Viktor Borisovich Krivulin (; 9 July 1944 – 17 March 2001) was a Russian poet, novelist and essayist.

Biography

Krivulin graduated from the faculty of philology from Leningrad State University. He opted for independent cultural activity and worked mostly as a watchman,

editor Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, or cinematic material used by a person or an entity to convey a message or information. The editing process can involve correction, condensation, organization, a ...

of short living leaflets of sanitary education while heading some important institutions of Russian uncensored literature of 1970s, such as «37» and «Severnaya Pochta»

samizdat Samizdat (, , ) was a form of dissident activity across the Eastern Bloc in which individuals reproduced censored and underground makeshift publications, often by hand, and passed the documents from reader to reader. The practice of manual rep ...

magazines among others. Later Krivulin was involved with other samizdat journals Obvodnyi Kanal and Chasy, the journal of the Leningrad alternative culture club «Klub-81». In 1978 Krivulin became the first winner of Andrei Bely independent literary prize and then for more than ten years he participated in running this award. After the collapse of the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

Krivulin served as co-chairman of the St Petersburg branch of the Democratic Russia party, where he worked with the reformer Galina Starovoytova murdered in November 1998.

Work

Krivulin's poetic output reflects some features of the

postmodern Postmodernism encompasses a variety of artistic, cultural, and philosophical movements that claim to mark a break from modernism. They have in common the conviction that it is no longer possible to rely upon previous ways of depicting the wo ...

current that has been variously labelled as neomodernism and metarealism. For many years, his poetry circulated exclusively in samizdat (Leningrad journals such as Chasy he Clock «37» and Obvodnyi kanal), as well as the émigré journals Grani ("Facets"), Tret’ia volna ("The Third Wave"), Vestnik RKhD ("Herald of the Russian Christian Movement") and Kontinent. Krivulin's first poetry collection was published in 1981 in

Paris Paris () is the Capital city, capital and List of communes in France with over 20,000 inhabitants, largest city of France. With an estimated population of 2,048,472 residents in January 2025 in an area of more than , Paris is the List of ci ...

and was followed with the two volumes of selected poems released in 1988. His first official Soviet publication appeared only in 1985 in the pages of the club's anthology, Krug. Krivulin's first book in the

was published in 1990.

Personal life

Krivulin was married several times. His first wife was the

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

Tatyana Goricheva, with whom they organized unofficial

seminars A seminar is a form of academic instruction, either at an academic institution or offered by a commercial or professional organization. It has the function of bringing together small groups for recurring meetings, focusing each time on some part ...

and edited the journal 37, named after the number of their

communal apartment Communal apartments (, colloquial: ''kommunalka'') are apartments in which several unrelated persons or families live in isolated living rooms and share common areas such a kitchen, shower, and toilet. When the Bolsheviks came to power in 1917 aft ...

. In the 1960s before getting married with Goricheva, Krivulin started a relationship with Masha Ivashintsova, clandestine street photographer whose works were discovered by her relatives in the family attic and made public. They were breaking up and getting back together several times until Masha's death in 2000.

Collections in Russian

* 1981: Stikhi (Poems), Paris: Rhythm. * 1988: Stikhi (Poems), Paris, Leningrad: Beseda * 1990: Obraschenie (Appeal), Leningrad: Sovetsky Pisatel * 1993: Konzert po Zayavkam (Concert on request), Saint-Petersburg: Publishing house of the Fund of Russian Poetry * 1994: Predgranichie: Teksty 1993-94 (Frontier: Texts of 1993–94), Saint-Petersburg: Borey Art * 1998: Requiem, Moscow: ARGO-RISK. * 1998: Kupanie v iordani (Bathing in the Jordan River), Saint-Petersburg, Pushkin Fund * 2001: Stikhi yubileinogo goda (Poems of the jubilee year), Moscow: OGI * 2001: Stikhi posle stikhov (Poems after poems), Saint-Petersburg: Peterburgsky pisatel

References

Sources

* Johnson, Kent (1992). Third Wave: The New Russian Poetry, The University of Michigan Press

External links

Sandler S. A Poet Living in the Big City: Viktor Krivulin, Among Others
In: Boudreau N, O'Neil C Poetics. Self. Place: Essays to Honor Anna Lisa Crone. Columbus, Ohio: Slavica ; 2007.
The Spirit(s) of the Leningrad Underground: Viktor Krivulin's Communion with Russian Modernism. Clint B. Walker. The Slavic and East European Journal. Vol. 43, No. 4 (Winter, 1999), pp. 674-698.

Michael Molnar (2001) Viktor Krivulin (1944–2001), Slavonica, 7:2, 116-118.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Krivulin, Viktor 1944 births 2001 deaths 20th-century Russian poets Writers from Saint Petersburg Jewish Russian writers Russian male poets Soviet dissidents