the understanding of the role of the poet, the significance of religious imagery, and the unofficial seminars and journals that fostered and promoted the extraordinary literary creativity of Leningrad’s unofficial culture.
Religious, in particularly Christian imagery, was ubiquitous in Leningrad samizdat poetry of the ... more Religious, in particularly Christian imagery, was ubiquitous in Leningrad samizdat poetry of the 1970s. This essay addresses two main questions that are closely related: is the term «religious verse» appropriate for this kind of poetry; how are we to define «religious» in this case? Secondly, what were the common denominators of religious verse in 1970s Leningrad.
The Modern Language Review, 2012
This article looks at the prevalence of religious, specifically Christian, imagery in the poetry ... more This article looks at the prevalence of religious, specifically Christian, imagery in the poetry of two prominent members of the cultural underground in 1970s Leningrad, Viktor Krivulin and Aleksandr Mironov. Taking into account the two poets' concern for the renewal of poetic language and their fascination with the modernist aesthetic, I find in their practice of art as a quasi-religious
The Centrality of Literature The Moscow poet and critic Ol'ga Sedakova, herself the author of... more The Centrality of Literature The Moscow poet and critic Ol'ga Sedakova, herself the author of many poems on biblical topics, identifies Iosif Brodskii's 1962 poem "Rozhdestvenskii romans" (A Christmas Ballad) as the beginning of the trend that subsequent researchers have dubbed «metaphy-sical poetry» (Nesterov 75-97), «spiritual lyrics» (Krivulin, "Peterburgskaia spiritual'naia lirika" 99-110) and «Leningrad religious poetry» (Berg, "Neofitsial'naia"). Ultimately, the Christian theme, subdued in the poem if not in the title, is of limited importance in "Ro-zhdestvenskii romans". Rather, Sedakova singles out this poem because it expresses the indistinct longing of young intellectuals coming of ages in the Soviet 1960s as «тоска необъяснимая» (inexplicable longing). Even more importantly, it presents a world that was no longer mon-dimensional and flat, but multi-layered and permeable to inspiration, an inherently immaterial, unqu...
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Videos by Josephine von Zitzewitz
Papers by Josephine von Zitzewitz
Aims: a) the study of the online platforms that increasingly replace print media in the field of poetry publishing and a conceptualisation of the role of digital networks in contemporary Russian poetry;
b) the translation of a representative sample of poets/poems and scholarly work on translating poetry that challenges our conception of the poetic genre by supplementing the written word with online-only content;
c) the fostering of collaboration between living poets and scholar-translators, with the long-term goal of establishing a network of people who write, translate and research contemporary Russian poetry that breaks down disciplinary boundaries.