What is ULBANDUS?
Produced under the auspices of the Slavic Department at Columbia University,
ULBANDUS is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to refreshing, adventurous, and
provocative work on topics in Slavic literatures and cultures. We welcome
submissions from faculty, graduate students and independent scholars in any
field, even superficially unrelated ones. Though faculty members sit on the
advisory board, the production, editing, and management of ULBANDUS is
carried out entirely by the graduate students in the Columbia Slavic
Department.
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS! DEADLINE: MARCH 1, 2005
ULBANDUS is now accepting submissions for issue No. 9 (2005), on "Men of the
'Sixties." Submissions in any genre dealing with any aspect of any men (or
women) of the '60s of any century in Slavic/East European history will be
accepted at [log in to unmask] until March 1, 2005. See submissions
guidelines for details.
Forthcoming, October 2004:
ULBANDUS No. 8, "Fruits of Evil"
The Editor's preface:
From the Editor: Slavists, like mushrooms, are widely under-appreciated and
even subject to ridiculous prejudices. They come in many surprising and
occasionally beautiful and/or savoury varieties, pop up unexpectedly and
fortuitously, or conceal themselves when you are searching for them most
avidly. It goes without saying that some are deadly, but we will not concern
ourselves with those varieties here. Perhaps the most amazing thing about
mushrooms (and by metaphoric extension Slavists) is that the mushroom body,
the rhizome, lies unseen and undefinable beneath the surface of the earth.
It can extend for literally hundreds of miles, and brings forth its fruit
exclusively according to its own internal logic, in defiance of human
attempts to bring it under cultivation. As editor of ULBANDUS's "Fruits of
Evil" issue, I have had the pleasure of gathering a variegated basket of
freely inspired Slavist produce, nourished by the simple question, "What did
Baudelaire's Fleurs du Mal do to Russian literature?"
The question was posed as broadly as possible so as to allow for a wide
variety of responses. Correspondingly, the reader will find in these pages
considerations ranging from the reception of the first Russian edition of
Fleurs to Baudelaire's influence on Yuri Mamleev, and from Rozanov's views
on the decadent woman to the image of the city in Briusov's poetry. Marijeta
Bozovic weighs in with a review of V. Erofeev's "Fruits of Evil" series. As
always, we strive to present in ULBANDUS fresh and provocative venues. New
(and perhaps ultimately unique) to this issue is a "Virtual Tea," a
discussion of Anna Akhmatova's early poems as possibly decadent with a view
toward discovering what exactly occurred in her poetry that makes us tend to
divide her oeuvre into "early" and "late." Anatoly Naiman makes some
startling observations and Boris Gasparov, a significant provacateur of this
discussion, contributes an epistle of his own on the subject. To round out
the early/late Akhmatova debate, Colleen McQuillen explores masking and
masquerade themes in the Poem without a Hero.
If Slavist thought resists alien [chuzhoi] cultivation, to what, then, do we
owe the "Fruits" issue of ULBANDUS? The origins of this issue lie in a
sporadic flowering of Salon culture near Columbia University beginning in
2001. Fortuitously or not, the number of poetry-lovers among graduate
students in the Slavic Department at Columbia was great enough, and
boisterous enough, to spill out of the confines of the classroom and into
the night. A loosely-defined collective, now known as the "informalists,"
began meeting unpredictably and inexplicably, mostly at the home of
Valentina Izmirlieva, to talk about poetry. Scattered through the current
issue of ULBANDUS, the curious reader will find documents relating to these
occurrences. The "Salon Files" range from poems written in celebration of
the evening's theme and excerpts from talks (to use the term loosely) to
"minutes" of the "proceedings." Again and again the focus of these evenings,
when it wasn't Brodsky, returned to Baudelaire and his influence on Russian
literature. For better or worse, this issue of ULBANDUS is the product of an
unforeseen fruiting of the Slavist body.
--Margo Rosen
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