The Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies is pleased to announce two events which take place as part of the annual Dublin Festival of Russian Culture.
‘Only one step’: The Bolsheviks and Revolutionary Ireland. Lecture by Dr John
Borgonov, UCC. Mon, 20th Feb 2017, 7pm, Synge theatre (2039), Arts Building,
TCD
Dr
John Borgonovo lectures in the School
of History at University
College Cork, and is coordinator of UCC’s Decade of Centenaries program.
He has published widely on the Irish Revolutionary period and Ireland’s First World War experience. His books include, ‘The Dynamics
of War and Revolution: Cork City, 1916-1918’ (Cork University Press, 2013)
and Spies, informers
and the 'Anti-Sinn Féin Society': The Intelligence War in Cork City, 1920–1921
(Irish Academic Press, 2007). He is the assistant editor of the
forthcoming The Atlas of the Irish Revolution, to be released by Cork
University Press this spring.
Evening
at the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, Trinity
College Dublin. Thur, 23rd Feb 2017, 6:30pm, Rm 4017,
Arts Building, TCD
Join us for a cup of tea, browse through second-hand books in Russian
and about Russia,
and hear students perform music and poetry. Books will be auctioned off from
7.15pm onwards; bids can be made beforehand. Copies of the journal 'Irlandskaya
Literatura'/'Ирландская литература' which contains Irish texts along with new
translations into Russian will be available for literary enthusiasts.
The evening courses at the Department are back this week. We have an exciting range of offers, from language courses in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish and Russian, to new lecture courses:
- Contemporary Czech Literature
- Contemporary Bulgarian, Croatian, Polish and Russian Cultures (4 five-week modules which can be taken separately or together)
- Contemporary Literature and Cinema in the European Southeast and the Question of Balkan Identity
Tonight the annual conference of the Irish Association for Russian, Central and East European Studies entitled ‘Memories and Identities in Central and Eastern Europe’ starts off with a public lecture by
Polly Jones (Oxford) on ‘The Many Uses of the Usable Past: Rethinking Revolution(s) in Late Socialism’
6pm, Long Room Hub, TCD
If you are interested in attending the conference itself, please go to IARCEES' website for the full programme and registration details.
A short post celebrating the work of Pushkin's literary contemporaries, who helped to shape and inspire his writings, featuring new translations specially created for Trinity's Russian poetry evenings.
Vasily Zhukovsky (1783 - 1852)
Oh silent sea, oh azure sea,
I'm spellbound by your depths.
You live, you breathe with turbid love,
With thoughts that never rest.
Oh silent sea, oh azure sea,
Reveal to me deep mysteries:
What moves your boundless breast?
How breathes your labouring chest?
Do the far-off shining heavens
Draw you from your earthly strife,
When, filled with sweet and secret life,
You bask in their radiant presence?
Their azure brightness floods your face,
You burn with the rising and setting sun,
The clouds are gold in your embrace,
The glittering stars and you are one.
And when the dark clouds gather round
To steal the heavenly glow,
Your waves rise up, wild howls resound,
To shatter your gloomy foe...
The darkened clouds disperse away,
But filled with past alarm,
You long raise waves of anxiety -
And returning heaven's shining charm
Cannot bring you peace complete,
Your calm appearance is deceit.
Your deep abyss hides turbulent fevers
For love of the heavens, the ocean quivers.
Apart from his influence as a leading poet - shown by his poem 'The Sea' above and his lyrics to the national anthem of tsarist Russia - Zhukovsky was a famously skilled literary translator, bringing the work of West European writers to Russian readers from Homer's epic 'Odyssey' to leading German Romantics, crucially influencing the forms of modern Russian literature in its early development. Mentored by the famous Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin, Vasily Zhukovsky himself became tutor to the future tsar, Alexander II. He may have helped to instill the liberal ideals that inspired Alexander to abolish the institution of serfdom and earn the nickname of 'Liberator', and he certainly used his influence at court to protect and serve as patron to edgier talents like Alexander Pushkin, Nikolai Gogol, Mikhail Lermontov and Alexander Herzen, even helping to buy the Ukrainian nationalist poet and icon Taras Shevchenko out of serfdom. Although the name of Zhukovsky is not very familiar outside of Russia, and his works rarely translated, it is no exaggeration to say that the Golden Age of Russian literature would not have been what it was without him.
Alexander Griboyedov (1795 - 1829)
Into what circles I'm driven by fate?
Circles of hell where my tormentors wait
To victimise me! ostracize me! Storytellers!
Gossiping traitors to love as well as
Ungainly connoisseurs, cunning laymen,
Malicious aged men and women
Grown stale on a diet of schemes and lies.
You brand me a madman with your loud cries!
You're right: he'll come through fire who
When staying just a day with you,
Breathing air with people of your kind
Would not be driven from his mind!
Away from Moscow! Out of these parts!
I seek a place for outraged hearts!
I'll go around the world in search
Get me a coach! Get me a coach!
Poet, composer, officer of a Hussar regiment and diplomatic envoy to Georgia and Persia, Alexander Griboyedov is today remembered as the author of the satirical verse comedy Woe from Wit. A snapshot of the tensions in Russia before the Decembrist Uprising of 1825 (a failed rebellion by mainly aristocratic advocates of democratic reform against the totalitarian tsarist regime), it shows the conservative, anti-reformist Famusov, the social-climbing hypocrite Molchalin and the liberal Anglophile Repetilov as typical types of Russian society at the time. Against all of them, the hero Chatsky is a sarcastic, disaffected cynic who would himself become the model for the 'superfluous man' type of Russian Romanticism. Banned by the censors in 1823, the play circulated freely in unauthorised manuscript copies (like a form of tsarist Samizdat') influencing later works like Pushkin's Eugene Onegin and Lermontov's A Hero of Our Time. Griboyedov saw his play staged only once, in an unofficial production by the garrison of Yerevan, Armenia, before he himself was murdered in an uprising against the Russian embassy in Tehran, Persia (now Iran). Mikhail Lermontov's decision to end 'A Hero of Our Time' by reporting his hero Pechorin's death on his way to Persia may be seen as a nod to Griboyedov, creator of Chatsky, the original hero of his time, played above by well-known Russian actor Oleg Menshikov (Burnt by the Sun, The Barber of Siberia). Click here for an article about Pushkin and the musical salon culture of the Golden Age.
Wednesday, 7 May 2014
Throughout 2014, we invite you to take part in the series of talks with 4 different guestswho, back in the Communist era, were leading personalities in Polish public life. Our guests have been selected in such a way as to present different (and possibly opposing) perspectives on the Polish political transformation of 1989. They will share their impressions, memories, hopes and possibly disappointments over the events of late 1980s and early 1990s in Poland, of which they were central figures in their own respective fields.
