A talk by Dr Ingeborg Jandl-Konrad, Assistant Professor at the Department of Slavonic Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria) and currently a guest researcher at UiT. She will present selected findings from her research on perceptions and emotions in Slavic literatures.
The poet Marina Tsvetaeva (1892-1941) and the prose author Gaito Gazdanov (1903-1971) both emigrated to Paris during the first wave of Russian emigration in the wake of the civil war. Apart from this biographical fact, the two writers are not closely connected to each other. However, both are renowned for their synesthetically inspired writing. In this talk, I will discuss the way in which sounds and visual elements appear as characteristic poetic devices in the work of both authors. Tsvetaeva’s synesthetic talent leads us to consider her associative approach to sounds and rhythms. I will provide an introduction to the metrical features of the Silver Age and demonstrate how these are linked to her unique synesthetic patterns. In Gazdanov, on the other hand, synesthesia mostly arises from visual associations that connect motifs and elements of the plot. Taking a closer look at synesthesia can help to understand the narrative stance of his texts that are often abstract and difficult to grasp.