Visionary Poetry after the Fall: Khersonsky, Kruglov, Sedakova, Shvarts

In an era when theology has become a contested space in Russia, as elsewhere, some poets have rejected intolerance and divisiveness to try to imagine the religious experience of the other – as Holy Fool, forgotten saint, strangely powerful monk, or Jew destined for diaspora. These poets are committed to a politics of free expression, and in their poetics of faith the limits on autonomy brought by ritual, rules, and religious traditions are experienced as their own form of liberation. They stand at the threshold between the secular and the sacred, creating visionary poems as ethical acts.

Stephanie Sandler is Ernest E. Monrad Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures and Chair of the Slavic Department, Harvard University. She has written about Pushkin and myths of Pushkin in Russian culture, and about contemporary poetry of Russia and of the United States. She has a long-standing interest in literary and cultural theory, including feminist theory, and has studied women’s writings in and beyond Russia. Professor Sandler is currently working on a history of Russian literature with three co-authors, due out from Oxford in 2017, and a monograph on Russian poetry after 1989, from which this talk is taken.