DOOMED TO ANY ROLE (Russian-English) — a collection of poems by poets you've hardly ever read. All of them became émigrés, fragments of revolutions and the Civil War in the former Russian Empire. They tried to make Paris and Belgrade, Berlin and New York, Prague and Reval their new home... Here, some began, others continued, writing in Russian.
Readers of the Soviet Union learned that Russian-language culture remained alive in emigration at the end of Perestroika — names arose, voices began to sound. This discordant chorus with unimaginable experience turned out to be alien — very soon, émigré literature became the property of a narrow circle of specialists and interested individuals. This continued until new common grief and a new wave of emigration.
A mini-anthology of sorts — published for the first time in decades. For the first time — in French and English translation. The poems have been awaiting nearly a hundred years—to address a new exile from Russia. The book is composed in such a way that today's émigré reader will easily recognize something familiar or personal in each poem: the irreversibility of the tragedy that has befallen, the desire to survive, the search for a new home, fear of the future, a prayer for peace, and the hope of returning home…