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Alles is slecht
Before retiring from the literary world and relinquishing all copyright to his work in 2003, Kirill Medvedev had published two collections of poetry with a traditional publishing house. His poems are autobiographical free verse, unusual in Russia, and were dismissed by some critics as not really poetry. Medvedev’s poetry – casual, often explicitly political, irreverent – fiercely diagnose the banality and disease of Putin-era Russia. Edited and introduced by n+1 co-founder Keith Gessen, It’s No Good includes selected poems from Kirill Medvedev’s books of poetry and subsequent online publications, as well as his most significant ‘My Fascism’ (on the failure of post-Soviet Russian liberalism, politically and culturally); ‘Literature Will Be Tested’ (on the attractions and dangers of the ‘new sincerity’ in Russian letters); ‘Dmitry An Essay-Memoir’ (a detailed memoir and analysis of the work of the 1990s Moscow poet, publisher, and impresario Kuzmin, and what his activity represents). As always, they are published without the author’s permission.
314 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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February 2, 2020
[3.5] Kirill Medvedev has lived a busy activist life in early 2000s Russia, and his experiences in (and troubles with) the local literary scene are interestingly captured here. It is for the most part translated by Keith Gessen, whose novel A Terrible Country I enjoyed much more than most of my buddies here on Goodreads. It’s No Good consists of free verse poetry, essays (the one on Dmitry Kuzmin being a highlight) and ‘actions,’ which refers to statements and reports concerning his political activism. Or literary activism? Politics and art are definitely inseparable in Medvedev’s philosophy. These writings carry no small tinge of a young man’s idealism. As a whole, I think the collection functions as a curiosity piece rather than as anything groundbreaking, not to belittle Medvedev’s important role in the development of post-Soviet poetics. I am glad to have read it and that it has even been translated in the first place: ‘As always ... published without the author’s permission.’
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March 24, 2013In his 2007 essay Literature Will Be Tested, Kirill Medvedev writes:
The idea that follows is that in a “normal” society, various strata would get along independently of one another: large corporations would be independent of the proletariat working in their mines and oil fields, bohemia would be independent of the large corporations whom it serves, and so forth. At the same time, nearly every person (especially every artist) wants to be considered unique, separate, independent, disconnected from conditions of, God forbid, “the relations of production.” And the most important idea of all: that the current situation, whatever you wish to call it – “celebrity culture,” “capitalism,” “the Putin regime,” and so forth – is total, that there is no escaping it. These ideas, which seem natural, but which date back to concrete historical conditions, explain the almost absolute hegemony of the “right” in Russian culture and politics today. These are a set of specific, deeply metaphysical ideas about the unshakable foundations of human nature. In their extreme-right, reactionary form, they are manifest in perceptions of the eternal characteristics of ethnic groups, races, nations; in their more or less liberal variant: of the irrevocable expansion of the market, which is impossible to wholly describe, to which one can only resign oneself, and within which the best one can do is find a tiny little niche.
It’s as if, within this system, the artist were indulged as a vessel for a particular kind of political innocence: this is his social role. The artist represents the idea of timeless, “apolitical” categories, of great masterpieces, of existential freedom. A poet is even freer than others, because unlike the artist, musician, or theatre director, the poet doesn’t need any capital to create works. The conditions of production are so cheap that a poet can believe his work is connected directly to the fabric of life, that it prevails over its context and circumstances. On an individual level this perfection is perfectly reasonable and can be productive. In truth, the belief that your work can escape the stagnant social fabric is very important – it is a major stimulus to the production of art.
But when one idea comes to be shared by all poets, it begins to look suspicious. Right now, not only is the idea of the “private project” shared by all poets, it is also the rallying cry of artists, critics, and other intellectuals.
Some examples of the touching innocence that characterizes our leading cultural figures illustrates this: Vyacheslav Butusov, a former star of the punk underground, expresses genuine surprise that he should be criticized for performing at a rally for “Nashi,” the Putin youth brigade; the fashionable theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov criticizes the President in Aesopian language and is simultaneously the main guide of the Kremlin’s cultural politics: he lectures under the aegis of the United Russia party.
The theatre director Alexander Kalyagin signs a letter against the imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in exchange for which he receives a theatre in the centre of Moscow, where he will, of course, stage his incorruptible oeuvres, where he will even stage Brecht – ars longa, vita brevis!
I recently found myself puzzled by one poet and critic who wrote a sympathetic article on “leftist poets” for a pro-Kremlin website. He even expressed a kind of solidarity with the leftist poets, cheerily urging them toward direct political action! And he did this not only from the right (it would not be notable if this were in the pages of the liberal journal Znamya), but from a space that was created by the Kremlin expressly to strengthen its power via the smokescreen of “parliamentary polyphony.” When I wrote to say I was surprised, he answered” “What difference does it make where the article is published; what matters is what is written in it” – again confirming my worst fears regarding the condition of the minds of even the most advanced and talented representatives of the intelligentsia.
What motivates these people is irrelevant: whether it’s really political naïveté or just ordinary cynicism and prudence. It’s impossible to separate one from the other, and I’m not posing a question of moral judgment. Russian culture as a whole has acquired (very much at the wrong time) the possibility of palpable autonomy, and now each individual artist sincerely defends his or her innocence and independence. But it is precisely through this kind of “innocence” and “sincerity” that works of art become commodities – not because the artist believes himself a spineless, prostituted insect, ready to do anything for publicity, but for exactly the opposite reason: because he values himself and his work very highly and believes that media appearances won’t do him any harm.
The idea that follows is that in a “normal” society, various strata would get along independently of one another: large corporations would be independent of the proletariat working in their mines and oil fields, bohemia would be independent of the large corporations whom it serves, and so forth. At the same time, nearly every person (especially every artist) wants to be considered unique, separate, independent, disconnected from conditions of, God forbid, “the relations of production.” And the most important idea of all: that the current situation, whatever you wish to call it – “celebrity culture,” “capitalism,” “the Putin regime,” and so forth – is total, that there is no escaping it. These ideas, which seem natural, but which date back to concrete historical conditions, explain the almost absolute hegemony of the “right” in Russian culture and politics today. These are a set of specific, deeply metaphysical ideas about the unshakable foundations of human nature. In their extreme-right, reactionary form, they are manifest in perceptions of the eternal characteristics of ethnic groups, races, nations; in their more or less liberal variant: of the irrevocable expansion of the market, which is impossible to wholly describe, to which one can only resign oneself, and within which the best one can do is find a tiny little niche.
It’s as if, within this system, the artist were indulged as a vessel for a particular kind of political innocence: this is his social role. The artist represents the idea of timeless, “apolitical” categories, of great masterpieces, of existential freedom. A poet is even freer than others, because unlike the artist, musician, or theatre director, the poet doesn’t need any capital to create works. The conditions of production are so cheap that a poet can believe his work is connected directly to the fabric of life, that it prevails over its context and circumstances. On an individual level this perfection is perfectly reasonable and can be productive. In truth, the belief that your work can escape the stagnant social fabric is very important – it is a major stimulus to the production of art.
But when one idea comes to be shared by all poets, it begins to look suspicious. Right now, not only is the idea of the “private project” shared by all poets, it is also the rallying cry of artists, critics, and other intellectuals.
Some examples of the touching innocence that characterizes our leading cultural figures illustrates this: Vyacheslav Butusov, a former star of the punk underground, expresses genuine surprise that he should be criticized for performing at a rally for “Nashi,” the Putin youth brigade; the fashionable theatre director Kirill Serebrennikov criticizes the President in Aesopian language and is simultaneously the main guide of the Kremlin’s cultural politics: he lectures under the aegis of the United Russia party.
The theatre director Alexander Kalyagin signs a letter against the imprisoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky, in exchange for which he receives a theatre in the centre of Moscow, where he will, of course, stage his incorruptible oeuvres, where he will even stage Brecht – ars longa, vita brevis!
I recently found myself puzzled by one poet and critic who wrote a sympathetic article on “leftist poets” for a pro-Kremlin website. He even expressed a kind of solidarity with the leftist poets, cheerily urging them toward direct political action! And he did this not only from the right (it would not be notable if this were in the pages of the liberal journal Znamya), but from a space that was created by the Kremlin expressly to strengthen its power via the smokescreen of “parliamentary polyphony.” When I wrote to say I was surprised, he answered” “What difference does it make where the article is published; what matters is what is written in it” – again confirming my worst fears regarding the condition of the minds of even the most advanced and talented representatives of the intelligentsia.
What motivates these people is irrelevant: whether it’s really political naïveté or just ordinary cynicism and prudence. It’s impossible to separate one from the other, and I’m not posing a question of moral judgment. Russian culture as a whole has acquired (very much at the wrong time) the possibility of palpable autonomy, and now each individual artist sincerely defends his or her innocence and independence. But it is precisely through this kind of “innocence” and “sincerity” that works of art become commodities – not because the artist believes himself a spineless, prostituted insect, ready to do anything for publicity, but for exactly the opposite reason: because he values himself and his work very highly and believes that media appearances won’t do him any harm.
March 16, 2020
‘Als je binnen een systeem wilt spelen, moet je je aan de regels van dat systeem houden; je kunt er echter ook voor kiezen om weg te lopen, en dat is precies van Medvedev heeft gedaan.’
June 15, 2025
‘willen jullie subcultuur of politiek? / het wordt tijd om te kiezen / wat wordt het?’
March 8, 2014
As with most poetry or essay collections I read, I'm not exactly going cover to cover, here. I had previously read work by and about Medvedev in N+1 (and greatly appreciated his long essay on Dmitri Kuzmin, and not just because I used it to sound up-to-date on matters Russian and poetical in grad school admissions interviews). The poetry translations seem well-done, and I'm searching out the originals (fairly easy to find online thanks to Medvedev's radical stance on copyright), but really, this book would be worth the $16 or so just for the essay "My Fascism" -- honest, insightful, moral and applicable in many ways to the American arts-media-culture-political complex (or whatever), just as it is to post-Soviet Russia. Think I'll go ahead and use "Vsyo Plokho" (everything's bad or "it's no good" as Gessen prefers) as a base theoretical rubric (in the sense that the task of art and theory is to continuously interrogate and challenge authority/power structures, that in the contemporary context to claim to be disengaged, to only want to write something beautiful (a position I was previously half-inclined to endorse), is itself political (I think Zizek goes off on that somewhere), but is also irresponsible and self-deluding--well, let Medvedev tell you, he does a better job using the example of Brodsky, a poet he obviously admires as much as he disagrees with his stance)--it's obviously working for Medvedev.
March 5, 2013
To call Kirill Medvedev a poet is to focus on only one aspect of his work: Medvedev is a committed socialist political activist, essayist, leftist publisher, and literary critic who lives in Moscow and who uses the medium of poetry as his artistic base for a broader discussion of art and politics, and the artist's place in today's global consumer capitalist society.
In 2004, Medvedev renounced the copyright to his own work and forbid any publication of his works via a LiveJournal blog post (included in this collection), announcing that any collected editions of his works henceforth would be pirated and published without the express permission of the author. Subsequently, a publisher in Moscow followed his advice and published a pirated collection of Medvedev's works up to that point and fittingly titled it Texts Published Without Permission of the Author. Two of America's best indie publishers, n+1 and Ugly Duckling Presse, have teamed up to present the first English-language pirated sampling of Medvedev's works up to this point, It's No Good: Poems/Essays/Actions, featuring wide-ranging excerpts selected from the first decade of his writing, including a well-curated selection of poetry to his most significant blog posts, along with lengthy essays on politics and art, descriptions and accounts of his political "actions," and literary obituaries, all written between 2000 (the first cycle of poems published as It's No Good [Всё плохо]) and 2012.
You don't need to know anything about Russia today to read and enjoy Medevedev and, further, to identify universal themes within his work. This edition presents a potent mixture of Medvedev's poetry and prose that, in his own words, explore the "link between politics and culture". Medvedev breaks with centuries of Russian (and Western) artists' attempts to create an apolitical world for themselves outside of the political and economic system in which they create their art: for Medvedev, art and politics are wholly inseparable, the artist cannot escape the influence of power and capital on their art. As Medvedev states in his essay "Literature Will Be Tested" (evoking Brecht):
In his poetry, Medvedev uses a brutally simple free-verse style, rare among Russian poets, evoking a sentimental humanism in constant dialogue with the world around him, be it artistic, political, or wholly personal, reminiscent of a mixture of Vladimir Mayakovsky with Charles Bukowski, whom Medvedev has translated into Russian, and with whom he shares a "genuine contact" that explores the collective aspect of human experiences.
In contrast to his poetry, Medvedev's essays use simple language to explore complex political and cultural issues on power and art, whether it is the attraction of aesthetic appeal of fascism, or the hierarchies of power in the Russian poetry underground. In a long biographical essay on the underground poetry publisher Dmitry Kuzmin, with whom he'd had a falling out, Medvedev calls for a new form of socialist-democratic art, with the artist as a leading figure in creating collective political consciousness and inspiring direct action:
Throughout It's No Good, in all of the literary methods and actions that he employs, Medvedev cycles through series of questions on the role of the writer as artist; the role of the artist as political figure; the role of art in politics, in general; the way art morphs and is shaped by money; the importance of leftist art in the fight against neo-fascist and capitalist hegemonies. Medevedev continuously evokes the work of political artists from outside of Russia who came before him, from Pasolini to Brecht, placing himself among an international tradition of artistic activism for leftist, socialist, anti-fascist political causes: "whereas I want—revolution / to change the face of everything, / to overthrow everything and everyone— / they want / a petty bourgeois revolution—".
It's No Good is presented in a beautiful paperback covered with Russian avant garde-esque art (Tatlin's tower is evoked on the front cover, the back cover descends into lines floating in autonomous space), which segues nicely with Medvedev's theories of art as political weapon, and recalls the intentions of the Soviet Constructivists in the post-Revolutionary period, when artists felt like they had the power to create a better place on Earth, a truly harmonious socialist society, through their art. The American publishers of It's No Good are no strangers to leftist political thought: Ugly Duckling Presse puts out some of the best poetry and prose from around the world of a truly independent and radical nature, while n+1 published the first collection of writings on the Occupy movement, and publishes some of the best international literature in their journal, as a recent issue featured an excerpt of Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair.
The impressive team of translators for It's No Good include Keith Gessen, a co-editor at n+1 and helped translate Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's There Once Lived a Woman Who Killed Her Neighbor's Baby, as well as Mark Krotov, an editor at publishing behemoth-extraordinaire FSG. Two other translators, Cory Merrill and Bela Shayevich, combine with Gessen and Krotov to give Medvedev a powerful and sympathetic voice in English that is remarkably unified and direct, overwhelmingly sympathetic, and refreshing and enjoyable to read.
As a poet, Medvedev will appeal to the casual poetry reader as much as the avid chapbook hound, and his nonfiction prose will undoubtedly help It's No Good land on many graduate student bookshelves for years to come. It is Medvedev's unique mixture of poetry and prose, artistic and political at once, that gives It's No Good a lasting power that immediately places him in the forefront of international activist art. While Medvedev delves into the complexities of art's role in Putin's Russia from his place within the Russian context, the American, and Western reader, in general, comes away not only with a greater understanding of the complexity of a political activist's lot in Russia today, but burning with the universal questions about every society's relationship between art and politics.
In 2004, Medvedev renounced the copyright to his own work and forbid any publication of his works via a LiveJournal blog post (included in this collection), announcing that any collected editions of his works henceforth would be pirated and published without the express permission of the author. Subsequently, a publisher in Moscow followed his advice and published a pirated collection of Medvedev's works up to that point and fittingly titled it Texts Published Without Permission of the Author. Two of America's best indie publishers, n+1 and Ugly Duckling Presse, have teamed up to present the first English-language pirated sampling of Medvedev's works up to this point, It's No Good: Poems/Essays/Actions, featuring wide-ranging excerpts selected from the first decade of his writing, including a well-curated selection of poetry to his most significant blog posts, along with lengthy essays on politics and art, descriptions and accounts of his political "actions," and literary obituaries, all written between 2000 (the first cycle of poems published as It's No Good [Всё плохо]) and 2012.
You don't need to know anything about Russia today to read and enjoy Medevedev and, further, to identify universal themes within his work. This edition presents a potent mixture of Medvedev's poetry and prose that, in his own words, explore the "link between politics and culture". Medvedev breaks with centuries of Russian (and Western) artists' attempts to create an apolitical world for themselves outside of the political and economic system in which they create their art: for Medvedev, art and politics are wholly inseparable, the artist cannot escape the influence of power and capital on their art. As Medvedev states in his essay "Literature Will Be Tested" (evoking Brecht):
"The metaphysical consciousness of the artistic intelligentsia is based, as I've said, on the idea that any product of nonmaterial labor exists outside its context and speaks for itself . . .'There is no freedom from politics': this is the banal truth one must now grasp anew. Political passivity also participates in history; it too is responsible."
In his poetry, Medvedev uses a brutally simple free-verse style, rare among Russian poets, evoking a sentimental humanism in constant dialogue with the world around him, be it artistic, political, or wholly personal, reminiscent of a mixture of Vladimir Mayakovsky with Charles Bukowski, whom Medvedev has translated into Russian, and with whom he shares a "genuine contact" that explores the collective aspect of human experiences.
(I remember this about myself:
when I was little I thought
that when it came time for me to die
that everything would be different
and that it wouldn't be me anymore exactly
and so for me, in the form that I was then,
there was nothing to fear)
children think that
in the form
in which they now exist
they will live forever
In contrast to his poetry, Medvedev's essays use simple language to explore complex political and cultural issues on power and art, whether it is the attraction of aesthetic appeal of fascism, or the hierarchies of power in the Russian poetry underground. In a long biographical essay on the underground poetry publisher Dmitry Kuzmin, with whom he'd had a falling out, Medvedev calls for a new form of socialist-democratic art, with the artist as a leading figure in creating collective political consciousness and inspiring direct action:
For a leftist art, there are no individuals: there is simply a single human space in which people exist . . . But no work of art is a thing in itself, as bourgeois thought claims, nor is it a divine reflection, as religious thought claims, but evidence of all society's defects, including the relations of the dominant and dominated. The task of innovative art is to insist on the uniqueness of the individual while revealing the genuine relations between people, the true connections in society, and, as a result, to forge a new reality.
Throughout It's No Good, in all of the literary methods and actions that he employs, Medvedev cycles through series of questions on the role of the writer as artist; the role of the artist as political figure; the role of art in politics, in general; the way art morphs and is shaped by money; the importance of leftist art in the fight against neo-fascist and capitalist hegemonies. Medevedev continuously evokes the work of political artists from outside of Russia who came before him, from Pasolini to Brecht, placing himself among an international tradition of artistic activism for leftist, socialist, anti-fascist political causes: "whereas I want—revolution / to change the face of everything, / to overthrow everything and everyone— / they want / a petty bourgeois revolution—".
It's No Good is presented in a beautiful paperback covered with Russian avant garde-esque art (Tatlin's tower is evoked on the front cover, the back cover descends into lines floating in autonomous space), which segues nicely with Medvedev's theories of art as political weapon, and recalls the intentions of the Soviet Constructivists in the post-Revolutionary period, when artists felt like they had the power to create a better place on Earth, a truly harmonious socialist society, through their art. The American publishers of It's No Good are no strangers to leftist political thought: Ugly Duckling Presse puts out some of the best poetry and prose from around the world of a truly independent and radical nature, while n+1 published the first collection of writings on the Occupy movement, and publishes some of the best international literature in their journal, as a recent issue featured an excerpt of Mikhail Shishkin's Maidenhair.
The impressive team of translators for It's No Good include Keith Gessen, a co-editor at n+1 and helped translate Ludmilla Petrushevskaya's There Once Lived a Woman Who Killed Her Neighbor's Baby, as well as Mark Krotov, an editor at publishing behemoth-extraordinaire FSG. Two other translators, Cory Merrill and Bela Shayevich, combine with Gessen and Krotov to give Medvedev a powerful and sympathetic voice in English that is remarkably unified and direct, overwhelmingly sympathetic, and refreshing and enjoyable to read.
As a poet, Medvedev will appeal to the casual poetry reader as much as the avid chapbook hound, and his nonfiction prose will undoubtedly help It's No Good land on many graduate student bookshelves for years to come. It is Medvedev's unique mixture of poetry and prose, artistic and political at once, that gives It's No Good a lasting power that immediately places him in the forefront of international activist art. While Medvedev delves into the complexities of art's role in Putin's Russia from his place within the Russian context, the American, and Western reader, in general, comes away not only with a greater understanding of the complexity of a political activist's lot in Russia today, but burning with the universal questions about every society's relationship between art and politics.
March 20, 2020
This was a bit of a surprise, I had very little idea of what this book actually was until I started to read it, and it's been a while since I've done that. Kirill Medvedev is a Russian writer, primarily a poet who relinquished all copyright to his work in 2003, refusing to have "even a tangential relationship to a system that has so devalued and cheapened the Word" and retreating entirely from the public aspects of a literary life. This collection is one of several that exist, that exploit the potential of Medvedev's manifesto on copyright: he allows for pirate editions published without a contract or his permission.
Part poetry, which is strikingly spare and often hilariously banal but with an acidic political bite, and part essay collection, this is a strange and genuinely enlightening piece of work from a maverick who actually seems to deserve that description.
Part poetry, which is strikingly spare and often hilariously banal but with an acidic political bite, and part essay collection, this is a strange and genuinely enlightening piece of work from a maverick who actually seems to deserve that description.
September 27, 2020
I realize my ratings are on the high side, so I'll work on that. But these poems are entrancing and real. Two qualities I wish I could find more of, when in combination. As well, he is political and very concerned with integrity. Two more highly valued qualities.
January 3, 2022
♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️♥️
November 7, 2018
Required reading for anyone who calls themselves an artist or wants to be. Thanks to Medvedev, Gessen, Krotov, Mead, Shayevich, n+1, and Ugly Duckling. A triumph.
* Took me a while to get through this, but it was because of my all-consuming day job and had nothing to do with this engrossing intellectual history / action / epic / obituary / manifesto.
* Took me a while to get through this, but it was because of my all-consuming day job and had nothing to do with this engrossing intellectual history / action / epic / obituary / manifesto.
April 7, 2013
One of my kids asked what the title of this book meant. I said, it had to do with not liking the way things are. What I didn't add was that its author doesn't only acknowledge the crap, he does what he can, he struggles to figure out what he can do, to clean it up. He makes writing meaningful as a cultural and political action, without the odious backwash that usually follows such a statement. He writes poems that are polemics, actions that are poems and essays that are inspiring. It's like in Russia there's a world that exists where art is dangerous and valued and scary and worthwhile. I'm reminded of first reading Roberto Bolaño and being envious of his poet-centric world that reads from here as fantastic as the Marvel Comics universe and just as wonderful. It's new and vital and speaks to everything at once. It's engaged and engaging. I friended Kirill Medvedev on Facebook. I want him to like my posts, offer to translate them into Russian, post them on this livejournal blog. I'll reject my copyright, as he has denied his, demanding that his work only be pirated. Aye, aye, matie!
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March 24, 2017891.785 M493i 2016
July 27, 2014
Ik heb zelden een boek gelezen dat zo verweven is met de auteur dat het onduidelijk is waar het 'verhaal' begint en waar de auteur. Misschien maakt het ook niet uit, want Alles is slecht van Kirill Medvedev is niet een standaard roman te noemen. Medvedev is o.a. een Russische dichter, auteur, maar bovenal linkse activist. Hij is een van de intellectuelen die het via zijn blog, pamfletten en andere schrijfsels opneemt tegen het huidige politiek klimaat in Rusland.
Wat is Alles is slecht dan eigenlijk? Dit boek bevat een selectie gedichten, essays, maar bovenal een blik in het gedachtegoed van deze schrijver die afstand heeft gedaan van zijn auteursrecht. Uit protest tegen het corrupte en ingedutte literaire milieu gaf hij ook zijn copyright op. Toch wel bijzonder voor een auteur.
Medvedev lijkt onderdeel te zijn van een uitgestorven ras; idealistische, politiek actieve auteurs die schrijven om het schrijven. Hij heeft zijn rug gekeerd naar de literaire wereld, maar dat betekent niet dat hij minder actief wordt.
Voor de rest zie:
http://tjhati.blogspot.nl/2014/07/all...
Wat is Alles is slecht dan eigenlijk? Dit boek bevat een selectie gedichten, essays, maar bovenal een blik in het gedachtegoed van deze schrijver die afstand heeft gedaan van zijn auteursrecht. Uit protest tegen het corrupte en ingedutte literaire milieu gaf hij ook zijn copyright op. Toch wel bijzonder voor een auteur.
Medvedev lijkt onderdeel te zijn van een uitgestorven ras; idealistische, politiek actieve auteurs die schrijven om het schrijven. Hij heeft zijn rug gekeerd naar de literaire wereld, maar dat betekent niet dat hij minder actief wordt.
Voor de rest zie:
http://tjhati.blogspot.nl/2014/07/all...
March 17, 2016
In which Kirill Medvedev (in translation) searches for the soul of leftist, post-Soviet poetry through poems, essays and accounts of idealistic, but largely ineffective actions.
A poet is even freer than others, because unlike the artists, musician, or theater director the poet doesn't need any capital to create works. The conditions of production are so cheap that a poet can believe his work is connected directly to the fabric of life, that it prevails over its context and circumstances. [p.235]
And,
The opposite position argues that a civil society does not emerge from any "mutually beneficial" agreement with the authorities, even the most sympathetic authorities. It emerges only from the bottom, only as a call, a resistance, a demand. And culture also only emerges this way. [p.248]
And,
I would have been happy to have been proved wrong-- to have learned that a real emotional outcry (which in this case was not confined to this or that small group but seemed a genuine rejection of obvious shiftiness) could become, even for just five minutes, the basis for some political action [p.228]
A poet is even freer than others, because unlike the artists, musician, or theater director the poet doesn't need any capital to create works. The conditions of production are so cheap that a poet can believe his work is connected directly to the fabric of life, that it prevails over its context and circumstances. [p.235]
And,
The opposite position argues that a civil society does not emerge from any "mutually beneficial" agreement with the authorities, even the most sympathetic authorities. It emerges only from the bottom, only as a call, a resistance, a demand. And culture also only emerges this way. [p.248]
And,
I would have been happy to have been proved wrong-- to have learned that a real emotional outcry (which in this case was not confined to this or that small group but seemed a genuine rejection of obvious shiftiness) could become, even for just five minutes, the basis for some political action [p.228]
February 1, 2016
Book containing a selection of Medvedev's poetry and short essays, in a collaborative translation by Keith Gessen, Mark Krotov, Cory Merrill and Bela Shayevich. All centre around the post-Soviet political situation in Russia and the reaction against it (of which Medvedev's writing is part). Provides an insider's view of the tensions within modern Russia and artists response to these which is only touched on simplisticly in Western media. To me the poetry is the most successful in doing this. A further aspect to the book is the author's renunciation of copyright, and this is written about too.
Quite a difficult read, but will be of great interest to followers of contemporary Russian life or international politics. Otherwise a good taster of these and, importantly, by a voice within the country.
Quite a difficult read, but will be of great interest to followers of contemporary Russian life or international politics. Otherwise a good taster of these and, importantly, by a voice within the country.
April 18, 2014
The english translation of the debut of Kirill Medvedev, a brilliant essayist and an authoritative critic of the contemporary literary scene in russia. a must read for anyone who wants to understand contemporary aesthetics, the depoliticization of literature, or for anyone that maintains a hope for our future, the future of art and our lives, this is your book.
May 12, 2013
A great window into the contemporary political situation in Russia through the eyes of poet and activist Kirill Medvedev. This is a great book.
February 26, 2016
Medvedev gives me hope for the future of the human race.
April 18, 2016
"for a long time I wanted / no one to know about me, / and then I wanted / everyone to know about my anonymity / and for everyone to understand this as / their punishment; now I have love"
June 16, 2016
some of the poetry is crap, but i learned more about contemporary leftist politics and art in russia than i could have possibly imagined
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