Serapion Sister - The Poetry of Elizaveta Polonskaja (Hardcover)

Elizaveta Polonskaja (1890-1969), was a poet, translator, children's writer, journalist, and noted memoirist. She is chiefly remembered as the only woman in the Petrograd literary circle, the Serapion Brothers. This work, the first to focus exclusively on Polonskaja, restores the neglected poet to her rightful place in the Russian literary tradition. At the same time, it exposes the critical practices and literary politics that served to obscure a writer of Polonskaja's talent and stature.

The Serapion Brothers, a controversial group of Soviet writers, expressed a commitment to artistic freedom while supporting the revolution. In this vein, Polonskaja's political verse constantly tested the limits of the permissible. By employing historical parallels, false dates, and indirect or even misleading wording, she remained within official bounds by expressing a humanistic Marxism consistent with the ideology (if not the practice) of the Soviet regime. Leslie Dorfman Davis's careful study of how Polonskaja achieved this balance deepens our understanding not only of her art and that of the Serapions but also of survival techniques practiced by many Soviet writers, particularly those who were left-wing and Jewish. Davis shows how Polonskaja expressed her cultural identity craftily, channeling her nationalism into allusions and translations.

Because Polonskaja's poetry stretches the boundaries of traditional female identity, any close look at her work is also an exercise in gender scholarship. Accordingly, Davis examines the distinctly feminine viewpoint that informs Polonskaja's vigorous poetic voice and severe, typically "masculine" rhetorical style. She shows us how the poet, a socialistbefore she was a feminist, nonetheless gave voice to a socialism whose goals included freeing women from the burdens of domesticity without diminishing their biological role. As she appears here, Elizaveta Polonskaja embodies, in both her life and her verse, Aleksandra Kollantai's ideal of the modern single woman.