Author's website Alexander Korotko

Hillary Shears translated into English the poem, written two decades ago, but not lost its relevance. The events of the revolution of the early twentieth century intertwined with the time of the “sovok” (“sovok” – the slangename of the Soviet Union time), and this poetic “bridge” is based not only on the bright realities of the historical periods mentioned, but also on their deep comprehension.Each of the sixteen chapters of the poem “Towards the  Dawn” is voluminous and convex, they are “multivalent and therefore communicate with each other, causing polysemy, flashes of unexpected semantic meanings”, this is the opinion of Andrei Voznesenskiy, the author of the introductory article preceding the poem-book published in 2003. And further: “The world itself is a very uniform and chaotic thing. But the real artist manages to see, to stop and to capture the <…> harmony of these seemingly conflicting principles. This is the talent of the poet. At the same time, the author’s personality was left out of the prentheses; he, like a satyr, peeps from behind the curtains, releasing sometimes so alien and sometimes so beloved by him performance on the stage <…> The supposedly plotlessness and external incoherence of the poems’ verses, fragmentation accurately reflect the thought process of the modern man – internally, they all come into contact, creating a very capacious sphere, with a deep associative series, giving rise to polysemy. ” The full text of introduction you may read here: https://korotko-poetry.com/vostokozapad-aleksandra-korotko Hillary Shears amazingly felt and found the necessary literary device for the translation of the nerve, stiffness, humor and sarcasm, originality, historical truth of this work. Some chapters are posted on the Poems page and on the Main page of the English version of the site:https://korotko-poetry.com/en/poemi#towards-the-dawn Separate verses in the original language may be seen on the Main page of the Russian version. And one of the chapters of the poem “Towards the Dawn “, read by Sergei Yurskiy in the framework of the project “Along the Silence”, you may watch and listen here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B6r863W9yWw&feature=emb_logo