Dartmouth Events

The Sun-Sounding Scythian: Sergei Prokofiev’s Musical Interpretations of Russian

Polina Dimova, Vanderbilt University

Tuesday, January 15, 2019
4:30pm – 5:30pm
Reed Hall 104
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories: Clubs & Organizations, Conferences, Lectures & Seminars

What can we learn about literature from music, and what can literature tell us about music? This talk will explore how the youthful Sergei Prokofiev bridged the seemingly incompatible Symbolist and avant-garde aesthetics in his early vocal and ballet music. In his settings of Silver-Age texts in the 1900s and 1910s, the composer created music that was at once aggressively barbaric and lyrically beautiful. The talk addressed this paradox by examining Prokofiev’s sunny Scythian aesthetic, which embraced Symbolism, Futurism, and Primitivism alike.

Polina Dimova holds a doctorate in Comparative Literature from the University of California, Berkeley. Currently a W.T. Bandy Fellow and a Visiting Scholar of German, Russian and East European Studies at Vanderbilt University, she specializes in Russian and European modernism across literature, music, and art. Nearing completion, her book At the Crossroads of the Senses studies how Modernist multimedia experiments stemmed from a fascination with synaesthesia, the figurative or neurological mixing of the senses. Her other research interests span visual and media theory; sensory studies; literature and science, fairy tales and science fiction; and translation theory. She has published on Russian and European Modernism and has taught Russian and Comparative Literature at Vanderbilt, Oberlin College, and Berkeley.

Sponsored by the Russain Department and the Arts and Humanities Dean of Faculty Office.

Free and open to the public!

For more information, contact:
Carol Bean-Carmody

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.