Time of Gratitude - Softcover

Aygi, Gennady

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811227197 ISBN 13: 9780811227193

Publisher: New Directions, 2017

Synopsis

A collection of extraordinary essays by one of the seminal Russian poets of the twentieth century

Gennady Aygi’s longtime translator and friend Peter France has compiled this moving collection of tributes dedicated to some of the writers and artists who sustained him while living in the Moscow “underground.” Written in a quiet intensely expressive poetic style, Aygi’s inventive essays blend autobiography with literary criticism, social commentary, nature writing, and enlightening homage. He addresses such literary masters as Pasternak, Kafka, Mayakovsky, Celan, and Tomas Tranströmer, along with other writers from the Russian avant-garde and his native Chuvashia. Related poems by Aygi are also threaded between the essays. Reminiscent of Mandelstam’s elliptical travel musings and Kafka’s intensely spiritual jottings in his notebooks, Time of Gratitude glows with the love and humanity of a sacred vocation. “These leaves of paper," Aygi says, 'are swept up by the whirlwind of festivity; everything whirls―from Earth to Heaven―and perhaps the Universe too begins to swirl. Everything flows together in the rainbow colors and lights of the infinite world of Poetry.'

About this title

About the Author

Gennady Aygi (1934–2006) was born in a village in the Chuvash Republic, a land with a Turkic language, and eventually became the Chuvash national poet, later moving to Moscow. Like Platonov, he couldn’t publish his work in the Soviet Union until the 1980s. New Directions publishes his books Child-And-Rose and Field-Russia.

Peter France has published widely on French, Russian, and comparative literature. New Directions publishes his translations of Gennady Aygi.

Review

“Illuminating.”
- Jim Kates, Artsfuse

“Warmth and passion infuse a collection of poetry and prose...A well-chosen introduction to the artistic and spiritual forces that shaped a poet.”
- Kirkus

“This collection of poetry and verse-infused prose from the celebrated Russian and Chuvash poet bows to the writers and artists who kept him creatively inspired during the Soviet era.”
- Bret Stephens, New York Times Book Review

“A collection of essays and poems inspired by a life in art, Aygi’s work is impressive in its international scope and deep devotion to the ideal of a poetry...His own included poems are both simple and striking, showing that he belongs in the company of the authors about whom he writes.”
- Publishers Weekly

“The most original voice in contemporary Russian poetry.”
- Jacques Roubaud, Times Literary Supplement

“Aygi's vision is essentially ecstatic, even slavific. It was Aygi who referred to the free-verse lyric as ‘a kind of unrepeatable temple.’ His verse constitutes an argument for aesthetic and affective scale, a lyric ripple or tremor in the fabric of the language and the sensual life: individual, collective, planetary....”
- G. C. Waldrep, West Branch

Edition details

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0811227197
• ISBN 13: 9780811227193
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 124