The
Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies in Trinity is hosting an
evening of readings to mark the centenary of the 1917 revolutions in
Russia. The audience will hear texts by poets, prose writers,
dramatists and historians who either witnessed the events first hand or
observed their aftermath. Some welcome the dawn of a new era; some
express disillusionment, anxiety and fear as history unfurls; some are
confused or ambivalent. Readers select texts which have fashioned their
understanding of the history of Russia and its neighbouring countries
over the past hundred years.
A number of texts will be read in
their original language (in which case translations will be provided);
most will be read in English.
Wednesday, 25 October 2017, 6:30 – 7:30pm, Trinity Long Room Hub
A six week evening course looking at selected films from Russia’s rich film history.
With 2017 marking 100 years since the Russian Revolution, the course
looks at examples of Russian cinema from the Soviet era through to
glasnost, and today’s film production under Putin.
Filmmaking in Russia dates from 1896, a recording of Tsar Nicholas’s
coronation shot by a Lumière cameraman. Since then, Russian cinema has
evolved alongside distinct historic upheavals, and yielded a wealth of
filmmakers, some of whom have significantly influenced the art of cinema
itself. Eisenstein’s use of montage, Tarkovsky’s long takes, Sokurov’s
poetic themes; the cinema of Russia has produced challenging, visionary
work.
The course will run on consecutive Tuesdays, commencing at 18.30 unless otherwise stated.
The films showing in this course are:
Ivan the Terrible Part 1 (Mar 21st)
Moscow Does Not Believe in Tears (Mar 28th)
The Commissar (Apr 4th)
Night Watch (Apr 11th)
Leviathan (Apr 18th)
Hipsters (Apr 25th)
More information about the films and the cost of the course at http://ifi.ie/evening-course-from-russia-with-film/
The Audi Dublin International Film Festival takes place from 16-26th Feb this year. There are a number of relevant films and cartoons on offer, for example:
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
Our by now traditional pub nights take place every second Wednesday
during term time in Kennedy's Pub in Western Row near Lincoln Gate.
The dates for the first semester are:
5 Oct 2016
19 Oct 2016
2 Nov 2016
16 Nov 2016
30 Nov 2016
14 Dec 2016
Those for the second semester are:
25 Jan 2017
8 Feb 2017
22 Feb 2017
8 Mar 2017
22 Mar 2017
5 Apr 2017
Pub nights start around 8:30-9pm, usually on the ground floor level. The pub takes food orders until about 9:30.
So come along and meet the language assistants, old and new, evening and
day students of the Department, during an evening of chats and stories
(and maybe some scrabble) in whatever Slavonic language you speak. See
you there!
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.
A cordial invitation to join us for some - famous and extremely tasty - gingerbread and a cup of tea tomorrow, Wed, 27th Jan, 6pm, in 5051.
Gorodetskie Pryaniki are handmade, beautifully decorated gingerbread pieces or loaves. The tradition of making pryaniki goes back as far as the 9th c., when they were sweetened with honey and berries, while spices began to be added in the 12-13th centuries. Festive pryaniki were made on specially carved wooden boards. Lots of traditions and sayings involve pryaniki, and today they are a very popular treat served with tea or coffee. Traditionally produced pryaniki, like those from Gorodets and Tula, are also given as souvernirs.
We have a beautifully decorated pryanik from Gorodets to share - so join us tomorrow.
Happy New Year to all our readers! We are pleased to announce that we are now enrolling for several new language and lecture courses starting the week of 18th January. - Bulgarian language - Czech language - Introduction to Polish Culture - The Golden Sixties and the Czech New Wave in Film
Schedules and application forms can be found on our website; please address enquiries to the Departmental Secretary, Nadia Browne.
But that's not all. As a new initiative, we are calling on all you film buffs to join us for our brand-new
Central and Eastern European film club
We will have weekly screenings of subtitled films from several of the countries studied in the Department.
22 January 2016Djulgerov Georgy, “Авантаж” [Advantazh], 1977
29 January 2016Gardev Yavor, “Дзифт” [Zift], 2008
5 February 2016Ryazanov Eldar, «Жестокий романс» [A Cruel Romance], 1984
12 February 2016Kalatozov Mikhail, «Летят журавли» [The Cranes are Flying], 1957
19 February 2016Ivanda Branko, “Lea i Darija” [Lea and Darija], 2011
26 February 2016Aćimović Dejan, “Moram Spavat’ Andjele” [I have to sleep, my angel], 2008
11 March 2016Kieślowski Krzysztof, “White”, 1993
1 April 2016Pasikowski Władysław, “Pokłosie” [Aftermath], 2012
All screenings will take place at 6:00 pm in Room 5051 (the Departmental Seminar room) in the Arts Building, Trinity College Dublin. Free admission.
You may be
interested in a live reading of a reading of Tolstoy's Война и мир being
broadcast on the Russian channel Kultura today and over the next three days - the whole novel is being read in small
sections by people from all over Russia and beyond.
The life feed, along with information about the novel and the participants can be found at the project blog.
Welcome back to the Department and the new (academic) year!
This semester, we again have an exciting range of evening classes on
offer, both in the various languages of the Department (Bulgarian,
Croatian, Czech, Polish and Russian), and also in the Cultures of South-Eastern Europe. Please see the Departmental website for details.
And
following a long tradition, we are also starting back our departmental pub nights every second Wednesday
during term time in Kennedy's Pub in Western Row near Lincoln Gate.
The dates for the first semester are:
7 Oct 2015
21 Oct 2015
4 Nov 2015
18 Nov 2015
2 Dec 2015
16 Dec 2015
Those for the second semester are:
27 Jan 2016
10 Feb 2016
24 Feb 2016
9 Mar 2016 - following Russian concert
23 Mar 2016
6 Apr 2016
Pub nights start around 8:30-9pm, usually on the ground floor level. The pub takes food orders until about 9:30.
So come along and meet the language assistants, old and new, evening and
day students of the Department, during an evening of chats and stories
(and maybe some scrabble) in whatever Slavonic language you speak. See
you there!
In collaboration with the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven NL, IMMA are showing the first ever exhibition in Ireland of works by El Lissitzky entitled 'El Lissitzky: The Artist and the State'.
The works are exhibited alongside 'archival material related to Alice Milligan
and Maud Gonne’s theatrical tableaux, and newly commissioned and recent
works by Rossella Biscotti, Núria Güell, Sarah Pierce and Hito Steyerl'. For more information on the artists and events relating to the exhibition check the IMMA website.
The Department is about to start its new diet of evening courses during the academic year of 2015/16. We offer a large range of language courses in
- Russian (from Beginners to Advanced Plus)
- Polish (from Beginners to Advanced)
- Croatian (from Beginners to Advanced)
- Bulgarian (from Beginners to Advanced)
We will offer Czech again in January.
We also have a number of lecture courses. During the first semester (October-December 2015), we are running
- Cultural History of Soviet and Contemporary Russia: Censorship and Freedom
- Cultures of South-Eastern Europe
while the following are offered during the second semester (January-April 2016)
- Introduction to Polish Culture
- The Golden Sixties and the Czech New Wave in Film
The first semester courses start during the week of 5th October. To enrol (ideally by 23rd September) and for further information please go to our website or contact Nadia Browne.
The Department of
Russian and Slavonic Studies, in collaboration with Moscow State
University, is an
official test centre for Certification Examinations in Russian as a Foreign
Language (TORFL/ТРКИ), which are fully integrated into the Common European
Framework of Reference. The six examinations that students may take are:
·Elementary Certification Level (ТЭУ) – A1
·Basic Certification Level (ТБУ) – A2
·First Certification Level (ТРКИ-1) – B1
·Second Certification Level (ТРКИ-2) – B2
·Third Certification Level (ТРКИ-3) – C1
·Fourth Certification Level (ТРКИ-4) – C2
Normally,
the examinations take place in April. Due to an administrative change,
the 2015 examination diet will be conducted on 21 and 22 May. Those who
intend to sit the Certification Examinations should contact Natalya Kulachkovskaya at the Department. The examination fee is €170.
We
also offer focused examination preparation for the Certification
Examinations. This special preparatory programme takes place over a
number of evenings before the examination in the Arts Building in
Trinity College. Each evening, two slots each lasting 60 minutes are
available – 6:30-7:30, and 7:45-8:45, and will be arranged according to
demand. 2 sessions are €50, additional sessions are €25/session. There must be a minimum of two students per slot; where numbers are lower, sessions may be merged across adjacent levels.
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.)
Welcome back to the Department and the new (academic) year!
This semester, we again have an exciting range of evening classes on offer, both in the various languages of the Department (Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Polish and Russian), and also in Czech literature & culture (19th c.to the present) and Russian culture (beginnings to the early 20th c.). Please see the Departmental website for details.
And we are starting back our traditional pub nights every second Wednesday during term time in Kennedy's Pub in Western Row near Lincoln Gate.
The dates for the first semester are:
1 Oct 2014
15 Oct 2014
29 Oct 2014
12 Nov 2014
26 Nov 2014
10 Dec 2014
Those for the second semester are:
21 Jan 2015
4 Feb 2015
18 Feb 2015 - following the Departmental Open Day (4:30-5), and the Russian Evening in the Atrium (7:00-9:00)
4 Mar 2015
18 Mar 2015
1 Apr 2015
Pub nights start around 8:30-9pm, usually on the ground floor level. The pub takes food orders until about 9:30.
So come along and meet the language assistants, old and new, evening and day students of the Department, during an evening of chats and stories (and maybe some scrabble) in whatever Slavonic language you speak. See you there!
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.
A new translation of 'Tumbling Biddies' ('Vyvalivaiushiesia Starukhi') by Trinity's own Brigit McCone, followed by a short cartoon in which the biddies tumble chaotically from a stack of Russian classic literature - a nice twist on Kharms' radical demolition of the traditions of Russian prose.
A surrealist and absurdist avant-garde Anglophile (ironic as his own work anticipates later English surrealists such as Monty Python), who took his name 'Kharms' from the Russian pronunciation of 'Holmes' (as in Sherlock), Daniil Kharms (1905 - 1942) is known for his dark and twisted children's literature (resembling a Russian Roald Dahl), but also wrote work for adults that was far ahead of its time: the absurdist play 'Elizaveta Bam', a novella 'The Biddy' ('Starukha' - a disrespectful word for an old woman) and Russian Futurist poetry and sketches with 'The Union of Real Art' (OBERIU) which he himself founded.
In the 1930s, the wild experimentation of the Russian avant-garde and their attempts to reimagine life and ideology from the ground up, began to be persecuted and suppressed as anti-Soviet. A simpler, more obvious style of realistic propaganda, "Socialist Realism", took over and Kharms found himself arrested and exiled to Kursk as an anti-Soviet writer, forced afterwards to write his children's stories anonymously. In 1941, Kharms was arrested on suspicion of treason and confined in a psychiatric ward, where he died in 1942 during the Nazi blockade of Leningrad (St. Petersburg), probably of starvation.
'Tumbling Biddies' combines a taste for the surreal and absurd with what seems a comment on the casual cruelty of the Stalinist period, and on the desensitised apathy of onlookers to the many disappearances and deaths that characterised the time. Perhaps, after all, the meaninglessly repeated casual cruelties of a Kharms story best express the climate of the time:
Tumbling Biddies
An old biddy, out of excessive curiosity, slipped and tumbled from a window, splattering herself.
Another old biddy poked her head out to look at the splattered one and, from excessive curiosity, also took a tumble, splattering herself.
Later, from the window tumbled a third old biddy... then a fourth... and a fifth one.
By the time the sixth came tumbling out, I was sick of looking at them and took a stroll to Maltsevsky Market, where they say some blind cripple was given a knitted shawl.
Lectures focussing on the work of Daniil Kharms are among the topics covered by the department's evening course of lectures in Russian culture. Click on the 'Evening Courses' button to the left to find out more.
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.
