"I am to be read not from left to right, but in Jewish, from right to left" : the poetics of Boris Slutsky / Marat Grinberg.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Grinberg, Marat, 1977-

Series:

Borderlines (Boston, Mass.)

Borderlines: Russian and East European Jewish studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Russian poetry--20th century--History and criticism.

Russian poetry.

Russian literature--Jewish authors--History and criticism.

Russian literature.

Slut︠s︡kiĭ, Boris, 1919-1986--Criticism and interpretation.

Slut︠s︡kiĭ, Boris.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (484 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Academic Studies Press, 2011.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Boris Slutsky (1919-1986) is a major original figure of Russian poetry of the second half of the twentieth century, whose oeuvre has remained unexplored and unstudied. The first scholarly study of the poet, Marat Grinberg's book substantially fills this critical lacuna in the current comprehension of Russian and Soviet literatures. Grinberg argues that Slutsky's body of work amounts to a Holy Writ of his times, which daringly fuses biblical prooftexts and stylistics with the language of late Russian Modernism and Soviet newspeak. The book is directed toward readers of Russian poetry and pan-Jewish poetic traditions, scholars of Soviet culture and history and the burgeoning field of Russian Jewish studies. Finally, it contributes to the general field of poetics and Modernism.

Contents:

Introduction: poet-interpreter/translator-scribe

Mythology/life, hermeneutics, translation

The coordinates: origin-return-seclusion

Pt. 1. Historiography

The Ur-suite of 1940/41: "poems about Jews and Tatars"

The poet-historian: transplantation added

A blessed curse: The midrash of 1947-53

Looking at the burned planet: the post-holocaust verse

The resurrected remnant: of horses and metapoetics

Pt. 2. Polemics

Writing the Jew: the poet's genealogies

On account of the elegy: within cemetery walls

Conversing about god: between the old and the new

Pt. 3. Intertexts

Among the objectivists: Charles Reznikoff

Blindness and no insight: David Samoilov

"leader of leaders and mentor of mentors": Il'ia Sel'vinskii

"Weighty proofs of the unprovable": Ian Satunovskii

the final myth: Pushkin

conclusion: the reader in perpetuity.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. 432-[451]) and indexes.

ISBN:

1-61811-133-7

OCLC:

785776759