"Impossible happiness": Alexander Bloks’ poetry
St Petersburg University and its Representative Office in Barcelona invite you to the online lecture "Impossible happiness": Alexander Bloks’ poetry. The lecture will be delivered by Nina Shcherbak, associate professor in the Department of English philology and cultural linguistics candidate of philology.
Alexander Blok was born in St Petersburg on November 16 (28), 1880. From birth, he was surrounded by the endless adoration of his grandmothers, great-grandmothers, aunts and nannies. Friends claimed that the most dear person was his mother.
When Blok met Lyubov Mendeleeva — daughter of the renowned chemist Dmitri Mendeleev — he was obsessed with mystical teachings. One day, being in a state close to a trance, he saw Lyubov Dmitrievna on the street. Blok followed her, trying to remain unnoticed. Later they had another chance meeting on the balcony of the Maly Theater. For any mystic, coincidences are not just an accident, on the contrary, a manifestation of the divine will.
During this lecture we will learn about the fate of this couple, to whom Blok dedicated one of his most famous poems "the Stranger" and why many contemporaries were outraged by Blok’s revolutionary lyric poetry.
Lecturer
Nina Shcherbak is Associate Professor in the Department of English Philology and Cultural Linguistics at St Petersburg University, Master of Arts (the United Kingdom), a writer and screenwriter. She is also a scriptwriter for science television shows, author of fifteen monographs, and books on linguistics, literature, language philosophy, and English literature.
The lecture will be held as part of the events to mark the 300th anniversary of St Petersburg University, the oldest university in Russia. The lecture will be held online in Russian with simultaneous interpreting into Spanish.