Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB

Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB Poets)

â€œPussy Riot are Vvedensky's disciples and his heirs.
Â Â Â Â Â Katya, Masha, and I are in jail but I donâ€™t consider that weâ€™ve been defeated.... According to the official report, Alexander Vvedensky died on December 20, 1941. We donâ€™t know the cause, whether it was dysentery in the train after his arrest or a bullet from a guard. It was somewhere on the railway line between Voronezh and Kazan. His principle of â€˜bad rhythmâ€™ is our own. He wrote: â€˜It happens that two rhythms will come into your head, a good one and a bad one and I choose the bad one. It will be the right one.â€™ ... It is believed that the OBERIU dissidents are dead, but they live on. They are persecuted but they do not die.â€
Â â€” Pussy Riot [Nadezhda Tolokonnikovaâ€™s closing statement at their
trial in August 2012]

â€œI raise[d] my hand against concepts,â€ wrote Alexander Vvedensky, â€œI enacted a poetic critique of reason.â€ This weirdly and wonderfully philosophical poet was born in 1904, grew up in the midst of war and revolution, and reached his artistic maturity as Stalin was twisting the meaning of words in grotesque and lethal ways. Vvedenskyâ€”with Daniil Kharms the major figure in the shortâ€“lived underground avant-garde group OBERIU (a neologism for â€œthe union for real artâ€)â€”responded with a poetry that explodes stable meaning into shimmering streams of provocation and invention. A Vvedensky poem is like a crazy party full of theater, film, magic tricks, jugglery, and feasting. Curious characters appear and disappear, euphoria keeps company with despair, outrageous assertions lead to epic shouting matches, and perhaps it all breaks off with one lonely person singing a song.

A Vvedensky poem doesnâ€™t make a statement. It is an event. Vvedenskyâ€™s poetry wasÂ unpublishable during his lifetimeâ€”he made a living as a writer for children before dying under arrest in 1942â€”and he remains the least known of the great twentieth-century Russian poets. This is his first book to appear in English. The translations by Eugene Ostashevsky and Matvei Yankelevich, outstanding poets in their own right, are as astonishingly alert and alive as the originals.
Country USA
Brand New York Review Books
Manufacturer NYRB Poets
Binding Paperback
ItemPartNumber 3TWOWA0018BG
Color Grey
ReleaseDate 2013-04-02
UnitCount 1
EANs 9781590176306

Country	USA
Brand	New York Review Books
Manufacturer	NYRB Poets
Binding	Paperback
ItemPartNumber	3TWOWA0018BG
Color	Grey
ReleaseDate	2013-04-02
UnitCount	1
EANs	9781590176306

Alexander Vvedensky: An Invitation for Me to Think (NYRB Poets)

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