The Poetics of the Avant-garde in Literature, Arts, and Philosophy

With a brief nod to the broadly international and interdisciplinary nature of the avant-garde as a unifying factor, the editor Slav N. Gratchev devotes the volume’s introduction to a summary of the individual chapters without proposing an overarching structure to pull them together. This serves to emphasize the diffuse nature of the avant-garde as a tenuous assemblage of topics with the editor as more bricoleur than conductor. The twelve essays in the volume thus work as individual case histories with a tendency to examine somewhat narrow swaths of the literary, cultural, and philosophical landscape that comprised the Russian and East-European avant-garde. This degree of focus frequently makes this book a valuable guide to specific corners and niches of the avant-garde that contribute to the movement’s distinctiveness. The insights offered by a more microscopic approach to the avant-garde are evident in a number of the volume’s chapters. * The Russian Review *
This wide-ranging collection cuts across disciplinary boundaries, enriching and refining our understanding of the Russian avant-garde; there is so much that is new here and so much that readers with interest in art history, film, literature, architecture, and dance are bound to enjoy. -- Galin Tihanov, George Steiner Professor of Comparative Literature, Queen Mary University of London