The content is translated using an automated and machine translation method. Die Übersetzung der Inhalte erfolgt durch eine automatisierte und maschinelle Übersetzungsmethode.

The Poet’s Forced Choice: Boris Khersonskii’s Post-2014 Poetry between Russian and Ukrainian

Öffentlicher Abendvortrag von Professor Dr. Dirk Uffelmann (Universität Passau) im Rahmen des XXIV. Greifswalder Ukrainicums – Greifswald Ukrainian Summer School „Ukraine's Forced Choice”

Having become famous thanks to publications in Russian publishing houses in the 1990s and 2000s, after 2014 the Russophone Odessite poet Boris Grigor’evich Khersonskii faced allegations for his pro-Ukrainian patriotic position and criticism of Russian neo-imperialism. Both in his Russian-language poetry and in his prose blog entries, Khersonskii reacted by ironically appropriating the propagandistic formula of “Russophobia”. Over the post-Euromaidan years the poet increasingly added Ukrainianlanguage translations of his Russian poems and texts originally written in Ukrainian to his portfolio. This paper investigates the self-translations which can be found online in Khersonskii‘s Facebook blog dating from October 30, 2013 to February 19, 2019 and defends the thesis that self-translation and bilingual blogging, despite contrary declarations of the poet, serve the goal of mitigating the language conflict in post-Maidan Ukraine.

Dirk Uffelmann is professor of East and West Slavic Literatures at Justus Liebig University Giessen. His research interests include Russian, Polish, Czech, and Ukrainian literatures, migration, masculinity, and internet studies. He has authored 4 monographs (two of them forthcoming) and co-edited 14 volumes, including Contemporary Polish Migrant Culture and Literature in Germany, Ireland, and the UK (2011), Tam, vnutri. Praktiki vnutrennei kolonizatsii v kul’turnoi istorii Rossii [There within: Practices of Internal Colonization in Russia’s Cultural History] (2012), Vladimir Sorokin’s Languages (2013), and Postcolonial Slavic Literatures After Communism (2016).

Moderation: Professor Dr. Roman Dubasevych

Alfried Krupp Wissenschaftskolleg Martin-Luther-Straße 14 17489 Greifswald 03834 420-5001 Öffentlichkeitsarbeit 03834 420 5019

Current highlights

Picture credits: Lena Schmidt
Zwischen Ahnung und bestimmter Gewißheit: Lena Schmidt und Pauline Stopp
Ausstellungsdauer 06.06. - 24.08.2025 | Spielhalle KUNST
Picture credits: Till Junker
Universität im Rathaus: Digitales Orgelmusikverzeichnis – über die digitale Suche nach passender Musik
Referent: Prof. Dr. phil. Matthias Schneider (Philosophische Fakultät) | 07.07.2025, 17:00 Uhr | Rathaus
Picture credits: Sebastian Reiter
Festspiele MV: Bangers Only!
Die Jazzrausch Bigband im Kulturbahnhof | 13.07.2025, 18:00 Uhr | Kulturbahnhof