To celebrate the 80th anniversary of the poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky (1940-1996), you are cordially invited to participate in our next Tamizdat Project Lab, which will be devoted to his first two books of poetry, Stikhotvoreniia i Poemy (Poems and Long Poems, 1965) and Ostanovka v Pustyne (A Halt in the Desert, 1970), published in the U.S., respectively, fifty-five and fifty years ago. While the first publication was unauthorized and appeared abroad in the wake of Brodsky’s infamous show trial in Leningrad “without the author’s knowledge or consent,” the second volume was compiled by the author but still produced mixed reaction. As part of the workshop, we will reconstruct the history of Brodsky’s first publications and their reception in tamizdat prior to the poet’s arrival in the U.S. in 1972.
Apart from working with rare archival sources, many of which still remain unpublished, we will focus on the reception of Brodsky abroad through the lens of the oldest Russian émigré newspaper Novoe Russkoe Slovo (1910-2010), now available as a searchable database through the New York Public Library. We will be joined by Bogdan Horbal, the Slavic Librarian at NYPL and enthusiast of Tamizdat Project, who will present the NRS database and other periodicals accessible remotely with the NYPL library card. Those without access to the database will, of course, still be able to participate by working with other sources.
To sign up for NYPL and get your card electronically, please click on the following link. You will be asked to enter a New York State address.
The workshop will be online. RSVP is required. Please mention if you have access to the NYPL databases. You will receive the Zoom link upon registration.
Tamizdat Project Lab is limited to 25 participants. It is designed as a workshop, so please be ready to use your own computer. We will be working with both archival and print sources such as reviews, diaries and editorial correspondence, typing and translating them into English or Russian, and thus collectively contributing to the project. Please let us know what other languages you can work with. NB: knowledge of Russian is NOT required. If you are unable to attend but would still like to volunteer for Tamizdat Project, please click here or email your application to tamizdatproject@gmail.com.
Tamizdat Project is a virtual environment that explores to the patters of circulation, first publications and reception of contraband literary manuscripts from the former USSR in the West during the Cold War. It is an online archive of documents that deals with how and why masterpieces of Russian literature first appeared abroad long before they could see the light of day in Russia, already during or after Perestroika.