| PUSHKIN CLUB PROGRAMME 2007 -2008 Pushkin Club, Pushkin House, 5A Bloomsbury Square, London WC1 We hope that you have enjoyed the Pushkin Club's 2007-08 season which has now come to an end and we would like to thank you for your support. We are very grateful. Pushkin Club and Pushkin House pool their efforts to create one seamless entity promoting Russian Culture. The Pushkin Club's 2008-09 begins on 23 September with a book launch for Stanley Mitchell's translation of Evgeni Onegin for Penguin. Other events in 2008 will include a rehearsed reading of Uncle Vanya directed by Simon Usher with Greg Hicks as Vanya. Professor David Jackson will give a lecture on the painter Ilya Repin. Jan Leder will talk about his native 'avtonomnaya respublika', Birobidzhan. To avoid an excess of emails duplicating the same announcements we will no longer be sending reminders of events. All Pushkin Club events as well as all Pushkin House events and general information will be in English and Russian on the Pushkin House website www.pushkinhouse.org.uk There will be a monthly mailout of both Club and House events. If you are not already getting these and would like to receive them, please send your email address to Pushkin House at info@pushkinhouse.org.uk Tuesday 11 September 2007 An evening in memory of Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov was a prominent figure in the cultural life of Russia and the world, well known as a poet, artist and writer. The evening will include video and audio recordings of Prigov himself, readings of his poetry in translation, and music and other performances dedicated to his memory. Talks will be in Russian and English. Вечер памяти Дмитрия Александровича Пригова состоится в Пушкинском Доме как первый вечер сезона. Дмитрий Александрович Пригов видная фигура культурной жизни России и всего мира. Он широко известен как поет, художник, прозаик. Во время вечера будут показаны видеозаписи его перформансов, как и записи его чтений, музыка и выступления посвящённые его памяти, чтение стихов Дмитрия Александровича в переводах на английский. Вечер будет проводиться на русском и английском языках. Tuesday 18 Sept Lesley Chamberlain: The Minister of Darkness Sergei Uvarov, an aristocrat born in 1788, one of the best-educated European-style Russians of his generation later became of the most repressive figures of the reign of Nicholas I, hated by Belinsky, Herzen and other liberals who felt his lash. Introducing her new book in progress, Lesley Chamberlain will talk about the contradictory life of a man whose career remains a paradigm for understanding Russian statecraft. Uvarov's opposition to the famously liberal 'marvellous decade' of 1838-48 has led historians to ignore him but one great novelist - Joseph Conrad - found inspiration in Uvarov for his novel Under Western Eyes. Tuesday 9 October David Brummell: A Commemoration of Anna Politkovskaya – The Search for Truth An overview of Anna Politkovskaya's life and achievements, coupled with a factual survey of some of the events and issues covered in her published work, including reference to the material which is now available in her recently published book, A Russian Diary. The reading will conclude with a reading of one or two poems, in Russian and English. Tuesday 23 October Rosalind P. Blakesley: Eating Restoration Glue to Stay Alive: The History of the Hermitage. Dr Rosalind P. Blakesley, Senior Lecturer in History of Art and Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, will examine the history of the Hermitage from the groundbreaking patronage of Peter the Great, to the survival of the institution through the momentous events of the twentieth century. By looking at the collecting activities of some of Russia's most charismatic rulers, aristocrats and merchants, it traces the museum's acquisition of world-class holdings, including the richest collection of Dutch art outside Holland and iconic examples of modern French art. The lecture also addresses the heroic endeavours of the Hermitage curators to preserve the collections during the Russian Revolution and the Siege of Leningrad, drawing on the lecturer's personal interviews with survivors of the Siege. Tuesday 6 November Richard Temple: Icons: A Search for Inner Meaning. Dr Temple founded the Temple Gallery in London in 1959 as a centre for the study, restoration, exhibition and collection of icons. He is a member of the Advisory Panel of the National Art Collections Fund of Great Britain and has been active in the acquisition of icons by several major museums, among them the British Museum and the Musée du Louvre. He has published many catalogues and scholarly articles. Tuesday 20 November Zinovy Zinik: The Gothic and Sadomasochistic Aspects of the Soviet Childhood and their Reflection in Russian Literature. Zinovy Zinik was born in Moscow in 1945. Since 1976 he has lived and worked in London. He is the author of eight books of fiction and contributes regularly to BBC Radio and the Times Literary Supplement. His book of sketches At Home Abroad is to be published in Moscow in the coming year. Tuesday 4 December Yana Glembotskaya and Oleg Burkov (eds). Permanent Winter: New Poetry from Siberia. Readings in Russian and English. This anthology brings together, for the first time in English, a selection of contemporary poetry from Novosibirsk, Siberia's largest city and the exact geographical centre of Russia. Writing about their extraordinary country, they have adapted Russian literary traditions to its exceptional conditions. There are the love lyrics of Maxim Ukolov, the imagist verse of Sergey Samoylenko, the experimental poetry of Igor Loshilov and Viktor Ivaniv, and the strange, magical free verse of Igor Davletshin. Five poets and five aesthetic and linguistic experiences, united only by the weather. Yana Glembotskaya has published widely on English and Russian literature. Sergei Samoylenko has published three collections of poetry. Oleg Burkov is currently studying twentieth-century Russian avant-garde poetry at the State Pedagogical University in Novosibirsk. Tuesday 18 December Duncan Higgins, painter and photographer on his project on the Solovki Islands. There will be an exhibition in conjunction with this talk. Details to follow. Currently undertaking a three year NESTA fellowship,Duncan is on sabbatical leave from Nottingham Trent University School of Art and Design, where he was joint course leader of the BA Hons Fine Art programme. He has made six extended visits to the Solovki islands since 2004 in both winter and summer. His talk will be presented from DVD projection and will include examples of his recent work, Solovki itself and the turbulent present and past histories he has encountered. He writes: 'For me the Solovki islands are a compelling and unique place of concentrated social and political history that touch not just my own but wider shared histories. It is for me a place of limits or an extreme situation incorporating the climate extremes, geographical extremes, extremes of faith, brutality, beauty and fantasy. In particular I am concerned with exploring ideas of testimony and social memory and to try and find the means to visualise how the personal and the historical meet. How far can the field of visual culture or art be a test site for the exploration of critical and imaginative alternatives and to try to re-imagine preconceptions about people, ideas and cultures. CANCELLED Tuesday 22 January Anton Nesterov and Richard McKane, poets and translators, explore with readings in Russian and English, the poetry of the late Irina Kovaleva. She left three small books of poetry and translations to and from Greek and was married to Anton Nesterov, whose poetry will also be read in Russian and in English translation by Richard McKane. A rare opportunity to hear the work of two contemporary poets and translators who are both deeply imbued with English poetry. Tuesday 29 January MANDELSTAM and TCHAIKOVSKY An evening of poetry and music, introduced by David Brummell who will explain the affinity between Tchaikovsky's music and Mandelstam's poetry and how the particular poems to accompany each month of the year were chosen. This will include a reading of 20 poems by Osip Mandelstam and the playing of Tchaikovsky's 12 piano pieces, "The Seasons" The poems, which will be read between each of the piano pieces, will be read in Russian by Alla Gelich. The text of the English translations, by Richard McKane and David Brummell, will be available. The pianist will be Nadia Giliova, who studied piano at the Kharkov Special School of Music in the Ukraine and, subsequently graduated from the Gnessin Academy of Music in Moscow and the Royal Academy of Music, London. Nadia has been a prize-winner at a number of national and international competitions, including the International Prokofiev Competition in Moscow, the Petrozavodsk International Piano Competition and the 2003 Grieg international Piano Competition in Oslo. Since her English debut in 2002, Nadia has performed at a number of important venues, festivals and music series across Great Britain. She is due to play "The Seasons" again at the Wigmore Hall in 2008. Tuesday 5 February Princess Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky: Revolutionary Ceramics – Soviet Porcelain 1917 – 1927. Princess Lobanov-Rostovsky, half-French, half-Russian is a freelance writer and lecturer living in London and specializing in the Russian decorative arts. She has co-curated numerous exhibitions of Russian theatrical art – designs for ballet, theatre and opera – in North America, Germany, Japan and Russia, and was a consultant for the Diaghilev Exhibition and Festival in the Netherlands in 2005. She is the author of Revolutionary Ceramics – Soviet Porcelain 1917 – 1927, published in 1990, and advises both Christie's and Sotheby's on the subject of revolutionary ceramics. Tuesday 19 February Professor Neil Kent: Looking at Karelia. A symbiosis of Russian and Finnic culture with its monasteries, churches, battlefields and rich resonance of its epic poetry, The Kalevala, which has its roots in ancient Finnic epic poetry. Neil Kent is Senior Associate at the Scott Polar Research Institute. He is based at Cambridge University and at the St Petersburg State Academy of Art and Culture specializing in European history and culture. His many books include The Soul of the North: A Social, Architectural and Cultural History of the Nordic Countries, 1770-1940 (Reaktion, 1999) and Helsinki: A Cultural and Literary History (Signal,2004). Tuesday 4 March John Riley: Shostakovich's film music. John Riley is a lecturer, broadcaster, writer and curator specialising in film and/or music, particularly from Russia and the Soviet Union. His book, Dmitri Shostakovich: a Life in Film (IB Tauris, 2005), is the only study of the composer's cinema career in English. He has also contributed to several other books. He produced the first BBC Film Prom, curated the UK's largest ever Shostakovich film season for the Barbican cinema, and devised, wrote and directed the evening-long show Shostakovich - My Life at the Movies for the South Bank Centre, which was premiered by the CBSO conducted by Mark Fitz-Gerald with Simon Russell Beale as narrator. The show was then produced at the Komische Oper, Berlin. Tuesday 18 March. Robert Chandler: Coats and Turncoats: translating the wit of The Captain's Daughter. Robert Chandler writes, 'Like the novel's young hero, Pyotr Grinyov, Pushkin is a trickster. The Captain's Daughter, apparently a mere historical yarn, is in fact constructed with extraordinary subtlety. The entire novel is bound together by delicate patterns of sound; thought, sound and feeling are inextricably interwoven.' Robert Chandler, together with his wife, Elizabeth, has recently translated the novel – one of Pushkin's greatest masterpieces – for Hesperus. He will discuss what he learned in the process. Tuesday 1 April Two Great Unknown Russian Poets: Ilia Bokstein and Roald Mandelstam. Readings in Russian and English. Translated and introduced by Richard McKane additional translations by Belinda Cooke. Ilia Bokstein spent time in the camps in the 60s for his reading poems by the Mayakovsky statue in Moscow. He subsequently emigrated to Israel where he died in 2002. Roald Mandelstam b. 1932 lived in St Petersburg and died aged 28. One of the first poets of the Leningrad Underground, attached to that city's artists, he did not publish a single poem in his lifetime. Recently published by Limbakh. Tuesday 15 April Stanley Mitchell: a talk on Chagall's illustrations to Gogol's Dead Souls. These illustrations were Chagall's first major work after leaving Russia. Gogol, too wrote Dead Souls after leaving Russia for 12 years. Both look back at their homeland through a diabolical scenario. Chagall's 90 graphics are a perfect match for Gogol's humour and will be compared with more conventional illustrations that appeared both in Gogol's lifetime and later Tuesday 29 April Natasha Randal on Yevgeny Zamyatin's novel, We. Written in 1921, the dystopian novel We is set in the One State, where all live for the collective good and individual freedom does not exist. The novel takes the form of the diary of mathematician D-503, whose psyche slowly unravels as he encounters love, revolution, and his 'soul'. Natasha Randall's new translation will be published by Vintage Classics in December 2007. (It was published in 2006 by The Modern Library, Random House in the U.S.) TUESDAY 6th MAY 7.30 Boris and Gleb Productions in association with the New Factory of the Eccentric Actor present THE PROPOSAL by Anton Chekhov. Cast: Josh Darcy, Penelope Dimond, Anthony Best Directed by Gary Merry Designed by Jonathan Swain. The company that brought "The Bear" to the Pushkin Club return with another of Chekhov's jests in one act. A piece of vaudeville in the French manner to delight you on a May evening. Although Chekhov said that it was written "especially for the provincial stage," "The Proposal" had its premiere in St Petersburg on the 12th April 1889 at a small chamber theatre, perhaps rather similar to Pushkin House, and was then staged at the Alexandrinskii Theatre. It was also staged that summer in the little wooden theatre at Krasnoe Selo in front of the Tsar Alexander III, who was heard to laugh so loudly throughout the performance that Chekhov said "I am expecting the Order of Stanislaus." WEDNESDAY 7th MAY 7.30 Professor Robert Bird Russian Symbolism and the Rise of Poetic Cinema: The Case of Andrei Tarkovsky Robert Bird is Associate Professor and Chair in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Chicago. He will analyse Tarkovsky's use of symbolist theories in his writings; examine the place of cinema in symbolism; show how symbolism ended up, rather unexpectedly, supporting theories of 'poetic cinema'. Robert Bird's first full-length book Russian Prospero (2006) is a comprehensive study of the poetry and thought of Viacheslav Ivanov. He is also the author of two books on the film-maker Andrei Tarkovsky, Andrei Rublev (2004) and Andrei Tarkovsky: Elements of Cinema (2008). His translations of Russian religious thought include On Spiritual Unity: A Slavophile Reader (1998) and Viacheslav Ivanov's Selected Essays (2001). His works in progress include The Soviet Imaginary and a book on Dostoevsky and narrative theory, provisionally entitled In Suspense. Tuesday 13 May John Milner: The Futurists in Russia Professor John Milner, Emeritus Professor completed his doctorate at the Courtauld Institute in 1979 writing on Russian Constructivism. He has since published numerous books as an art historian, and currently leads courses on Russian art at the Courtauld Institute of Art, London. He is active in exhibition work, and organized the exhibition of Russian Futurist art at the Estorick Collection, in 2007. In addition he is committed to the study of painting. He has worked in art schools in universities throughout his career, most notably as Head of Fine Art at Newcastle University, becoming Professor there from 1996, and from 2004. Recent publications include: an essay in Art and Social Change: a Reader (Tate Publishing, London, 2006) and the exhibition catalogue A Slap in the Face: Futurists in Russia, Estorick Collection, (London, 2007). His current publishing projects include a book on Museums of Modern Art as an International Phenomenon. Tuesday 27 May Clem Cecil: Narkomfin: the fate of a lost utopia. Narkomfin, icon of the Soviet avant-garde, was intended to house the new Soviet Man. This elegant building was the first example of semi-collective housing and is the prototype for post-war contemporary housing estates. It inspired Le Corbusier, in some of his famous designs. It is now a sorry ruin in central Moscow. It has been on the World Monuments Fund Watchlist 3 times in a row. THIS EVENT POSTPONED TO THE CLUB'S AUTUMN SEASON Emma Widdis: Dressing the Part? Clothes and Belonging in Soviet Cinema of the 20s and 30s'. Dr Emma Widdis is University Senior Lecturer, Department of Slavonic Studies, Trinity College, Cambridge. Her research focuses on Soviet culture of the 1920s and 1930s, with a particular emphasis on cinema. Her book, Visions of a New Land: Soviet Cinema from the Revolution to the Second World War was published by Yale University Press in 2003, and she has just completed a book on the filmmaker Alexander Medvedkin (I.B. Tauris, 2004). She is co-editor with Simon Franklin of National Identity in Russian Culture: An Introduction (Cambridge, 2004), and has published articles on the cinema, literature and architecture of the Soviet and post-Soviet period in several journals and edited volumes. Her current research examines the symbolic status of dress and clothing in Soviet culture. Tuesday 24 June Daniel Weissbort, translator, on the poet Inna Lisnianskaya. Readings in Russian and English. Inna Lisnianskaya was born in Baku in 1928. Her first publication was in 1948 and her first poetry collection appeared in 1957. From 1979, for many years, her books appeared only abroad. In recent years she has published several more collections in Russia and has contributed regularly to all major literary periodicals. Lisnianskaya was married to the late Semyon Lipkin, also a leading Russian poet, and her most recent collection consists partly of an elegy to him. She lives in Moscow and Jerusalem Daniel Weissbort has published a selection of Inna Lisnianskaya's poetry with ARC, Far from Sodom, 2005, in a bilingual series, Arc Visible Poets. introduced by Elaine Feinstein. PUSHKIN CLUB co-chairs David Brummell, Robert Chandler, Lucy Daniels, Richard McKane, Peter Tegel PUSHKIN HOUSE is owned by the Pushkin House Trust, Registered Charity no. 313111. For more information on Pushkin House go to www.pushkinhouse.org.uk |