Varlam Shalamov, Kolyma Notebooks

Robert Chandler (Queen Mary, University of London)

Ed. by Andrei Rogatchevski, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 2.2.2.00: Post-1917 Writing and Culture in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, 1917-present.
Vol. editors: Neil Cornwell (University of Bristol), Roman Koropeckyj (University of California, Los Angeles), Andrei Rogatchevski (UiT - The Arctic University of Norway)

Dates

First circulation or publication 1994

Places

Russia (Country of Origin; Publication/ performance)

Genres and Modes

Poem collection

Resources

Varlam Shalamov’s Kolymskie Rasskazy [Kolyma Tales] is generally recognised – at least by Russians and readers of Russian – as a masterpiece of Russian prose and the greatest work of literature about the Gulag. Shalamov’s poetry, however, still has few readers even in Russia, although he himself seems to have valued it above his prose. One possible reason for this lack of interest may be that some of Shalamov’s poems were published in the 1960s and 1970s, in censored versions that gave many readers the impression that Shalamov was no more than a competent writer of traditionally crafted poems about the natural world. His prose, on the other hand, was unpublishable before perestroika – and when it finally …

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2624 words

Citation: Chandler, Robert. "Kolyma Notebooks". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 May 2014 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=35214, accessed 23 November 2024.]

Save this article