Ticket Info: General Public: $8; OJMCHE Members: $5; Students: $5
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Living in Russia during and after the Second World War as a Jew, what does a gifted poet write and which writings must be hidden for the sake of self-preservation? How does this poet shape and maintain his identity when his Soviet allegiance and Jewishness collide?

Boris Slutsky was born in 1919 and raised in Kharkov, Ukraine. Fighting in Russia’s war against Hitler proved to be one of the most decisive and transformative experiences of his life, as afterwards he emerged fully as a poet. Although Slutsky was a central figure in the post-Stalinist literary revival, and wrote poems condemning the Stalinist regime, he cannot be easily confined within a pro- or anti-Soviet dichotomy. A loyal member of the Communist Party, Slutsky was also a sharp critic of its policies, and especially of government-sanctioned anti-Semitism after the war. Though better known as a Soviet poet than as a Jewish one, he was also a translator of Yiddish poetry into Russian, and oversaw the first anthology of Israeli poetry published in the Soviet Union. He was recognized in Russia as a significant figure, though a large part of his verse remained unpublished in his life. For his final nine years – he died in 1986 – he remained creatively silent, writing not a single line of poetry.

Marat Grinberg, Associate Professor of Russian and Humanities at Reed College, and Judith Pulman, poet and translator, have been collaborating to translate a selection of Slutsky’s unpublished poetry. 

Whether I grow wiser or I grow older—
I grasp myself clearly to be a Jew.
I thought that I had made it.
And I thought I’d broken through—
I didn’t make it, I unmade myself,
I didn’t break through, I broke down,
I am not to be read from left to right,
but in Jewish, from right to left.
    -Boris Slutsky, translated by Judith Pulman and Marat Grinberg

Join us for a bilingual poetry reading followed by a Q & A session, where together we can explore expressions of Jewish identity in cataclysmic times.

This event is funded in part by the Regional Arts & Culture Council and is co-sponsored by Congregation Shir Tikvah. Please call ahead to 503-226-3600 for ADA accommodation requests.