The article analyzes J. A. Brodsky’s unpublished essay On Teaching, preserved in the poet’s manuscript archive at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. The history of the text’s emergence is recreated, Carl Proffer’s revisions are analyzed, as well as the key aspects of his polemics with the author of the essay. The article focuses on Brodsky’s attitudes to teaching at the university, creative writing courses, the role of poetry in modern world, as well as on his critique of the American academic system and politicization of education.
The article focuses on the memoirs about Gulag produced by the amateur writers in the 1960s — mid-1980s. The theoretical framework for the study is the clarification of the relationship between the poetics of the memoirs and the artistic structure of the Soviet novel. While the authors working on their manuscripts during the Thaw were strongly influenced by the official discourses and tended to use the literary models of Socialist Realism, those writing in the 1970s–1980s chose the narrative strategies close to ‘labor camp prose’ and autobiographical narratives of the dissidents.
