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
The 2016 Dublin Festival
of Russian Culture kicks off this Sunday, 6th March, with a concert of classical
music at the Hugh Lane Gallery (12-13:30) and a public guided tour of the
gallery which will be interpreted into Russian (14-15). This will be followed
by a screening of Alexander Sokurov's 2002 Russian Ark (15-16).
The Department is again involved with two events:
Wednesday,
9th March, 7-9pm, Atrium (underneath the Dining hall): "Literary
Sketches – Women. An evening of poetry and songs",with performances by students of the Department.Afterwards we'll repair to
Kennedy's for our next pub night.
Friday, 11th March, 3-5pm, 5051 (Arts
Building): Departmental
Open Day.
Includes:
- Presentations by students about living and working/studying in Russia
- A fun quiz on Russia
- A guided tour of
Trinity in Russian
- An opportunity to find out about
our courses, state testing and other activities we're involved in.
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.
This Friday, 6 March, there will be a musical evening to honour Václav Havel and to raise funds for a bust to be placed in the Irish Parliament. The concert takes place at 7:30 at Odessa.
This year's Dublin City Festival of Russian Culture kicked off today with a lunchtime concert in the Hugh Lane Gallery. It runs until next Sunday, 22nd Feb, boasting a varied programme of concerts, talks and film screenings. Full details of events at http://www.russianfestival.ie/.
The Department again contributes several events:
- a talk about studying Russian at TCD/abroad and a quiz "How well do you know Russia?", on Tue 17th Feb, 10-12.30, Ilac library
- a talk in Russian and English about the history of the Bolshoi Theatre by Evgenia Rosato, on Tue 17th Feb, 6-7:30pm, Long Room Hub, TCD
- an Open Day at the Department, on Wed 18th Feb, 4.30-6pm, Room 5051 in the Arts Building, which includes a free tour of TCD
- an evening of poetry and song, on Wed 18th Feb, 7-9pm in the Atrium at TCD.
Next Wednesday is our next regular pub night, and we will repair to Kennedy's after the poetry evening, so the Russian table will start a bit later than usual.
All welcome, and enjoy!
(Please note that there are a couple of inaccuracies concerning our events in this printed version.)
A romantic interlude now, with fresh translations of love poems by two of the most popular bards (poets / singer-songwriters) of Russia's Thaw period. The poems were translated for a poetry evening organised by Trinity College Dublin's Russian and Slavonic department.
"I Love You Now" was written by Vladimir Vysotsky to his wife Marina Vlady. The French daughter of Russian emigrants, winner of a best actress award at Cannes for 'The Conjugal Bed', Marina Vlady reconnected with her Russian heritage in the more tolerant atmosphere that followed Khrushchev's Thaw, becoming a juror at the 4th Moscow International Film Festival in 1965. Meeting the popular Vysotsky while in Russia, the two were married in 1969 and carried on a long-distance relationship for ten years before Vysotsky's death in 1980. This relationship made it possible for Vysotsky to travel abroad to France, the USA and Mexico among other places, broadening his perspective and cultural reach beyond what was available to his contemporaries and leaving us many recordings of his banned songs in Western performances. His wife's importance as a cultural ambassador for the USSR protected him somewhat from the Soviet authorities and their suspicion of his subversive songs. In 'I Love You Now' Vysotsky reflects the uncertainty and intercultural/linguistic issues of their marriage. The clip is illustrated by footage of Vysotsky and Vlady.
VLADIMIR VYSOTSKY - I Love You Now
I love you now - not secretly, out loud! Not "after... until" - I burn in your light! Sobbing or laughing, but I love you now! I want no past; future's out of sight. "I loved": a grave holds less despair! It clips my wings and hobbles hopes. Though the poet of poets might declare "I loved you - and love still, perhaps..."
Thus they speak of wilted things - Condescending pity for the lost. Thus they speak of dethroned kings, Regretful for a thing that's past; For urges stripped of urgency, When "I love you" loses currency.
I love you now - vows can't explain, My time is now - I won't cut its vein! This time, ongoing, while the moment lasts- I fear no future and I breathe no past. I'll come to you over sea or land, Chained or headless, I'll come still! Only don't mistakenly demand To 'I love you' be added 'always will'.
That "always" has a bitter taste, Forged signatures and rot and waste, A get-out clause, a 'just in case', Dull poison at the glass's base, And a slap in the present's face, Where 'I love now' in doubt is placed.
My French dream overflows with time, The past's not so, the future's scarier I'm pilloried in the stocks and I'm Called up to the language barrier. The language gap! A state defective! Together we can leap this fence, I love you even when it's tense: In the future and the past perfective.
"Rain Whips My Face and Collarbones" by Bella Akhmadulina shows the work of the most famous female poet of the era. Called 'the best living poet in the Russian language' by Joseph Brodsky, Akhmadulina (of Tartar/Russian/Italian heritage) was a close friend of Bulat Okudzhava, and her work was often suppressed due to her support of many artists persecuted by the Soviet regime, including Boris Pasternak, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Sergei Paradjanov. She declared herself apolitical, however (itself a radical stance at the time), and recited her poems of love and human relations to sold-out stadiums in the 1960s, before moving on to discussions of philosophy and religion. By the time of her death in 2010 she had many awards in her homeland and the status of a national treasure.
BELLA AKHMADULINA (Untitled 'Rains whips my face...' - 1955)
Rain whips my face and collarbones, Over masts the thunders rip, You have come upon me Like a storm upon a ship.
What will be will be I do not seek to know, If I'll be flung up into joy Or smashed against sorrow.
I'm frightened and elated Like a ship riding the wave, I don't regret our meeting I do not fear to love.
Newly, rhythmically and rhymingly translated just in time to be late for Pride,The Light Blue Puppy is a classic 1976 Soviet 'cheerful, musical tragedy', animated in a distinctively fluid style using flowing India ink, and boasting the vocal talents of some of the 1970's most beloved stars, including Alysa Freindlich (star of Eldar Ryazanov's "An Office Romance") and Andrei Mironov (star of Zakharov's "12 Chairs" and "An Unusual Miracle") . Telling the story of a light blue dog who is shunned for being different, it is a children's story encouraging tolerance and promoting positive diversity, ending in an explosion of rainbow colours. In an age of dancing with the censors, when films were regularly scrutinised for their subversive subtexts, many were quick to spot a gay theme in 'The Light Blue Puppy', who was even named one of '69 Outstanding Russian Gays and Lesbians' in a recent publication by Ganymede Press, according to Russia's leading gay internet portal: www.gay.ru. The cartoon may have played a key role in popularising the slang term 'goluboi' (light blue) to refer to homosexuals, with its theme of the lonely, bullied puppy longing for a flamboyant and self-confident rescuer and mentor being one that spoke to the experience of many Russian gays during the Soviet era's criminalisation of homosexuality. Based on a book by Hungarian author Gyula Urban which featured a black puppy (serving as a metaphor for the plight of African-Americans in the United States), Yuri Entin, the creator of 'the Light-Blue Puppy', has explicitly stated his pro-gay sympathies and that he never intended the cartoon to be read as a satire of homosexuals, saying:
"Believe me, never in my life would I have done it if I could imagine what it would be associated with. It's literally hitting below the belt. I have a huge amount of acquaintances of non-traditional orientation, they are wonderful people that I have the tenderest relations with. And so I would never have allowed myself to mock them."Source (in Russian).
Many pro-gay groups celebrate the story, with the 'Planet Krasnoyarsk' club in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia, staging their own musical theatrical version in 2000, while a children's ballet production in the Ekaterinburg theatre was cancelled by director Alexander Novikov in 2010 for being "saturated with paedophilia and homoeroticism" despite the fact that the story never actually references homosexuality at any point. For a complete list of Russian-language articles on the significance of 'the Light Blue Puppy' in gay culture, click here.
ABOVE: a montage of footage from Sergei Paradjanov's 'Sayat Nova' set to the music of FireX
The most famous victim of Soviet anti-homosexuality legislation was the bisexual Armenian-Georgian film director Sergei Paradjanov. Already controversial for his celebration of the ethnic traditions of Ukraine and Armenia in his masterpieces 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors' and 'Sayat Nova' / 'The Colour of Pomegranates', he served 3 months (of a five year term) on a conviction for homosexual acts with a KGB officer in 1948 and in 1973 he was sentenced to five years of hard labour (serving four) for the alleged rape of a male communist party member and the 'propagation of pornography'. His claim to have given sexual favours to 25 party members, made to a Danish magazine and serving as grounds for the arrest, was seen by many as another in a long line of the director's scandalous provocations, with some commentators even questioning whether his homosexual inclinations were more than a countercultural pose. Andrei Tarkovsky and Mayakovsky's muse Lilya Brik were among the Russian artists who campaigned for his release, while his post-prison reunion with his friend Vladimir Vysotsky was reportedly tearful. The renowned poetess Bella Akhmadulina said on his behalf "he was guilty of being free". In prison, Paradjanov created hundreds of drawings and collages, many now displayed in the Paradjanov Museum in Yerevan, Armenia. His mature (post-1964) films have a lush, camp aesthetic that conflicted with the demands of socialist realism, and 'Sayat Nova' also features daring gender-bending in its use of Georgian actress Sofiko Chiaureli in a dual role as both the young poet and his motherin this sequence.
Openly gay imagery disappeared from Russian culture in 1933 when Stalin criminalised homosexuality. However, classic films from the 1940s which celebrate the brotherhood of students and workers' collectives through intense male bonding, such as 'Attestat Zrelosti / The Certificate of Education' (the most suggestive clips of which are shown above, unsubtitled) have been cited, and in some cases celebrated, by modern Russian audiences for their homoeroticism. Similarly, the films of the 1980s and 1990s by director Alexander Sokurov have been labelled homoerotic for featuring sensual imagery of physical closeness and affection between men, often scantily clothed, although without explicit sexuality in these relations. Sokurov himself has dismissed these claims as the product of diseased Western imaginations. The first Russian film to have openly homosexual themes is 2004's comedy drama "You I Love".
The most famous gay Russian is probably the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, whose sexuality is well attested in his own letters, once suppressed by Soviet censors, as well as his brother Modest's autobiography. His sexuality has been edited out of the proposed screenplay for an upcoming Russian biopic, Tchaikovsky, to be directed by Kirill Serebrennikov, under pressure from Russia's prohibitive anti-gay-propaganda laws, a move which is controversial. The writer Yuri Arabov has claimed that he 'will not sign his name to a film that advertises homosexuality' and that discussion of homosexuality is 'outside the sphere of art' in this interview. Tchaikovsky's sexuality continues to be celebrated abroad, including by Matthew Bourne's award-winning production of 'Swan Lake' with male swans (pictured). The importance of Tchaikovsky to the gay movement in Russia may be attested by the decision to call St. Petersburg's major organisation for gay social events 'The Tchaikovsky Fund'. Other famous gay and bisexual figures in Russian musical culture include Sergei Diaghilev, director of the 'Ballets Ruses' and Nijinsky, their most famous dancer, as well as the later ballet dancer Rudolph Nureyev, and the contemporary openly gay dancer, singer and director Boris Moiseev. Finally, in literature, the first openly gay novel in Russian was Mikhail Kuzmin's 1906 novel 'Wings'which compares the main character's final acceptance of his sexuality with growing wings. The poet Gennady Trifonov spent 4 years in prison in the 1970s for circulating openly homosexual poetry. Marina Tsvetaeva, one of the most famous poets of the Silver Age, had a lesbian affair with the poetess Sophia Parnok, and frequently referenced her bisexuality or lesbian desire in her poetry, discussed here. For a full discussion of gay themes in Russian literature, click here.
The 5th Dublin City Festival or Russian Culture kicks off today at 12 noon at the Hugh Lane Gallery with a concert of classical music. In the course of one week, you can sample Russian culture through a long line-up of events for all ages. The Festival concludes next Sunday, 2nd March, with the traditional Family Day.
The Department is involved with three events this year:
The now-traditional Quiz for transition-year students and Talk about living in Russia (Tue, 25th Feb, 1pm, Ilac centre library)
A Gala concert/poetry evening (Wed, 26th Feb, 7pm, Atrium, TCD)
Open Day at the Department, where we will showcase some of our activities (Fri, 28th Feb, 12 noon-3pm, Rm. 5051, Arts Building, TCD)
As part of the Open Day, the Head of Department will give a short introduction to the Department at 1pm, and we will give a guided tour of Trinity in Russian at 2pm, starting in the Department. Everyone welcome - drop by and put your name on the list!
Alex and Ailbhe from first year have made this great video, their entry for the Eurotrip Citizen X competition, and need your
vote to take on the TalkToEU Eurotrip
Challenge.
If they win, they'll be
racing across 5 countries over 6 days, while completing 5 tasks. If you'd like
them to take on the Eurotrip challenge, then give them your vote here - and share the link!
This year's Maslenitsa festival start this coming Saturday 9th March and runs to Thursday 14th March. Sunday 10th March sees the traditional family day in Temple Bar (photos from last year), and there is a great line-up of events - cultural, literary, musical and more - throughout the Festival.
Event highlights co-organised by the Department:
Sat, 9th March, 12.00-13.00, Cultural Talk at the National Gallery, Justin Doherty, "The Exotic in Russian Art and Music"
Sat, 9th March, 18.00-19.30, Literary Evening with Dmitry Bykov at the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin
Wed, 13th March, 19.00-20.30, Cultural Evening, "Poetry of the Russian Silver Age", Atrium, Trinity College Dublin
Thur, 14th March, 19:00-20:30, Public Lecture by Conor O'Clery, "Russia's brief love affair with America", Davis theatre (Rm. 2043), Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin
Louth Contemporary Music Society presents the world
premiere performance of a fantastic new spiritual work Monk’s Music by the Russian
Composer Alexander Raskatov. Monk’s Music will be performed by the Carducci
Quartet and Gordon Jones of the Hilliard Ensemble.The performance will take
place on Friday 8 February 2013 in St. Nicholas’ Church of Ireland Dundalk
(The Green Church), 8pm.
We are pleased to announce that now
we have a Croatian Language site! We’ve worked hard to make this happen. (LINK)
Now we invite you to
take a look around and explore the features. Use the sidebar to explore topics
like news and events, language, literature, culture, music, and more.The site will be constantly updated so stay
informed, and check back often!
Explore, learn, have
fun!!!
- Croatian Lector -
To have another language is to possess a second
soul.
Bulat Okudzhava - The son of fervent communists from Georgia and Armenia, the Moscow-born Bulat Okudzhava was to see his father executed as a German spy during the purges and his mother sent to a gulag camp for 18 years. Volunteering for the Red Army at the start of Russia's entry into the Second World War in 1941, Okudzhava served until the end of the war. Working in outlying Georgia after the war, Khrushchev's 'Thaw' brought Okudzhava to Moscow and a position as head of the poetry division of the popular Literaturnaya Gazeta ('literary magazine'). It was during this time too that Okudzhava began to experiment with setting his own poems to music, becoming a pioneer of the avtorskaya pesnya, the 'author's song', a unique singer-songwriter tradition of 'the bard' that flourished in the Soviet sixties, whose deep philosophical and poetic lyrics were given simple musical settings that made them easy to master on the guitar and spread by unofficial private performance: a popular pastime for a new generation of Soviet baby boomers.
Okudzhava's 1959 song 'Paper Soldier', at once an apparently apolitical fable and a touching and humanist reflection of his own experiences in the Second World War with its poetics of the helpless and uncertain individual, became an anthem to the 60s intelligentsia.
Paper Soldier
Once there lived a soldier-boy,
None handsomer or braver,
but he was just a children's toy
A soldier made of paper.
He'd change the world, or so he said,
for joy and peace he'd labour,
but he was hanging by a thread,
a soldier made of paper.
He'd bravely go through fire and smoke,
He'd die for you twice over.
But he was just a laughing-stock,
a soldier made of paper.
You wouldn't trust a paper guy,
With secrets or your favour.
And why is that? I'll tell you why,
'cause he is made of paper.
He challenged fate, prepared to die,
Marched on another caper,
"Ready, fire!" was his cry,
Forgetting he was paper.
"Forward march! We stand or fall!"
He, burning into vapour,
Died under fire for nothing at all,
'cause he was made of paper.
Vladimir Vysotsky - The most famous of the 'bards' Vysotsky's impact in Russia (and abroad, playing concerts as far afield as Mexico thanks to his French actress wife Marina Vlady's connections) is hard to overestimate, leaving behind a legacy over 600 songs, numerous films and an iconic image of himself as individualist rebel and truth-teller. Despite the city's being closed for the Moscow Olympics, Vysotsky's death in 1980 at the age of 42 caused the streets to throng with an unauthorised gathering of thousands in tribute to him, noticeably decreasing attendance of the Olympics that day.
'When I wrote 'Wolf Hunt' it tortured me: I dreamed of that chorus at night. I didn't know what I'd write, but remembered only that 'The hunt for wolves is on, the hunt is on...' - Vladimir Vysotsky
Written in 1968, as the intellectual climate for criticism worsened following the Soviet crackdown on the Prague Spring and 'socialism with a human face', at a time when Vysotsky's films were being banned or heavily edited, and authorisation refused for his concerts and casting in many roles, Wolf Hunt portrays the individual struggle against for liberty against conditioned mental barriers. In December 1969 the Taganka, the most subversive and fashionable Moscow theatre of the 60s, staged the poet Andrei Voznesensky's 'Protect Your Faces', billed as 'an exploration of the way in which the individual face is lost under capitalism and regained under socialism' and climaxing in a performance of Vysotsky's 'Wolf Hunt' as a reaction to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. The nominal criticism of capitalism covered and allowed a poetic exploration of the struggle to assert individuality, with Vysotsky shot down against a redlit background after his singing of 'Wolf Hunt' and the actors bringing out mirrors at the finale of the show to show the spectators their own faces. The show was a sensation – and banned after 3 performances. This rare footage of Vysotsky performing the song was recorded during a trip to France.
Wolf Hunt
With every sinew strained I hurtle,
But today like yesterday,
I'm cornered, chased, encircled,
Kept cheerfully at bay.
From the firs the shotguns blast,
In the shadows huntsmen lurk,
On the snow wolves tumble past,
Live targets - easy work.
The hunt for wolves is on! The hunt is on!
For the predators, the mothers and their brood,
Hounds bark themselves sick, beaters yell and run,
And the snow is red with flags and blood.
The hunter stacks the odds against us,
Fights unfairly, his hand won't shake,
With flags and ropes they've fenced us,
They'll hit squarely, and no mistake!
A wolf can't break with tradition,
Blind suckling cubs learn all is lost,
If you break mother's prohibition,
Ropes and flags cannot be crossed!
The hunt for wolves is on! The hunt is on!
For the predators, the mothers and their brood.
Hounds bark themselves sick, beaters yell and run,
And the snow is red with flags and blood.
Our legs and jaws are quick,
Answer, leader, why oppressed,
Do we stumble poisoned and sick,
Without putting the fence to the test?
A wolf's fate cannot be questioned;
And now my time is done.
The hunter to whom I'm destined
Smiled as he raised his gun.
The hunt for wolves is on! The hunt is on!
For the predators, the mothers and their brood.
Hounds bark themselves sick, beaters yell and run,
And the snow is red with flags and blood.
I burst through the flags in desperation,
The thirst for life is stronger still!
Behind I listened with elation
To yelling, cheated of their kill.
With every sinew strained I hurtle,
But today's NOT yesterday,
I was cornered, chased, encircled,
But the hunter lost his prey!
The hunt for wolves is on! The hunt is on!
For the predators, the mothers and their brood.
Hounds bark themselves sick, beaters yell and run,
And the snow is red with flags and blood.
Another interesting riff on the wolf persona came with the airing in 1969 of the first episode of 'Nu Pogodi!' ('Just you wait!') which was to become the Soviet 'Tom and Jerry', depicting the struggles of an antisocial hooligan wolf (a role originally intended for Vysotsky, whose casting wasn't authorised) to catch a cleancut, model citizen hare. Aside from the nods to Vysotsky's 'bandit song' persona in the character design, the first episode also features the whistling of a few bars of one of his rare radio hits, the 'Song About a Friend', as the wolf climbs the rope to the balcony. Click here to view 'Nu Pogodi!' episode 1.
Taken from the 'Milestones in the History of Russian Culture' evening course. *Just announced!* The course will be available next year. Email the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies for more information on how to enrol.
Mon, 19 March at 7:30 PM, The Helix, DCU, Dublin 9
A music and dance extravaganza featuring one of the finest musical ensembles in the world, the White Russian Central Band (formerly the Red Army Band) with special guest soloists from The Bolshoi and Dancers from The Belarussian National Folk Dance Academy.
Spectacular Finale ‘Last night of the Russian Proms’. This spectacular programme of music from across the world will feature one of the world’s finest bands who will be joined by traditional folk dancers and guest soloists. From traditional Russian music to the big band sound, there is something for everyone at this special event, which will foster links with Russia through the international language of music, song and dance.
An evening not to be missed! Tickets: €20, €22.50, €25 available from http://www.thehelix.ie/
Lady Windermere's Caffeinated Art and Literature Salons present a special Slavonic evening on Wednesday 14th December (final pub night!). With silent cinema screenings of the classicMan With a Movie Camera, bilingual poetry readings by the Russian department's own Natasha Kulachkovskaya and Brigit McCone, songs of the Russian bards played and sung live, and finishing with a screening of a new subtitling of the Bulgarian film 'Whale' by Ellie Boyadzhieva and Brigit McCone.
Above: the climax of whale as Comrade Director Parushev (veteran Bulgarian actor Georgi Kaloyanchev) hallucinates the whale.
Directed by Peter Vasiliev, Whale is a biting satire of the bureaucratic incompetence and empty propaganda of 1960s Bulgaria, set to a swinging jazz soundtrack. Made at a tricky moment in 1967 when the Thaw was coming to an end and the Prague Spring threatened democratic revolution, the film was held up by 2 years' wrangling with the censors before being given a limited release without fanfare (where it still attracted sell-out crowds and spawned famous Bulgarian catch-phrases such as the classic optimist vs. pessimist debate 'It's fish but it's a sprat!' 'It's a sprat, but it's fish!'). Disappearing again until the end of communism, the film's rerelease in Bulgaria sparked renewed interest, but it is still virtually unknown abroad and not widely available in English translation.
A haven of coffee, conversation and cookies set amidst chill-out zones, classic silent cinema, musicality, performance, paintings, browsable reading matter, vintage wares and holistic healings, Lady Windermere's Salons will be open Wednesday - Sunday from 4pm to 9pm until the winter solstice in the Back Loft, with different performances and events each day - visit www.windermerecoffee.blogspot.com for details.
Freshly subtitled for the 'Milestones of Russian Culture' lecture on 19th century music, the 'father of Russian literature' Alexander Pushkin and the 'father of Russian music' Mikhail Glinka join forces for a musical setting of Pushkin's lyric poetry (this performance - Yuri Gulaev, 1978)
A glimpse into the thriving, unofficial 'salon culture' of the early 19th century, whose poetry recitals and philosophical discussions helped to shape the Golden Age of Russian literature as well as the birth of Russian classical music, much like the later influence of the unofficial 'Samizdat' and 'Magnitizdat' cultures of the Soviet 1960s. Notice the simplicity of the piano accompaniment, designed for circulation by intimate salon performance, the subtle reference within this sentimental love song to Pushkin's enforced political exile in the countryside for his writings after the Decembrist revolution: - “the rebel storm's blast scattered the dreams of former times [...] in remoteness in gloomy isolation” - which gives the song a subversive political edge for his contemporaries, and, lastly, the harmony between the rhythms of the song and the musical rhythms of Pushkin's Russian.
The distinctive character of Russian prose played a huge role in shaping the aesthetics of Russian music, with a staggering 141 operas being based on the works of Pushkin alone. The most radical 19th century Russian composer Mussorgsky, in works like 'Marriage' and 'Night on a Bare Mountain', drew inspiration from Gogol's chaotic breaking of the rules of composition and jolting shifts of tone between poetic lyricism and farce - listen to his famous'Night on a Bare Mountain', based on Gogol's St. John's Eve.
The Polish Folk Song and Dance Group Shamrock is based in Dublin. We have performed at many events as recently as the KinoPolis launch at the Irish Polish Society 2 weeks ago. Please check out our website to learn more about us.
Perhaps you would like to keep us in mind if there was any event where you needed some Polish folk culture! Also we are always looking for new members, especially those who are experienced folk dancers, and newcomers are welcome the 1st Tuesday of every month.
Against the backdrop of Russian history, this new lecture course (2011/12) offers an overview of major developments in Russian literature, music, film, painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre (including opera and ballet), crafts and costumes.
Spanning the history of Russian culture from its roots to the present day, the course is divided into two semesters. The first looks at the culture of pre-revolutionary Russia (from the icons of Kievan Rus’ through the times of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great to the ‘golden age’ of the nineteenth century), while the second covers the culture of Soviet and post-Soviet Russia from the October Revolution to the present (the avant-garde of the 20s, Stalinist social realism, ‘the thaw’ under Khruschev, the culture of ‘glasnost’ and contemporary Russia).
This multimedia course is intended for a wide audience with a general interest in Russian culture. The class consists of a one and a half hour lecture per week. Lectures are delivered in English by staff of the Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies.
The course is already running, but it is possible to enrol for the second semester.
The completed application form accompanied by payment in the form of a personal cheque, postal money order or bank draft, payable to Trinity College no. 1 account should be returned to: The Executive Officer, Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies, room 5045, Arts Building, Trinity College, Dublin 2. Phone: 01 896 1896, email: slavonic@tcd.ie
