By The Slavic Literature Pod
The Slavic Literature Pod is your guide to one of the most important—yet understudied—literary traditions. Every episode, Russian literature PhD Candidate Matt Gerasimovich and Personable
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The podcast currently has 344 episodes available.
Heads up: This episode will contain conversation about incest throughout. Take that into consideration as you head into it. Also sorry about the kitchen noises in the background of some portions.
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron learn about narrative-causes and narrative-effects in The UnSimple, a novella by Ukrainian writer Taras Prokhasko and translated by Uilliam Blacker. Set in the Carpathians through the first half of the 20th century, the story follows Anna, Franz, Anna, Sebastian, Anna, and Anna — no, that’s not a typo — as their picaresque lives overlap with the earthly gods known as the UnSimple. Grab your glass of gin, and get ready to get really confused.
Major themes: We can never escape Benedict Anderson, Bai-narrative, Quasi-history
02:13 - Ukrainian Literature, volume 2
05:25 - Here are the interviews I’ll be referencing throughout the episode:
Taras Prokhasko: “Literature is a Lonely Business”
Taras Prokhasko: The Ukrainian idea is connected with gentle sitting
Taras Prokhasko, writer: Ukrainian literature is still at the level of domestic literature
Talking at the shelter about what matters. Taras Prokhasko.
06:02 - Taras Prokhasko’s bio on the White Chalk of Days website
08:48 - Uilliam Blacker’s website
09:09 - Earth Gods: Writings from before the war
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Buy this book with our affiliate links on Bookshop or Amazon!
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron dig into the short story collection To Hell WIth Poets, authored by Kazakh writer Baqytgul Sarmekova and translated by Mirgul Kali. The collection, published in English by Tilted Axis Press in 2024, explores rural-urban divides (with a focus on the dissatisfaction life doles out on both sides), troubled people, sexual exploitation, and the indulgence of nostalgia. Although the entire collection is worthwhile, they’ll be covering the stories “The Night the Rose Wept,” “To Hell with Poets” parts 1 and 2, as well as “The Taming of Aqtory.” Grab your qurt and tune in!
Major themes: Aul literature, Looking for satisfaction, Having two faces
01:49 - To Hell With Poets was actually published earlier this year, not last. I think I got this mixed up with the collection’s English PEN Translates award, which it did receive in 2023.
05:28 - Turkoslavia’s website.
06:34 - Baqytgul Sarmekova speaking on Tilted Axis Press’ Instagram.
10:37 - Mirgul Kali on the Harshaneeyam podcast
20:12 - An interview with Mirgul Kali and Baqytgul Sarmekova by Alma Review
Buy this book with our affiliate links on Amazon!
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron host Office Hours, speaking about the wider state of reading as well as some non-Slavic lit they’ve been getting in to. Tune in to find their opinions about Lament for Julia by Susan Taubes and Z by Vassilis Vassilikos, whether or not literary analysis has any meaning at all, and whether we’re too concerned with what straight men are reading. Grab your extra credit and tune in!
Major themes: A.I. bait, straight men and novels, TikTok killed the author-star
15:06 - As an example of what I’m talking about here: Playing Cops: Militia Member Aids Police in Arresting Protester at Portland Alt-Right Rally by Arun Gupta
36:06 - Piss Christ
53:06 - “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books”
01:08:08 - The Combahee River Collective
“This focusing upon our own oppression is embodied in the concept of identity politics. We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity, as opposed to working to end somebody else’s oppression. In the case of Black women this is a particularly repugnant, dangerous, threatening, and therefore revolutionary concept because it is obvious from looking at all the political movements that have preceded us that anyone is more worthy of liberation than ourselves. We reject pedestals, queenhood, and walking ten paces behind. To be recognized as human, levelly human, is enough.”
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron dive into Sergei Eisenstein’s landmark film Strike! (1925) to get a better look into his foundational ideas around montage and film composition amidst a tragic tale of a failed strike. Yes, they will be talking about the cow scene for most of the episode. Not sure what we’re talking about? You’ll have to tune in to find out.
Major themes: Cow slaughter, Influencing the audience, Everything is montage
01:30 - Mosfilm’s youtube channel actually does not have Strike!, but it does have many of Eisenstein’s other works. You can find decent versions of Strike! posted by other Youtube channels, though.
03:21 - Film Form: Essays in Film Theory by Sergei Eistenstein, ed. and trans. by Jay Leyda
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron dive into Andriy Sodomora’s short story collection The Tears & Smiles of Things with the help of its translators Roman Ivashkiv and Sabrina Jaszi. The collection draws together Sodomora’s reflections on life, ancient texts, and the difficulties of translation. The book holds the subtitle “Stories, Sketches, Meditations.” It’s never easy to tell which is which — if indeed a clear delineation can be made at all — but Jaszi and Ivashkiv do their best to help the pair untangle it.
Roman Ivashkiv teaches Slavic languages, literatures, and cultures at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa. His research interests include translation, comparative literature, and language pedagogy. Currently, he is writing a monograph on transmesis (i.e., fictional representation of translation and translators) in contemporary Ukrainian literature and film.
Sabrina Jaszi is a translator of Uzbek, Russophone, and Ukrainian literature based in Oakland, CA. She is a co-founder of the Turkoslavia translation collective and journal, both dedicated to Turkic and Slavic literature in translation. Currently, she is writing a dissertation on modern Central Asian literature at UC Berkeley.
Major themes: Reading antiquity, Tears and smiles, Translating translators
We have included links where you can purchase a copy of The Tears & Smiles of Things later in these notes.
25:02 - “Andriy Sodomora: “There are two paths that a translator can choose before their journey into the world of foreign languages: The first, long and difficult, will lead to the author, the other, shorter one, - leads to the reader, who seeks instant enjoyment.” by Bogdana Romantsova
25:40 - *Room without a Shadow, excuse me
01:09:30 - The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy
01:09:38 - Timothy Snyder’s history of Ukraine Yale courses on Youtube
01:10:02 - Victoria Amelina, whose book Women Looking at War: A War and Justice Diary is set to be published in February 2025.
01:10:12 - The publication section of Harvard’s Ukrainian Research Institute.
01:10:15 - Lost Horse Press
01:11:22 - Stanislav Aseyev’s In Isolation: Dispatches from the Occupied Donbas
01:12:10 - There isn’t a lot on Sukhbat Aflatuni, but here’s a review of one of his novels by translator Lisa Hayden.
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Buy this book with our affiliate links on Bookshop or Amazon!
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron talk Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song, dropping the nuclear bomb (a timely conversation), and torturing your roommates by cooking cabbage. They’ll also be getting into a topic that everyone has been dying to know more about: Jordan Peterson Academy. Well…maybe not, no one has asked us about it, but Cameron is dying to know how they got his email. Get read to get real anti-intellectual and tune in!
Major themes: Lackluster dystopias, Cabbage torture, Jordan Peterson Academy
6:45 - It Can’t Happen Here is indeed authored by Sinclair Lewis.
41:42 - Politely and calmly discussing 1984
43:07 - Actually, his Master’s was in medical botany, but his PhD was in nutritional ethnomedicine.
50:06 - “Controversial professor Jordan Peterson retires from tenured position at U of T” by Lauren Alexander, Tahmeed Shafiq
1:03:42 “Churchill’s policies to blame for millions of Indian famine deaths, study says” by Bard Wilkinson
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Buy this book with our affiliate links on Bookshop or Amazon!
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron are down with the sickness of Schulzomania, covering parts of the short story collection “The Street of Crocodiles” by Polish-Jewish literary superstar Bruno Schulz. They’ll be talking about “Visitation,” “Tailor’s Dummies,” and the eponymous “The Street of Crocodiles,” delving deep into Schulz’s surreal vision of his family and city. Order versus chaos, taking the formation of matter into our own hands, seductive tickling — we’ve got it all here! Get ready for it to get real confusing.
Major themes: Torturing matter, Doomed eroticism, Unfinished modernity
01:51 - 1973, not later ‘70s. “The Hourglass Sanatorium.”
07:37 - “The Battle Over Bruno Schulz’s Final Works” by Adam Kirsch
30:42 - “Thinking about Absurdity with Bruno Schulz: Paradox and Potential” by Shlomit Gorin
51:27 - “Bruno Schulz and Seductive Discourse” by Jerzy Jarzębski
57:31 - “Are Crocodiles Flawless? The Reptiles Haven’t Changed in 200 Million Years” by Elizabeth Gamillo but counterpoint: “Modern Crocodiles Are Evolving at a Rapid Rate” by Riley Black
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron chart new territory by covering the novella Devil's Yard by Yugoslav writer, poet, and diplomat (at varying times) Ivo Andrić. Covering a story within a story, they’ll have plenty to say about the construction of narrative, storytelling from the core and periphery of empire, and what’s up with everybody talking about eyes, huh? Grab your prison blanket, find a safe spot to sleep in the yard, and tune in!
Major themes: Narrative confusion, Residue of truth, The eyes have it
10:35 - “Narrative and Narrative Structure in Ivo Andric’s Devil’s Yard” by Mary P. Coote
00:00 - “Ivo Andric in English Translation” by Albert B. Lord
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Note: This episode originally aired in February 2024. Matt and Cameron are taking a much needed break this August and wanted to re-up some mid-series Life and Fate episodes they thought deserved more attention.
Pick up a copy of The Czech Manuscripts here.
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron are joined by Professor David L. Cooper to talk about his new book The Czech Manuscripts: Forgery, Translation, and National Myth. In the book, Dr. Cooper takes a new look at the so-called Czech Manuscripts — several forged literary works that played a large role in 19th Century Czech national identity-building — using several approaches to tackle what trends shaped them and how they were treated in turn.
David L. Cooper is Associate Professor and Head of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. A specialist in Czech and Russian literatures, his research is in the areas of nationalism in literature, forgery and mystification, translation history and translation studies, and history of criticism. David has published translations of Slovak folktales and a critical edition of the poems of the Czech 19th-century forged manuscripts, The Queen’s Court and Green Mountain Manuscripts with Other Forgeries of the Czech Revival (Ann Arbor, 2018).
Major themes: National identity, forgery or fiction, more medieval poetry
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
Questions, comments, want to hear your voice on a bonus episode? Send us an email at [email protected] or call our voicemail at 209.800.3944
Note: This episode originally aired in January 2024. Matt and Cameron are taking a much needed break this August and wanted to re-up some mid-series Life and Fate episodes they thought deserved more attention.
Pick up a copy of Ochre & Rust from Green Linden Press’ website.
Show Notes:
This week, Matt and Cameron tackle some of the work of Sergey Gandlevsky, translated by Philip J. Metres and collected in Ochre & Rust. Tune in to hear more about one of Russia’s most celebrated modern poets, self-described outsider who drifted around the edges of the USSR (and, later, the Russian Federation) and cataloged his thoughts and experiences in his poems.
Philip Metres is a poet, scholar, translator, essayist, and peacebuilder. He is the author of twelve books, including Fugitive/Refuge (2024), Ochre & Rust: New Selected Poems of Sergey Gandlevsky (2023), Shrapnel Maps (2020), The Sound of Listening: Poetry as Refuge and Resistance (2018), and Sand Opera (2015). His work has garnered fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Lannan Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Ohio Arts Council, and the Watson Foundation. He has been awarded the Adrienne Rich Award, three Arab American Book Awards, the Cleveland Arts Prize, and the Hunt Prize. Philip has been called “one of the essential poets of our time,” whose work is “beautiful, powerful, magnetically original.” He is professor of English and director of the Peace, Justice, and Human Rights program at John Carroll University. He is also Core Faculty at Vermont College of Fine Arts.
You can find more from Philip on his website and see some other links he’s shared on his linktree.
Major themes: Prodigious drinking, After the USSR’s dissolution, Andrei Bolkonsky returns
The music used in this episode was “Старое Кино / Staroye Kino,” by Перемотка / Peremotka. You can find more of their work on Bandcamp and Youtube.
Our links: Website | Discord
Socials: Instagram | BlueSky | Twitter | Facebook
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