Spring 2023
SLAVIC 287 001 - LEC 001
Russian Poetry
The Russian Nature Lyric
Lyubov Golburt
Class #:30771
Units: 4
Instruction Mode:
In-Person Instruction
Offered through
Slavic Languages and Literatures
Current Enrollment
Total Open Seats:
11
Enrolled: 4
Waitlisted: 0
Capacity: 15
Waitlist Max: 3
No Reserved Seats
Hours & Workload
9 hours of outside work hours per week, and 3 hours of instructor presentation of course materials per week.
Other classes by Lyubov Golburt
Course Catalog Description
Class conducted in Russian. Russian poetry and versification (eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth centuries): close readings of texts. Variable topics.
Class Description
This course proposes to use the capacious thematic rubric of the “nature lyric” to constitute and analyze a corpus of diverse texts from the Russian poetic tradition, spanning some 270 years from Mikhail Lomonosov and Gavrila Derzhavin in the eighteenth century to Anna Glazova and Polina Barskova in the twenty-first. Focusing on the representations of nature and the poet as both within and apart from nature, as drawing inspiration from it as well as articulating its contours in language would allow us to conceive of the lyric as a project that engages – in a uniquely condensed form – with questions posed by several branches of philosophical inquiry (epistemology, phenomenology, metaphysics, aesthetics). In the first half of the course, we will perform close readings of texts by different poets and begin to pose both philosophical and formal questions about poetry’s capacity for apprehending the world. The second half of the course will be devoted to a closer examination of several case studies of authors whose oeuvre consistently invokes nature. These 5-6 case studies will be selected from Alexander Pushkin, Evgenii Baratynskii, Fyodor Tiutchev, Afanasii Fet, Velimir Khlebnikov, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelshtam, Nikolai Zabolotskii, Joseph Brodsky, Leonid Aronzon, Gennadii Aigi, and Elena Shvarts. The course will also introduce students to some of the crucial scholarship on the Russian lyric as well as key texts and important recent critical discussions in lyric theory.
Class Notes
Prerequisites: Graduate standing; consent of instructor.
Rules & Requirements
Repeat Rules
Reserved Seats
Current Enrollment
No Reserved Seats
Textbooks & Materials
See class syllabus or https://calstudentstore.berkeley.edu/textbooks for the most current information.
Guide to Open, Free, & Affordable Course Materials
Associated Sections
None