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Poets, Resistance, Translation, and Ethics in a Time of War
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2025
Abstract
Poetry has proven a productive aesthetic discourse for those working in Russian and in Ukrainian, documented by a huge outpouring of verse and by both the articles in this forum. This viewpoint piece zeroes in on the ways in which poems have become a means of resistance, particularly for those writing in Russian, and on the roles played by translation as its own ethical act and as a form of further resistance. It ends with the example of Igor’ Bulatovskii's poetry and his broader actions as translator and editor.
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- Critical Forum: Poetry and Aesthetics in a Time of War
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- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2025. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies
References
1 Nothing I write here refers to or is meant to include what has become known as Z-poetry, the verse published in support of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
2 We already have considerable journalistic writing, though, as Jonathan Bolton reminded me when he kindly read a draft of this essay. And poetry might well be taking on some reportage-like functions, as he put it. A fascinating instance of prose reportage is Yevgenia Belorusets’s posts in spring 2022, written and first published in German and immediately translated into English by Greg Nissan as “Kyiv,” at www.isolarii.com/kyiv (accessed July 30, 2024), then published in 2022 by isolarii press as In the Face of War and by New Directions as War Diary (New York, 2023).
3 Ilya Kukulin, “New Languages of Hostility and Resistance: Politicizing Russophone Poetry, Part I,” Jordan Center Blog, May 14, 2024, at jordanrussiacenter.org/blog/new-languages-of-hostility-and-resistance-politicizing-russophone-poetry (accessed July 30, 2024).
4 This is another way that poetry of this war resembles journalism, which the journalists like to say is the first draft of history.
5 LiveJournal was essentially replaced for most Slavic poets by Facebook, but a few still have active LiveJournal accounts. Glaser and Lee do not include it as part of their database, however, which tells us something about the drop in usage.
6 The dissertation in progress by Anna Ivanov (Harvard University), “Network(ed) Russian Literature: 1820s–2020s,” also includes a chapter that analyzes the nodes and clusters of contemporary Russian poets largely on Facebook, with some attention to Telegram as well. One of her research questions is how these interactions might change our notion of a cultural community.
7 The statements were posted to Kuz΄min’s Facebook page, March 5, 2022, at www.facebook.com/dmitry.kuzmin.566/posts/5159281400800884 and www.facebook.com/dmitry.kuzmin.566/posts/5159289247466766 (accessed July 30, 2024).
8 But not an uncomplicated one. After the tragic death of Ukrainian poet Victoria Amelina, instantaneous translations of her poetry into Belarusian and Russian shared on social media drew swift criticism by fellow writers and friends. For a report on some aspects of this controversy, see “Belorusskii poet perevel stikhotvorenie ubitoi ukrainskoi pisatel΄nitsy. Rodstvenniki protiv,” Nasha Niva, July 6, 2023, at nashaniva.com/ru/320982 (accessed July 30, 2024). My thanks to Vitaly Chernetsky, who kindly read an earlier version of this essay, for reminding me of this history.
9 Kuz΄min also published a book of his own translations of Yuriy Tarnawsky’s poetry, U rany est΄ imia (Ozolnieki, Latvia, 2024); Kuz΄min’s series featuring the poets of Ukraine now includes the work of Lviv poet Sergiy Mushtatov, who writes in Russian and Ukrainian: List pered travoi (Ozolnieki, Latvia, 2024).
10 Ol΄ga Sedakova, Facebook, August 13, 2022, at www.facebook.com/osedakova/posts/5752873934745443 (accessed July 30, 2024). Kryvtsov was killed in an artillery strike in January 2024. For the report of his death and some of his work in English translation, see Amos Chapple, “Machine-Gun Poet: The Work and Untimely Death of Maksym Kryvtsov,” Radio Free Europe, January 11, 2024, www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-war-poet-maksym-kryvtsov-death/32769907.html (accessed July 30, 2024).
11 Amelia Glaser and Paige Lee, “Archive of the Contemporary: Ukrainian Poetry and Digital Solidarity on Facebook,” in this forum, 459-80.
12 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty, Outside in the Teaching Machine (New York, 1993), 180Google Scholar.
13 A telling example involved the poet and writer Linor Goralik, who occasioned a boycott in the run-up to a festival in Tartu, Estonia. For reports on these controversies, see Kate Tsurkan, “Why Ukrainian Authors Refuse to Share Stages with Russian Authors at Festivals,” Kyiv Independent, May 19, 2023, at kyivindependent.com/why-ukrainian-writers-refuse-to-share-stage-with-russian-authors-at-festivals/ (accessed July 30, 2024); and Cathy Young, “Does Opposing Putin’s War Mean Opposing All Russians?” The Bulwark, May 23, 2023, at www.thebulwark.com/p/does-opposing-russias-war-mean-opposing-russians (accessed July 30, 2024). The decisions have been a matter of principle, rather than targeting specific poets, but the broad definition of “Russian” was striking in the case of Goralik (born in Dnipro, Goralik worked in Moscow; she is a citizen of Israel, where she has lived since 2014).
14 See also the courageous analysis of the curation of Russian-language projects by the poet and critic Vitalii Lekhtsier, which examines projects across a range of political positions and uses willingness to cooperate with the state as one of his measures. See Lekhtsier, “Kuratorstvo russkoiazychnykh literaturnykh proektov vo vremia voennykh deistvii,” Laboratorium 16, no. 1 (2024): 100–117.
15 An eloquent poetic representation of this switch is Anastasiia Afanas΄ieva’s “Nova pisnia tyshi” (New Song of Silence), which begins in Russian and ends in Ukrainian, published by Soloneba, April 9, 2022, at soloneba.com/anastasia-afanasieva/ (accessed July 30, 2024). For a translation into English by Katie Faris and Ilya Kaminsky, see Forché, Carolyn and Kaminsky, Ilya, eds., In the Hour of War: Poetry from Ukraine (Medford, 2023), 91–93Google Scholar.
16 Translated from Khersonskii, Boris, Post Printum (London, 2024), 11Google Scholar.
17 Lyudmila Parts, “‘In the Language of the Aggressor, I Cry for its Victims’: Russophone Anti-War Poetry of Witnessing,” in this forum, 485–503.
18 Skidan’s poem first appeared on Facebook on March 1, 2022, at www.facebook.com/alexander.skidan.33/posts/5543530532342201 (accessed July 30, 2024), as did the nearly immediate translation by Kevin Platt, in the comments to Skidan’s post. The Russian original is included in several anthologies, among them Iurii Leving, ed., Poeziia poslednego vremeni (St. Petersburg, 2022), 50–51. The translation was also published in a post by Ivan Sokolov on Olga Zilberbourg’s blog, Punctured Lines, April 5, 2022, at puncturedlines.wordpress.com/2022/04/05/new-world-new-plane-a-letter-by-ivan-sokolov/ (accessed July 30, 2024).
19 Glaser and Lee, “Archive of the Contemporary,” in this forum, pp. 459-480 in Word. On [Translit], see the excellent new study by Marijeta Bozovic, Avant-Garde Post—: Radical Poetics after the Soviet Union (Cambridge, Mass., 2023), which also includes attention to feminist poetics. For a bilingual collection of feminist and queer poets, see Ainsley Morse, Eugene Ostashevsky, and Galina Rymbu, eds., F Letter: New Russian Feminist Poetry (New York, 2020). I treat the topic in “The Body Returns: Recent Poems by Russian Women,” in Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik: Poetics and Politics by Women in the Post-Soviet Space, 6 (2022): 261–300. And Skidan wrote a signal essay on the importance of women poets nearly two decades ago: “Sil΄nee urana,” Vozdukh 3 (2006): 153–69.
20 Bulatovskii, Igor΄, Avram-trava (Moscow, 2023), 271Google Scholar.
21 Bulatovskii, Avram-trava, 192.
22 For a compelling discussion Avram-trava which includes readings by the poet of select texts, listen to the podcast “Chto izuchaiut gumanitarii” (season 4, episode 2, aired June 6, 2024, 48 minutes), hosted by Aleksandr Skidan, in conversation with Bulatovskii and with Polina Barskova, https://nlo.media/catalog/chto-izuchayut-gumanitarii/uchastie-vo-vremeni-avram-trava-igorya-bulatovskogo/ (accessed August 30, 2024). Barskova also wrote the introduction, “Slova vrazlom,” to Bulatovskii, Avram-trava, 5–12.
23 Bulatovskii’s translations from Yiddish are especially highly regarded. His Jaromír Hladík Press is known for its mix of translations, philosophy, aesthetics, poetry, and experimental writing, and, as the press’s statement about its own goals reads, for its aim of promoting its readers’ free thought: jaromirhladik.com/about (accessed July 22, 2024).
24 The story is “El milagro secreto” (The Secret Miracle, 1943). For an English translation, see Borges, Jorge Luis, Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings, ed. Yates, Donald and Irby, James E. (New York, 1964), 88–94Google Scholar.