Freedom to believe

Olga Sedakova, one of Russia's great living poets, is also a deep and brilliant thinker. This collection of essays, her first in English, demonstrates that the legacy of such poet-essayists as Osip Mandelstam and Joseph Brodsky lives on in Russian culture. Andrew Wachtel, Bertha and Max Dressler Professon of the Humanities Northwestern University. "Olga Sedakova writes essays that delve fearlessly into the cultural history of humanking. She addresses matters of the spirit as well as the moral challenges facing post-Soviet Russians, indeed all of us. Her style crackles with will her insights are profound, and her erudition astonishes us. Those who know her poetry will find grat pleasure in this prose, which should also bring a wider audience her way." Stephani Sandler, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures Harvard University. Freedom to Believe is a powerful collection of philosophical and religious essays by a modern poet of distinction. It introduces a highly original and controversial thinker to the Western reader. Olga Sedakova's central philosophical thought lies in the notion of existential freedom in its association with the liberating power of the arts, especially poetry. These convictions place her firmly in the Russian and European classical cultural traditions, which, in turn, have deep roots in Christianity. Devoutly Orthodox yet Fiercely independent in her thinking, Sedakova's ecumenical humanism places her in opposition to both the "new left" and modern fundamentalism. Indeed, Sedakova's "conservatism" is more genuinely new than the so-called radicalism of the postmodernists, as she castigates "old totalitarianism" and new commercialism alike, in the name of a new cultural poetics and politics. --Book Jacket.