Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture by Molly Thomasy Blasing (review)

Reviewed by: Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture by Molly Thomasy Blasing Yelena Severina (bio) Molly Thomasy Blasing, Snapshots of the Soul: Photo-Poetic Encounters in Modern Russian Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2020). 221 pp., ill. Selected Bibliography. Index. ISBN: 978-1-5017-5370-1. This book introduces the concept of "photo-poetics," defined by the author as "those elements of photographic processes and modes of photographic representation that give rise to new forms of lyric expression" (P. 5). Using this concept, Blasing examines the works of four prominent Russian poets: Boris Pasternak, Marina Tsvetaeva, Joseph Brodsky, and Bella Akhmadulina. The book consists of an introduction, five chapters, and a coda. Each chapter analyzes the relationship of one of these poets with photography, while the fifth chapter explores the role of photography in the works of late Soviet and post-Soviet poets, thus demonstrating the influence that these four well-known figures had on younger generations. The author studies photographic motifs, themes, and allusions in the poetry and prose of the four protagonists, drawing on a wide range of additional sources: their personal correspondence, essays, interviews, recollections of their descendants, and black-and-white photographs. Each new chapter effectively builds on the findings of the previous one, thereby creating a sense of continuity and a cohesive reading experience that makes the book feel like a unified whole rather than a collection of disparate parts. By using this approach, Blasing masterfully shows how the adoption of "photo-poetic thinking" played a pivotal role in shaping the distinctive artistic styles of these poets. Chapter 1 analyzes the photo-poetic motifs in Boris Pasternak's oeuvre as Blasing sets out to prove her claim that some of his poetry could not have been written before the invention of photography. She skillfully weaves together biographical facts from Pasternak's childhood, which was marked by interest in visual culture such as magic lanterns, photographic flip-books, and cinema, with examples that reveal how he utilized the aesthetic and technological aspects of the photographic process. Through close readings of Pasternak's poems, excerpts from his novels in prose and in verse, philosophical writings, and letters, a vivid portrait of the famous poet emerges. It reveals someone who had a fascination with photography, which is perhaps best exemplified in My Sister Life: "In conveying visual experience and the interplay of consciousness and perception in his poetry, Pasternak uses photographic tropes as a way of isolating the experience of perceiving, [End Page 245] capturing, and processing moments in time" (P. 55). While using photo-poetics to explore the conflict between motion and stasis as well as to communicate a variety of the poet's concerns, this chapter emphasizes the significant impact that photography had on Pasternak's creative output. In chapter 2, the author focuses on Marina Tsvetaeva and how photo-poetics influenced her elegiac poetry. Beginning her analysis with Tsvetaeva's earliest poems, Blasing challenges the poet's claim that she had no interest in visual arts. Citing Tsvetaeva's characterization of Pasternak's poetry as "light-writing" (svetopis') in chapter 1, as well as the friendship between the two poets, this chapter serves as an organic extension of the previous one. As with Pasternak, Tsvetaeva's texts are studied within the large cultural context of twentieth-century theorists of photography. However, it is Tsvetaeva's friendship with another poet, a fellow émigré in Paris, Nikolai Gronskii, that presents one of the most fascinating examples of her engagement with this medium. With Gronskii playing a crucial role in nurturing Tsvetaeva's interest in photography, his untimely death had a profound impact on her, making it an important aspect of this study. In addition to a close reading of the Tombstone cycle, written by Tsvetaeva on Gronskii's death, Blasing includes a series of photographs that the poet took of her friend's empty room. One of them is a haunting portrait of Tsvetaeva sitting at her deceased friend's desk; the photograph is a double exposure that can be interpreted, according to the author, as a "form of self-elegy" (P. 124). It is followed by a powerful snapshot of...