Elena Shvarts: From Underground to Mainstream

A guest lecture by Dr Josephine von Zitzewitz (Leverhulme Early Career Fellow in Russian Literature, Department of Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge)

Elena Shvarts (1948-2010) began her poetic career in the literary underground that flourished in Leningrad in the 1970s and 1980s. Her work circulated exclusively in samizdat until the late 1980s; she and her peers began to publish prolifically in the official press only during Glasnost’. However, she is one of the very few former underground poets who succeeded in becoming truly established in the post-Soviet era, winning prizes and attracting the attention of scholars and translators alike.  

Through a combination of close readings and the consideration of extra-textual factors this talk attempts to answer the question of how Shvarts managed to become so popular in the 1990s and 2000s.

When: 04.05.17 at 10.15–12.00
Where: SVHUM C-1004
Location / Campus: Tromsø
Target group: All
Responsible: Andrei Rogatchevski
E-mail: andrei.rogatchevski@uit.no
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