For the first time in sixteen years as a Dartmouth Professr of Russian Language and Literature, the renowned Russian poet, Lev Vladimirovich Loseff, read his poetry to an audience of nearly sixty students, professors, and community members last night in the Wren Room of Sanborn library.
Highly respected by all of the students in the Russian Department, Loseff intrigued and perplexed, moved and inspired those who gathered to hear his poetry.
Reading in Russian, the poet shed the skin of the man who quietly attends to business around the department, and powerfully emerged with a heightened expression of his experiences.
His own vigor was well matched by that of his student, Eric Waters '95, who dovetailed the poet's Russian rendering with literal English translations.
Loseff describes the time before his emigration to the United States as his "former life," a time during which he wrote many of his poems. The second half of the reading was a collection of his more recent works. The piece that touched many students was entitled "One Day in the Life of Lev Vladimirovich." This was the one that most "intersected" with the lives of students, Sasha King '95, president of the Russian club, said.
Loseff wrestles with the forces involved in retaining one's cultural identity in a society so foreign from his own.
" ... Every sound cripples my language, or insults it," Loseff writes.
He maintains a sense of satire and rhythm throughout, no matter how serious the subject at hand.
"But why yawn around/ Before me is a mound of student papers/'Turgenev loves to wrote the novel/Fathers with Childs.' Excellent, Joe, top marks!/ Turgenev loves looking out the window..."
Loseff not only mocks an unperceptive Dartmouth student, but also the role he is able to play in the cultivating the student's perceptiveness.
A Russian graduate student found his poems to be a "cold shower," as he himself has been able to forget the negativity in his life and move ahead with positive experiences in mind. Loseff brings both elements to bear in racapturing different modes of existence.
Fellow Professors in the department, who had never heard his poetry, greatly valued the opportunity to hear their collegue read. Professor John Kopper was glad to find a kindred spirit.
"He finds life as banal as we do, but can speak about it better," he said.
