Please join us on Monday, February 25th for “Sincerity out, authenticity in: poetry on the quest for trust in the times of post-truth”, a talk with Stanislav Lvovsky. This event is part of the Occasional Series, sponsored by the NYU Jordan Center for the Advanced Study of Russia.
Back then in the first half of 1990s new generation of Russian poets, — or its considerable part — found itself facing the challenge of inventing a new way to speak straightforwardly: readily available poetics either weren’t quite fit for the job or themselves were part of the problem to be resolved. Poetry optics, which has emerged at the time in the capacity of the solution, was the “new sincerity”. The new generation of poets entering the scene since the mid-2010s, face completely new challenges, shaped mostly not by the previously dominant poetry practices, but by the discourses of power. New political forces, probably not quite suitably labelled as “populist” have not just appropriated but in fact, weaponized the notion of sincerity. More often than not poetry feels itself obligated to work up its fix in relation to the new everchanging, opportunistic and largely immoral “sincerity” of the public discourse — and all the more so because this discourse is so extremely pervasive and mechanisms of defence are not yet created or, often not even imagined. Of course in a situation like this, a multiplicity of strategies emerge. Some of such strategies consider pursuing authenticity rather than (compromised) sincerity, while others are desperately seeking a new locus for the poetic voice which can be trusted not only by others but also by the speaker him- or herself.
Stanislav Lvovsky (b. 1972) was born in Moscow and has worked in advertising, cultural events management, and journalism. Lvovsky is former editor-in-chief of the “Literature” section of OPENSPACE.RU/COLTA.RU and winner of several Russian literary awards including, among others, Andrey Bely Prize (2017, for the poetrey collection "Poems from the book and other poems"). He is the author of six published collections of poetry, one short story collection and one novel (written in co-authorship with LinorGoralik). One of his poems was the basis of the project “Quiet War Songs” (2015) by six contemporary Russian composers as well as for the contemporary dance performance “Parasomnias”. Lvovsky regularly publishes articles on political and social issues as well as on cultural history and contemporary Russian poetry in various periodicals and academic journals. His poetry has been translated into and published in English, French, Chinese, Italian and other languages. Currently, he is finishing his DPhil thesis on Soviet cultural history at the University of Oxford.
Watch the event recording here.
