Russian–speaking, UK and European artists and scholars, from a transcultural perspective.
On 19 October. Sands Film Studio. 19-30
Prize-winning poet and writer Fiona Sampson asks whether we ignore the influence of ecology and even geology on the ways we chose to live. Do we miss something that is both politically important and intimately concerned with our quality of life? And what do we learn by comparing experiences across cultures?
Victor Sonkin, the author of this prize-winning guidebook to Ancient Rome, will talk about the everyday details of ancient Roman life, concentrating on (sometimes deceptively) simple questions of what the ancient Romans ate and drank for supper and how they calculated time. An authority on this culture, with public appearances from education, to television, and ship cruises, he makes the layers and quirks of history amusing, as much as his treatment is informative and in-depth.
Most fiction published in English is originally written in English. In many countries, including Russia, the situation is almost reversed, and translated fiction dominates the market. Borisenko and Sonkin will talk about Soviet-era translation and its influence, the great changes inpost-Soviet times, and the challenges that Russian literary translators encounter today.
Continue reading “Literary translation during the Soviet and Post Soviet period”
will speak about his experiences compiling the anthology 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution (Pushkin Press, 2016) and translating Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry (Pushkin Press, 2014) and Odessa Stories (Pushkin Press, 2016) and read stories from Red Cavalry.
After his fearsome 1948 condemnation at the hands of the Union of Composers and Stalin’s ‘cultural’ henchman Andrey Zhdanov, Shostakovich was understandably careful about what he composed next and what he revealed in public. His position was undoubtedly dangerous. In the autumn of the same year he compiled a strikingly unusual song-cycle for three singers and piano: the texts were taken from a collection of Russian translations of Jewish lyrics, mostly originally in Yiddish but one or two Hebrew or Russian; the melodies he created were original but closely related to the style of ‘klezmer’ music which Shostakovich knew and loved. The ensemble of three singers gives almost the feeling of a chamber opera.
Алексей Макушинский, Интервью в журнале Eclectic.
Continue reading “Чтение и разговор с писателем Алексеем Макушинским”
An evening of Yiddish and Russian Songs
listen to
One of his songs ⇒
(Подмосковные Вечера)
Стихи, переводы, разговоры oб Украине, на русском и украинском языках.
Поэт и переводчик Аркадий Штыпель представит свой проект перевода полного свода сонетов Шекспира, расскажет о принципах подхода к текстам и о том, почему поэты и переводчики спорят с канонической версией Маршака.
One after another they
reveal themselves
stepping solemnly
into the light
creatures great and small
all of them strangers
all of them naked as the white
moths that skitter
round them
only half surfacing
from the deep dream place
where they live
and from where they greet you
emissaries
who arrive out of dark hedges
gradually
like sight clearing
or all at once
who stand and wait to address
your bright path
(…)
from Fiona Sampson – The Border
Continue reading “Fiona Sampson – Poetry in a Changing World”
