Maria Stepanova — In Memory of Memory
Maria Stepanova (1972 –) is a Russian poet, novelist, journalist, and the founder of online arts and culture forum Colta.ru. Born in Moscow, she is one of Russian literature’s most influential contemporary voices, having published over ten collections of poetry, as well as the 2017 novel-memoir, In Memory of Memory. Stepanova is a vocal critic of Vladimir Putin’s political regime and full-scale invasion of Ukraine, and resides permanently, as of 2022, in Berlin. Her writing has been largely associated with the concept of ‘postmemory’ – a theoretical framework that seeks to come to terms with complex, often traumatic, past events as they manifest in the consciousnesses of generations that follow. To this end, she engages frequently in agile and multi-dimensional practices of personal, political, and historical reckoning – deconstructing the legacy of multiple, often co-existing imperialisms, and concepts of a collective “we”.
Excerpt:
This postcard has a stormy seascape on the front by the painter Aivazovsky, a picture that graced the walls of Russian living rooms and community halls for decades: the soapy-green underside of the sea, a huge wave cresting over the shattered remains of a mast to which the drowning seafarers are clutching. A boat is sinking in the distance. Above the picture someone has added by hand: Greetings from Nizhny!
Explanation:
This passage from Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory (2017) reflects upon a postcard reproduction of a stormy sea by Ukrainian painter, Ivan Aivazovsky – an image once ubiquitous across Russian interiors, displayed frequently in living rooms and public halls. Stepanova's description reflects the potency of the Black Sea space as a symbol of collective identity and memory. As the seascape is replicated as a mass-produced postcard and vaguely personalized with the banal inscription, “Greetings from Nizhny!”, it is detached from its real-world existence; rendered, in its artistic "freezing", as a locus of cultural coherence.