Controversies and contentions in 1920s Russian poetry

Thu 11 April 2019

Cambridge University Library

This talk examines the avant-garde poetic output that informed and underpinned the Russian revolution’s preliminary years. It focuses on the suppressed, oftentimes self-published, work that ran contrary to Party-mandated revolutionary ideals. In so doing, it underscores the richness of informal, radical experimentation that Bolshevik censors saw as a 'malignant outrage... on mankind, and over modern Russia’ (Lunacharsky 1921). Likewise, it reviews the challenges this work posed to the new post-revolution order. Further questions under consideration include: What was the role of poetry in early revolution-era Russia? What new insights can these works, many of which are untranslated or understudied, teach us about the early 20th century avant-garde? How do these works transcend their time-period and remain relevant today?

Cost: Free