Notwithstanding the economic hardship Russian people are experiencing, their cultural life is as rich and alive as ever, as Gerald Janecek shows us in this collection of his articles on contemporary Russian poetry, which are especially written for this publication or so far only available in Russian. These articles focus on works in which sonic-musical, resp. visual-typographical features are used to produce interesting new effects and range from a musical analysis of the way Joseph Brodsky recited his poems to quasi-musical principles of organization (as in the works by Mnatsakanova and Nikonova) to layout designs that reflect the way a poem is recited (as in the case of Khudyakov, Volohovsky, Brodsky, Nekrasov, and Aigi) and perceived. As the first serious scholarly examination of the poets presented, this volume offers an important introduction to Russian avant-garde poetry.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A “brilliant [and] entrancing” (The Guardian) journey into the hidden lives of fungi—the great connectors of the living world—and their astonishing and intimate roles in human life, with the power to heal our bodies, expand our minds, and help us address our most urgent environmental problems. “Grand and dizzying in how thoroughly it recalibrates our understanding of the natural world.”—Ed Yong, author of An Immense World ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR—Time, BBC Science Focus, The Daily Mail, Geographical, The Times, The Telegraph, New Statesman, London Evening Standard, Science Friday When we think of fungi, we likely think of mushrooms. But mushrooms are only fruiting bodies, analogous to apples on a tree. Most fungi live out of sight, yet make up a massively diverse kingdom of organisms that supports and sustains nearly all living systems. Fungi provide a key to understanding the planet on which we live, and the ways we think, feel, and behave. In the first edition of this mind-bending book, Sheldrake introduced us to this mysterious but massively diverse kingdom of life. This exquisitely designed volume, abridged from the original, features more than one hundred full-color images that bring the spectacular variety, strangeness, and beauty of fungi to life as never before. Fungi throw our concepts of individuality and even intelligence into question. They are metabolic masters, earth makers, and key players in most of life’s processes. They can change our minds, heal our bodies, and even help us remediate environmental disaster. By examining fungi on their own terms, Sheldrake reveals how these extraordinary organisms—and our relationships with them—are changing our understanding of how life works. Winner of the Wainwright Prize, the Royal Society Science Book Prize, and the Guild of Food Writers Award • Shortlisted for the British Book Award • Longlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize
Russia possesses one of the richest and most admired literatures of Europe, reaching back to the eleventh century. A History of Russian Literature provides a comprehensive account of Russian writing from its earliest origins in the monastic works of Kiev up to the present day, still rife with the creative experiments of post-Soviet literary life. The volume proceeds chronologically in five parts, extending from Kievan Rus' in the 11th century to the present day. The coverage strikes a balance between extensive overview and in-depth thematic focus. Parts are organized thematically in chapters, which a number of keywords that are important literary concepts that can serve as connecting motifs and 'case studies', in-depth discussions of writers, institutions, and texts that take the reader up close and personal. Visual material also underscores the interrelation of the word and image at a number of points, particularly significant in the medieval period and twentieth century. The History addresses major continuities and discontinuities in the history of Russian literature across all periods, and in particular brings out trans-historical features that contribute to the notion of a national literature. The volume's time range has the merit of identifying from the early modern period a vital set of national stereotypes and popular folklore about boundaries, space, Holy Russia, and the charismatic king that offers culturally relevant material to later writers. This volume delivers a fresh view on a series of key questions about Russia's literary history, by providing new mappings of literary history and a narrative that pursues key concepts (rather more than individual authorial careers). This holistic narrative underscores the ways in which context and text are densely woven in Russian literature, and demonstrates that the most exciting way to understand the canon and the development of tradition is through a discussion of the interrelation of major and minor figures, historical events and literary politics, literary theory and literary innovation.
An experiment with language. Is it an object cultivated in poetic laboratories where entry is locked for mere mortals? And what do language scholars think about it? Specialists in language and literature studies interested in linguistic innovation and experimental poetry will find answers to these questions in Vladimir Feshchenko’s book. The study investigates various strategies of radical linguistic creativity in Russian and American experimental writing of the 20th century and explores cases of contemporary ‘language-oriented’ and ‘trans-language’ poetry. It is a comparative examination of two national avant-garde cultures, but also a juxtaposition of the relationships that Russian and American avant-garde poetics had with linguistic ideas of their times. The monograph may serve as a wonderful introduction to the entire field of ‘linguistic poetics of the avant-garde’.
The canon of Russian poetry has been reshaped since the fall of the Soviet Union. A multi-authored study of changing cultural memory and identity, this revisionary work charts Russia’s shifting relationship to its own literature in the face of social upheaval. Literary canon and national identity are inextricably tied together, the composition of a canon being the attempt to single out those literary works that best express a nation’s culture. This process is, of course, fluid and subject to significant shifts, particularly at times of epochal change. This volume explores changes in the canon of twentieth-century Russian poetry from the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union to the end of Putin’s second term as Russian President in 2008. In the wake of major institutional changes, such as the abolition of state censorship and the introduction of a market economy, the way was open for wholesale reinterpretation of twentieth-century poets such as Iosif Brodskii, Anna Akhmatova and Osip Mandel′shtam, their works and their lives. In the last twenty years many critics have discussed the possibility of various coexisting canons rooted in official and non-official literature and suggested replacing the term "Soviet literature" with a new definition – "Russian literature of the Soviet period". Contributions to this volume explore the multiple factors involved in reshaping the canon, understood as a body of literary texts given exemplary or representative status as "classics". Among factors which may influence the composition of the canon are educational institutions, competing views of scholars and critics, including figures outside Russia, and the self-canonising activity of poets themselves. Canon revision further reflects contemporary concerns with the destabilising effects of emigration and the internet, and the desire to reconnect with pre-revolutionary cultural traditions through a narrative of the past which foregrounds continuity. Despite persistent nostalgic yearnings in some quarters for a single canon, the current situation is defiantly diverse, balancing both the Soviet literary tradition and the parallel contemporaneous literary worlds of the emigration and the underground. Required reading for students, teachers and lovers of Russian literature, Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry brings our understanding of post-Soviet Russia up to date.
Eylin has faced a lot in her short life—plagues, wars, deaths of loved ones, and even a crazy imprinting. She’s even had some good surprises along the way, but she’s about to face something…or someone…much worse. Now that she has the freedom she’s always dreamed about, she realizes just how difficult it can be to make the right choices. Consequences are far more reaching than what she sees in front of her. One rash decision followed by a series of unforeseeable events is going change her life as she knows it forever. She has no idea the force she has unleashed. Will her friends and family be able to forgive her after the damage has been done?
