Writer dmitry bykov lesson

Biography

Of all of Dmitry Bykov&#;s professions&#;journalist, biographer, public intellectual, novelist, poet, media personality, professor of literature&#;he likes that of poet the best. &#;Traditionally, writing poetry is considered a prestigious occupation in Russia, because a poet is a prophet, a pillar of civil disobedience,&#; he states in a LA Times interview. At the same time, he considers the academic environment to be his &#;natural habitat.&#; He loves to teach and write about literature. As a scholar, Bykov has written prize-winning biographies of the Russian poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Boris Pasternak; the poet, guitar bard and writer Bulat Okudzhava; the writer Maxim Gorky; and, most recently, president Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine (soon to be published in English translation).

As a novelist, Bykov has been called one of the faces of contemporary Russian literature whose novels &#;balance quasi-realistic verisimilitude with modernist phantasmagoria&#; (Oxford History of Russian Literature). His best-known work in the West is&#;Living Souls&#;(), which, according to the&#;Independent, blends &#;a novel of ideas with a fairy-tale and satire with lyricism&#; in its picture of Russia in the near future, where war rages between liberal Westernizing forces and statist nationalists, each of whom &#;endlessly take turns at colonizing Russia&#; (Oxford History of Russian Literature). An extremely prolific writer, Bykov is the author of some 90 books, including 5 biographies, 12 novels, and 20 collections of poetry.

One of Bykov&#;s most famous projects is &#;Citizen Poet&#; in which he satirizes social and political realities in Russia through verses based on famous poems in Russian and world literature that are publicly performed or recorded on YouTube. Bykov was also a prominent participant in the famous &#;strolls with writers&#; protest in Moscow in May , after authorities prohibited public rallies in the wake of

Sunday Jun 7, pm

Conversation

Lionel Trilling wrote in that "no event in the history of Soviet culture is more significant than the career, or, rather, the end of the career, of Isaac Babel." Notoriously secretive and evasive, a genius of style and literary compression, a Jew with spectacles who rode with the Cossack army of Semyon Budyonny in , friend of André Malraux and protege of Gorky, and the lover of the wife of Nikolai Yezhov (the Head of the NKVD), Babel is one of the great writers of the modern period whose life and work presents enduring enigmas. Arrested in , Babel was shot in January, His manuscripts, diaries, journals, and letters were confiscated and have never been discovered in post-Soviet Russia.

Join prominent Russian poet, writer and journalist Dmitry Bykov and Jonathan Brent, Russian scholar and the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute, for an intimate conversation about Isaac Babel's Russian Jewish identity, his life, the myth of Babel, and his contribution to literature.

Presented by YIVO, the Russian American Foundation and RTVi (Independent Russian TV Network), as part of the 13th Annual Russian Heritage Month®.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.

About the Participants

Jonathan Brent is the Executive Director of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City. From to he was Editorial Director and Associate Director of Yale Press. He is the founder of the world acclaimed Annals of Communism series, which he established at Yale Press in Brent is the co-author of Stalin’s Last Crime: The Plot Against the Jewish Doctors, (Harper-Collins, ) and Inside the Stalin Archives (Atlas Books, ). He is now working on a biography of the Soviet-Jewish writer Isaac Babel. Brent teaches history and literature at Bard College.

Dmitry