Music & Literature, No. 6

Music & Literature no. 6 champions the work of three artists poised for an international breakthrough: Argentine poet Alejandra Pizarnik, Ukrainian composer Victoria Polevá, and Croatian writer Dubravka Ugresic. An aura of almost legendary prestige surrounds the short life of Alejandra Pizarnik, who, though haunted by doubt and depression, left behind an oeuvre by turns searing, tragic, playful, and erotic. Her portfolio includes 100 pages of previously untranslated prose, diary entries, and letters, plus new appreciations from, among others, Enrique Vila-Matas and César Aira, who writes that Pizarnik was 'not only a great poet, she was the greatest, and the last.' Equally uncompromising in her artistry is Victoria Polevá, who has written music for many of the world's leading soloists and ensembles while building a reputation as a major cultural figure in Eastern Europe. Though Polevá's music has yet to reach Western audiences, her illustrious contemporaries from around the world attest in verse, in correspondence, and in oils to her singular vision, which the maestro expresses at length in her first major interview in English. Her musical writings on mentors Arvo Pärt and Valentin Silvestrov round out a remarkable portfolio. Since the break-up of her native Yugoslavia, Dubravka Ugresic's fiction has revolved around questions of exile and identity, while her caustic and brilliantly insightful criticism has taken on literature, Yugostalgia, and contemporary hypocrisy in all its forms. Alongside an exclusive interview and a newly-translated work of fiction, appearing here for the first time in any language, this portfolio offers contributions by Ugresic's translators Michael Henry Heim and Damion Searls, as well as a critical overview of her prolific career.