Sasha Sokolov: The Life and Work of the Russian “Proet”
Описание книги
Martina Napolitano explores the poetics of one of the most significant Russian authors of the 20th century. Sasha Sokolov’s oeuvre represents a milestone in the development of Russian literature; his legacy can be traced in most prose and poetry appearing in post-Soviet Russia. Taking as point of departure the studies and analyses written so far and considering the new suggestions contained in Sokolov’s last published book Triptych (2011), Napolitano further examines the keystones and the theoretical framework that arise from a close reading of Sokolov’s works, trying to systematize the findings into what can be considered as a structured authorial theory of literary creation.
The study demonstrates how Sokolov’s oeuvre cannot be fully understood but within the widened perspective of inter-artistic creation: in fact, the writer, a “failed composer”, as he admits, in his literary work has tried to draw natural and spontaneous connecting lines between the artificially categorized realms of art (word, sound, painting, performance).
Finally, the book sets forth the first solid analysis of Sokolov’s concept of proeziia, not merely a genre nor style of his own invention, but a more significant theoretical reflection of the writer about the role and value of literature, art, creation, and finally beauty.
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Martina Napolitano. Sasha Sokolov: The Life and Work of the Russian “Proet”
Introduction
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Masquerade, or “Maintain your reputation!”
The son of the nomenklatura
An asocial profile in the Moscow underground scene
Fleeing the city
Getting ready to leave
A stopover in Vienna
A North-American nomad
Sasha Sokolov, the lecturer
Soviet Union, toccata and fugue
“An eternal student of the globetrotting department”26
Chapter 2. On Early Trains, or Beyond Sasha Sokolov’s Twilight Cosmos
Emotional proximity
Classification difficulty
Close reading attempts
A School for Fools—A binary novel
Between Dog and Wolf—A spiral network of threads
Palisandriia—A bricolage of different sources
Triptych—A performative reflection on finesse
Discourse
Gazebo
Philornist
Sasha Sokolov’s baroqueness
Chapter 3. Pictures from an Exhibition
A language to compose texts
Generating words
The power(s) of language
A sound architecture17
Listening to the linguistic symphony
Triptych’s music
Antonio Scandello: a metronome under the Gazebo
Music enters poetry
The tradition
Poets and music
Composing verbal music
Voices on stage
A gallery of still images
Theatrical novels
Triptych’s “theatre of pure reason”
On an experimental stage
A specific scenario
Chapter 4. Theory and Play of Proeziia
A long proetic tradition
A choice of awareness
A baroque macro-genre
In Lieu of a Conclusion
References