Ilya Bernstein

Matvei Yankelevich

Genya. Turovskaya

Thomas Epstein

It was a movement so artfully anarchic, and so quickly suppressed, that readers only began to discover its strange and singular brilliance three decades after it was extinguished-and then only in samizdat and émigré publications. Some called it the last of the Russian avant-garde, and others called it the first (and last) instance of Absurdism in Russia; however difficult to classify, it was OBERIU (from an acronym standing for The Union of Real Art), and the pleasures of its poetry and prose are, with this volume, at long last fully open to English-speaking readers. This anthology includes the work of three writers, Alexander Vvedensky, Daniil Kharms, and Nikolai Zabolotsky, who, between 1927 and 1930, made up the core of OBERIU, and of three others, Nikolai Oleinikov, Leonid Lipavsky, and Yakov Druskin, who, although not members of OBERIU, worked in the same vein. Skillfully translated to preserve the weird charm of the originals, these poems and prose pieces display all the hilarity and tragedy, the illogical action and puppetlike violence and eroticism, and the hallucinatory intensity that brought down the wrath of the Soviet censors. Today they offer an uncanny reflection of the distorted reality they reject.

An Anthology of Russian Absurdism

OBERIU

Arkadiĭ Dragomoshchenko

Evgeny Pavlov

Arkadii Dragomoshchenko, Russias leading founder of Language poetry, in his new collection of essays fuses seemingly disparate elements of poetry, philosophy, journalism, and prose in an attempt to capture the workings of memory. At stake is not what he writes about--whether memory, Gertrude Stein, immortality, or a walk on Nevsky Prospect--but how he writes it. Formally, Dragomoshchenko never tires of digression, creating playful games of patience and anticipation for his reader. In so doing, he pushes story and closure into the background--arriving, finally, but not to a destination. Ultimately, Dragomoshchenko "carefully seeks out the dust of traces from the period of oblivion," which evidently lead to the oblivion of minds. "Full of vitality as well as profundity, and resonating with something I can only term friendship, these meditations / memoirs belong to the great tradition of metaphysical prose, alongside the works of Nietzsche, Shklovsky, Kierkegaard, and Toufic." -Lyn Hejinian "Dragomoshchenko, one of a new generation of younger Russian writers, is an original, though his writing shows the influence of the Russian poets of the early 20th century, of more contemporary Western writers, and of philosophers in particular. His imagery can be breathtaking." -Publishers Weekly "Dragomoshchenko is a whirlwind of words, tender expressions, fierce gestures, piercing glances." -Matvei Yankelevich "Arkadii Dragomoshchenko is an eloquent essayist and poet." -Toronto Slavic Quarterly

Thomas Epstein

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