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A first full-length critical study of Chuvash-born poet Gennady Aygi (1934-2006), who is considered the father of late-Soviet avant-garde Russian poetry, this book charts the development of Aygi's poetics, which draws equally on Russian poetic and religious tradition, European literature and philosophy, and Chuvash literature, folk culture, and cosmology. Moving chronologically through Aygi's life and work from the 1950s to his final work in the early 2000s, the book concludes with an interview with American poet Fanny Howe about the importance of Aygi's work in translation. The volume places Aygi in the context of twentieth-century poetry of witness and reveals the global significance of his work.
About the author
Sarah Valentine earned a PhD in Russian Literature from Princeton University and has received a research fellowship from the Templeton Foundation from Princeton¿s Center for the Study of Religion, a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Writer in Residence Fellowship from the Lannan Foundation. Her peer-reviewed articles have appeared in
PMLA,
Slavic and East European Journal and
Poetics, and her translation from the Russian,
Into the Snow: Selected Poems of Gennady Aygi was published by Wave Books in 2011. She teaches English and Comparative Literature at Northwestern University.
Summary
A first full-length critical study of Chuvash-born poet Gennady Aygi (1934-2006), who is considered the father of late-Soviet avant-garde Russian poetry, this book charts the development of Aygi’s poetics, which draws equally on Russian poetic and religious tradition, European literature and philosophy, and Chuvash literature, folk culture, and cosmology. Moving chronologically through Aygi’s life and work from the 1950s to his final work in the early 2000s, the book concludes with an interview with American poet Fanny Howe about the importance of Aygi’s work in translation. The volume places Aygi in the context of twentieth-century poetry of witness and reveals the global significance of his work.
Additional text
“Of the most important Russian poets of the late Soviet period (Brodsky, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Aygi), only Aygi was not Russian, but Chuvash. However, with his mentor Boris Pasternak’s encouragement, Aygi began to compose primarily in Russian, thereby opening his work to a broad international audience. Sarah Valentine’s astute and rich monograph, the first on Aygi in English, establishes Aygi’s preeminence in contemporary world poetry and reveals the importance of Chuvash language and culture for his Russian works. Aygi’s special background has given him a whole new vision of the world in some of the greatest Russian poetry of the last century."
