Video lecture - Galina Zalomkina: Psychedelic language in contemporary Russian poetry

Galina Zalomkina: Psychedelic language in contemporary Russian poetry

Galina Zalomkina, Doctor of Sciences in Philology, Associate Professor at the Department of Russian and Foreign Literature and Public Relations, Faculty of Philology and Journalism, Samara National Research University, Samara, Russia. Prof. Zalomkina’s comparative research focuses on contemporary poetry in Russian and Italian literature.

About Prof. Zalomkina’s lecture:

Arkadi Dragomoshchenko’s, Shamshad Abdullaev’s and Alexander Ulanov’s poetic systems display parallels with Aldous Huxley’s psychedelic experience described in his essay “The Doors of Perception.” In their texts, efforts are made to overcome the limitations of language: visions are achieved free from hierarchizing habits of perception, highly concentrated on the object of observation. The lyrical subject, the “I” is objectivated, becoming one of the autonomous elements of the world, subject to observation and reflection in the process of writing. Calmness and equanimity in the face of giddy, transcendent experience voluntarily taken upon oneself is the fundamental mood in their verse. Interval, gap, standing still within the point of contemplation have thus been distinctive semantic components of their poetics. Consequently, an idea is developed of the inevitability of loneliness as a position of consciousness providing a specific perception of the world.