Different twins: Typologies of Russian postmodernism and individual aesthetic experience

Abstract

This article presents a reflection on the works of six poets who came out of the late Soviet underground: Viktor Sosnora, Arkady Dragomoshchenko, Vladimir Kucheryavkin, Boris Constrictor, Dmitry Volchek and Dmitry Golynko. All are both different and alike in their membership in the underground of the 1960s–80s. These poets belong to three generations of the same tradition and build their own trajectory in the space of modern literature, where high feelings are associated mainly with the concepts of strategy, positioning and rating. They represent almost entirely the nonconformist scene of Leningrad and its place in the modern literary situation, still value independence from literary institutions, bypassing the “New World”, “New Literary Review” and Livejournal on a tangent. Their way of being historical is to avoid being completely biased.

In the 1990s, each author disposed of the cultural baggage of Soviet nonconformism in his own way. The trajectories they have chosen in modern times were as diverse as their poetic programmes were different before. Modern literature, which is not inspired by the passeism of memories, is nevertheless predetermined by the utopian past, its background. The identity crisis, the end of history, the devaluation of ideology—all were experienced during the years of the agony of the Soviet utopia, when the processing of the experience of the Silver Age was put at the forefront. Russian postmodernism turned out to be the aesthetics of revolutionary anarchy, scepticism and Great Russian lawlessness. Each author has found his own way of participating in this story—from rejection or emigration to working as a columnist or choosing quiet coexistence. Today, all of these paths are equally possible and can be equally successful.