CamRuSS “Chagall’s illustrations to Gogol’s Dead Souls”, 4 April

A talk “The Grotesque Imagination, or Mr Chichikov in a Land of Monsters”, with many beautiful slides, by Stanley Mitchell (in English).

• WHEN: Wednesday, 4 April, 7pm for 7:30pm
• WHERE: Scott Polar Research Institute, Lensfield Rd, Cambridge

The talk will be about the black humour that Chagall and Gogol both share, how important Gogol was for Chagall; about the diabolical and grotesque in a world where the dead could be bought and sold for profit…

Chagall did these graphics on the rebound from the First World War and the Russian Revolution which had turned everything upside down and released infernal (as well as heroic) forces.

About the speaker: Stanley Mitchell, Emeritus Professor of Aesthetics, Derby University, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, University College, London. Has recently completed a new translation of Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin for Penguin Classics, translated Benjamin and Lukacs and published essays on them, published essays and papers on Pushkin, Mayakovsky, Russian Formalism, Mikhail Lifshits, and a playlet on Chagall and Bakhtin. For many years, Professor Mitchell has taught modern Russian literature and art.