ABSTRACT
The Russian literary critic Vladimir Kozlov has described the role of poetry in Russian culture as ‘a means by which the individual can come to an understanding of national identity. Perhaps that is why Russian poetry is no less important as a brand than German philosophy, Spanish music, or French cooking’ (Kozlov 2014). 1 This chapter explores the extent to which poetry has retained its privileged position as a ‘signature’ of Russianness when flows of people, capital, technology and ideas have created connections between Russia and the rest of the world, as well as a Russophone cultural space which extends far beyond Russia’s national borders. The point of departure for this discussion is the idea of the literary canon as an expression of Russian national identity, and the privileged position which poetry has traditionally occupied in it. While it is indeed the case that there is considerable cultural and linguistic diversity within the Russian Federation, with poetry being created in many languages other than Russian, this chapter will focus on poetry written in Russian, the language which plays the role of a prominent marker of national rather than regional identity. 2 By exploring the ways in which poets, their readers and the state have related to their roles as co-creators, critics and consumers of the developing canon of poetry from 2008 onwards, it shows that their responses to the processes of globalization are by no means uniform, showing sometimes a turn towards the national and the traditional, and at others an openness to cultural influences drawn from elsewhere in the world. Anxieties about the prospect of Russian poetry being restricted to the academy, as is believed to be the case in the United States, can be seen as part of the ‘fear of cultural absorption’ due to globalization (Appadurai 2011: 29). At the same time there are signs that influences from outside Russia are becoming indigenized, which is entirely in line with how literary culture has incorporated ‘alien’ elements over the centuries. While in some ways greater emphasis has been placed on the role of authoritative institutions in maintaining a poetry canon seen as an expression of national cultural tradition, there have also been departures from this tradition, particularly in ways that both poets and readers have come to understand their roles in recent years.
