Glory to Heroes
Feodor Swarovski
four Canadians have saved the world from genetic catastrophe
one Armenian has invented a new form of rocket fuel
and medicine to cure cancer
one Russian sacrificed himself
unplugged a reactor and saved the international space station
one Englishman gave up his liver to a wounded journalist a woman
who returned after the Gypsy coup in California
one Tatar in the midst of ethnic violence
in Southeast Asia saved 240 Malaysian infants
one French woman died for the freedom of Phobos in Deimos prison
one Kartadian
was meant to attack earth aboard a neutrino-powered ship
but
at the sight of that blue planet
turned his ship in the direction of the sun
life is love
people are immortal
glory
glory to heroes
Translation from the Russian
By Stephanie Sandler
Feodor Swarovski was born in Moscow in 1971. He emigrated to Denmark in 1990 at the age of nineteen but returned to Moscow in 1997. He is a journalist who has worked for Russian television as well as print media. Swarovski's first book of poetry, Vse khotiat byt' robotami (2007; Everyone wants to be a robot), received the Moskovsky Schet prize and was short-listed for the Andrei Belyi prize. He was short-listed for the Andrei Belyi prize again in 2009 for his poetry collection Puteshestvenniki vo vremeni (Time travelers). Swarovski's poetry has been translated into English, Bulgarian, Danish, Polish, Slovenian, and Ukranian.
Stephanie Sandler is Professor of Slavic languages and literatures at Harvard University. Her most recent critical monograph was Commemorating Pushkin: Russia's Myth of a National Poet (2004). She has edited several collections of essays, including Rereading Russian Poetry (1999). Sandler collaborated with Genya Turovskaya in translating The Russian Version: Selected Poems of Elena Fanailova (2009) and is currently working on a book about contemporary Russian poetry.
November 2011
In this issue of WLT, a special section devoted to Post-Soviet Literature features recent work from Russia and other former republics, twenty years after the collapse of the regime.
Table of Contents
COVER FEATURE
Post-Soviet Literature: Twenty Years
After the Fall
- INTRO: "Twenty Years after the Collapse of the Soviet Union: Russian and East European Literature Today," Emily D. Johnson
- ESSAY: "Censorship in Russia: Old and New Faces," Nadezhda Azhgikhina
- ESSAY: "Poetry in the Cloud: An Experiment, Results, and n+1 Hypotheses," Kevin M. F. Platt
- Poetry by Igor Belov, Semyon Khanin, Artur Punte, Feodor Swarovski, Sergej Timofejev, Viktor Ivaniv, and Ksenia Shcherbinio
- FICTION: "Petrov and Markov," Oleg Woolf
- ESSAY: "Re-Visioning the Past: Russian Literary Classics in Film," Catharine Nepomnyashchy
- POETRY: "The Rock or, A Third Anecdote about Wallace Stevens," Grigory Kruzhkov
- EXCERPT: The Button, Iren Rozdobudko
READING LIST: WLT's post-Soviet reading list- New! VIDEO: Multimedia poetry from Orbita 4
SPECIAL SECTION
Zoran Živković
- "Zoran Živković: A Biographical Sketch," Michael Morrison
- "Rendezvous in Front of the House," Zoran Živković
- "The Metaphysical Fantasias of Zoran Živković," Michael Morrison
- FICTION: "The Teashop," Zoran Živković
- INTERVIEW: "Fantastika and the Literature of Serbia: A Conversation with Zoran Živković," Michael A. Morrison
- A Bibliography of the Works of Zoran Živković
INTERVIEWS
- "My Life as Cinema: A Conversation with Samuel Shimon," Kaitlin Hawkins
- "Literary Cairo, A Conversation with Samia Mehrez," Michelle Johnson
ESSAYS
FICTION
- "The Demon of Hunger," Tania Malyarchuk
- "Shiki Nagaoka: A Nose for Fiction," Mario Bellatin
POETRY
- Three Poems by Askold Bazhanov
- Two Poems, Alistair Noon
IN EVERY ISSUE
- LETTERS/EDITOR'S CHOICE
- BOOK CLUB: An Iraqi in Paris by Samuel Shimon
- AUTHOR PROFILE: Zoe Whittall
- WHAT TO READ NOW: Zimbabwe
- CITY PROFILE: Yerevan, Armenia
- INTERNATIONAL CRIME & MYSTERY: Meet "Bo from Ro": Building Romanian Crime Writing, J. Madison Davis
- OUTPOST: Los Angeles
