Course	FLCL 405: The Esthetics of DIssidence
Professor	Maria Rybakova
CRN	95469
Schedule	Mon 4:00-6:20 pm Olin 310
Distribution	OLD: B/D	NEW: FOREIGN LANGUAGE, LITERATURE & CULTURE

Russian Nobel-prize winning poet Joseph Brodsky had "esthetical differences" with Communist rule, for which he was imprisoned, exiled and denied citizenship. He believed that ethics and esthetics are the same, that "esthetics are ethics." This course will examine the philosophical implications of this statement. We will read Brodsky's two English-language collection of essays, some of which deal with his biography and the meaning of being a poet and being a Jew in a totalitarian state. Others examine the work of poets such as Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Tsvetayeva, Auden, Cavafy, Dostoyevsky and Walcott. Another focus of the class will be exile and the classical tradition. Akhmatova, Mandelstam, and Brodsky all had their own intense relation to the classical world, and Mandelstam even entitled one book "Tristia," alluding to Ovid's post-exile poem, "Tristia ex Ponto." Certainly once one-man rule was reestablished in Rome with Augustus, and especially under Nero, Roman poets had to deal with the relation of ethics to esthetics in an increasingly oppressive context. Former Soviet dissident Vasily Rudich's studies of literary dissidence under Nero will help us to see parallels between the world of antiquity and the modern world. Discussion will include "A Fraternity of Losers," in which the characters try to surpass ethics by estheticising the world. Students will write essays or stories reflecting their perception of ethics equaling esthetics resolution.