Maria Stepanova: Winterpoem 20/21
- daadgalerie
- Reading
- Talk
19.04.2023 / 19:00 – 21:00
With Maria Stepanova, Irina Bondas, Katharina Raabe, and Olga Radetzkaja
The outbreak of the Covid pandemic brought an end to Maria Stepanova’s stay in Cambridge, UK in March 2020. Back in Russia, she spent the following months in a state of inertness—the world had retreated from her, time had “gone deaf.” As she emerged from this state, she began reading Ovid. Ideas and themes that had been lingering in her for some time started to coalesce. As in Der Körper kehrt wieder, she transforms historical and present-day cataclysms into an uncommonly intricate, agile structure of rhythms and voices.
The poem, created in a frenzy of poetic inspiration, speaks of winter and war, of banishment and exile, of social isolation and existential desolation. Stepanova conjures grandiose images for silence: when, for instance, the words we call out to each other freeze in the air and no longer reach our counterpart. The work weaves love letters and travelogues, Chinese verse and Danish fairy tales into a multi-voiced evocation of frozen and slowly thawing time.
Maria Stepanova will present her new volume in a reading and conversation with editor Katharina Raabe and translator Olga Radetzkaja. The conversation will be translated by Irina Bondas.
In Russian with German translation
Free admission
In cooperation with Suhrkamp Verlag and Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
Photo: © Ekko von Schwichow/Suhrkamp Verlag