Authors

Alexandra Smith¹;  ¹ University of Edinburgh, UK

Discussion

Olga Sedakova is well-known in Russia and in the West  as a philosophical poet, translator  and essayist  who was largely influenced by  the cultural ‘underground’ of Moscow in the 1970s.  Sedakova’s poetry explores spiritual and metaphysical aspects of everyday life and , as  Josephine von Zitzewitz points out, “Sedakova’s poetic vision is deeply embedded in the European tradition”. Zitzewitz describes Sedakova as a spiritual seeker. She mentions Dante Alighieri and Rainer Maria Rilke as Sedakova’s teachers. (Josephine von Zitzewitz . “Olga Sedakova’s Journey Poems: The Spirituality of Form”, Literature & Theology, Vol. 29. No. 2, June 2015, 183–198, 189). The paper will offer a more balanced approach to Sedakova's poetry and discuss her re-assessment of Russian literary canon based on Eurocentric values.

It will analyse Sedakova’s cycle featuring her imaginary journey to China and explore Sedakova's engagement with the Chinese poet Li Bai (701-762) in this cycle in the context of the revival of Eurasianist ideas in the late Soviet period. It will be argued that Sedakova’s vision of China challenges Russian modernist renderings of Chinese poetry and culture as manifested in Gumilev’s poems. The cycle creates a sense of  estrangement both from Socialist Realist culture and from Russian literary canon advocated by Russian authors in the 1820s-1920s. It also showcases Sedakova’s skilful use of direct and simple language for expressing emotions in poetry with the help of visual images, allusive texture and intertextual references. Sedakova seems to be especially interested in Li Bai’s revival of the traditional poetry in China and his engagement with the theme of the neglected courtesan.