Olga Sedakova – författare

I början av maj 2016 hölls ett seminarium i Jonsered, Göteborg. I centrum för diskussionerna och föredragen stod Nobelpristagaren i litteratur, Svetlana Aleksijevitj, som berättade om sitt eget skrivande och också kommenterade de övriga deltagarnas bidrag vilket resulterade i en dialog som här presenteras i bokform. Sara Danius är litteraturvetare och ständig sekreterare i Svenska Akademien. Olga Sedakova är en av Rysslands mest framstående poeter och god vän till Svetlana Aleksijevitj. Julija Tjernjavskaja är professor i litteraturvetenskap och god vän till Svetlana Aleksijevitj, samt en av de otaliga personer som blivit intervjuade i böckerna.

An intensely philosophical and religious poet, Olga Sedakova writes of nature, music, and the inner, spiritual life. As one of the preservers of traditional Russian culture, she stands in stark contrast to the rampant commercialization in contemporary Russian life, instead tracing her poetic roots back to the early avant-garde movements of pre-revolutionary Russia. For that stance, she endured years of censorship and silencing during the Soviet regime her poems distributed by hand in mimeographed copies or by word of mouth. This volume introduces to an English-speaking audience an extensive selection of poems by one of Russia's most distinguished lyric poets writing today.

Freedom to Believe is a powerful collection of philosophical and religious essays by a modern poet of distinction. It introduces a highly original and controversial thinker to the Western reader. Olga Sedakova's central philosophical thought lies in the notion of existential freedom in its association with the liberating power of the arts, especially poetry. These convictions place her firmly in the Russian and European classical cultural traditions, which, in turn, have deep roots in Christianity. Devoutly Orthodox yet fiercely independent in her thinking, Sedakova's ecumenical humanism places her in opposition to both the "new left" and modern fundamentalism. Indeed, Sedakova's "conservatism" is more genuinely new than the so-called radicalism of the postmodernists, as she castigates "old totalitarianism" and new commercialism alike, in the name of a new cultural poetics and politics.

“Olga Sedakova is a writer of global significance. . .the publishing ofthis collection is a welcome stage in the reception of her exceptional geniusin the West.” So writes Rowan Williams in his foreword to this translation of Old Songs.

 

Born in Moscow in 1949, OlgaSedakova emerged as a leading writer of the late Soviet period. Since 2014, shehas been an outspoken critic of Russia’s war on Ukraine. Her writing bearswitness to the values of generosity, attention, and non-violence. The poems in OldSongs construct a world shaped by these values, forming a lyric sequenceinfused with folk wisdom and anchored in moral courage. It is a world broughtinto being by song, the kind passed down over cradles and on walks through thegarden. These poems find their way into your memory and accompany you on yourway.

 

Sedakova is not only one ofRussia’s most revered contemporary poets but also a scholar and essayist. Oftencompared to figures such as Czesław Miłosz, she has,with this volume (according to Rowan Williams), succeeded in “conveying thesense of a forgotten directness of perception and relation—not a lostsimplicity, exactly, but a larger and more human world. . . .”