The Enduring Legacy of Arkadii Dragomoshchenko: Scholarship, Photopoetics, and Artistic Influence

Session Submission Type: Panel

Brief Description

This panel explores the legacy of poet, photographer, and translator Arkadii Dragomoshchenko through the lens of memory. Memory is considered in three interrelated ways: first, through an exploration of Dragomoshchenko's late writing and photography shared with one of the panelists in the final years of life; second, as his poetic influence on contemporary Russian photopoetics; and third, as his interrogation of cultural and historical memory.

The first paper considers Dragomoshchenko’s late poetry collection "Tautology", expanding on Mikhail Yampolsky’s thesis of the poet's "symbolist revolution." The paper develops this thesis by arguing that Dragomoshchenko's work deterritorialized not only the specific language of poetry but also language as such, making it just one of the means of poetic utterance that can also be conveyed by visual means. The second paper examines the poetry cycle "We Are Distances" by Gleb Simonov, a poet and landscape photographer. Through a close reading, it investigates how Simonov’s hybrid artistic approach resonates with Dragomoshchenko’s tradition of photopoetics and merges visual and textual languages to capture shifting perceptions of space. The third paper explores Dragomoshchenko’s early prose, his novel "Placement in Houses and Trees", to explore his engagement with memory, national identity, and historical trauma. Rather than positioning him solely within abstract transnational contexts, this study situates his work in the context of suppressed Ukrainian cultural memory.

Together, these papers offer new perspectives on Dragomoshchenko’s poetic and photographic legacy, revealing his work’s lasting impact on contemporary artistic and scholarly discourse.

Sub Unit

• Literature: 21st Century

Chair

• Ivan Sokolov, UC Berkeley

Papers

• Arkady Dragomoshchenko’s Photopoetics as a New Visual Language - Eric Patton

• All of the Time is Still Ahead: A Legacy of Photopoetics in Gleb Simonov's ‘We Are Distances’ - Nadezhda Vikulina, Harvard U

• Negotiating Ukraine: Nation, Historical Trauma, and the Politics of Memory in Arkadii Dragomoshenko’s 'Placement in Houses and Trees' - Yuliya Charnyshova, Yale U

Discussant

• Jacob Edmond, U of Otago (New Zealand)