After Paradise

Elena Andreevna Shvarts (1948-2010), one of the foremost Russian-language poets of the post-World-War-II period, emerged as a central figure in the "Unofficial Culture" that began with the "Thaw" following Stalin's death in 1953, reached a first peak in the 1960s, and then went "underground" turn after the general disillusionment following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Cutting all ties with the officially-sanctioned artist establishment, the Unofficial Culture set up...
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Elena Andreevna Shvarts (1948-2010), one of the foremost Russian-language poets of the post-World-War-II period, emerged as a central figure in the "Unofficial Culture" that began with the "Thaw" following Stalin's death in 1953, reached a first peak in the 1960s, and then went "underground" turn after the general disillusionment following the invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. Cutting all ties with the officially-sanctioned artist establishment, the Unofficial Culture set up in its own "invisible" institutions, centered around self-published magazines and books - samizdat - apartment seminars, and apartment galleries. Its adherents gave birth to the first independent literary prize in the Soviet Union, the Andrey Bely prize, which was established in 1978 and is still awarded annually. Shvarts won this prize for poetry in 1979. In the mid-1980s Shvarts became a leading figure among the poets, painters, and musicians who rejected the cold war conformist-dissident model of Soviet artistic culture for what might be deemed Soviet counter-culture, which emphasized personal autonomy, non-ideological values, and an intentional re-engagement with Modernism. With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the 1990s and the rise of Gorbachev's glasnost, Shvarts' poetry directly engaged Russia's "brave new world" both in subject and forms. In more than 800 poems she explored more genres and employed a richer vocabulary than any of her contemporaries and sometimes included shocking subjects of rape, suicide, and murder. In 2003, Shvarts won the Nikolai Gogol Award for The Visible Side of Life (Vidimaia storona zhizni). This bi-lingual translation of her selected poetry and prose includes translations that span Shvarts's poetic career - from the earliest poem she chose to save (1962) to her last poem (2010) - and for the first time her prose. Opening with a substantial introduction highlighting biographical details, the social and political context of Shvarts's work, and an assessment of her overall artistic achievement, the book includes 62 shorter poems (between eight lines and five pages), three longer poems (eight, nine, and twelve pages), and literary prose of varying subjects and lengths. The book also includes photographs of the poet, her doodlings, and several manuscript pages.