History and Daddy: The Politics of Autobiographism in Polina Barskova’s ‘Proshchatel’’

Abstract

In her latest poetry and prose, Polina Barskova addresses the subject of her critical writings, namely, the cultural-political dimensions of the siege of Leningrad. In all these writings, she pursues a critique of Soviet and post-Soviet mythologies surrounding this historical event. In her prose piece ‘Proshchatel’’ (‘The Forgiver’), from Zhivye kartiny (Tableaux vivants), Barskova employs autobiography as an element of critique, invoking and renovating Russian modernist precedents. In so doing, she shapes a new kind of autobiographism which has commonalities with American confessional poetry and theorizing of identity.