Ignatova's verse is highly concentrated--rich with aromas and colors and
the sometimes bitter hint of what is left unsaid. Particular words or
motifs gain intensity as they repeat through varied contexts. Her verse
is classical, with effective but traditional versification and frequent
shades of Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Mandelstam and of course Pushkin.
Ignatova's work is also unmistakably contemporary in its stylistic
range, marked not only by current events but by the dissident angst,
subversive linguistic play and conversational ease of the late Soviet
period. She combines both Russian Orthodox and Biblical spiritual
sensibility by setting her poems amid the famous beauties and chimeras
of St. Petersburg, places where she has visited or has family ties
(Crimea and Smolensk), and the new, ancient environs of Jerusalem,
described as crystalline and distinct from St. Petersburg's granite.
Elena Alekseyevna Ignatova was born in Leningrad in 1947 and began
to publish her poetry abroad in 1975. Her book The Warm Earth appeared
in Leningrad in 1989, not long before she immigrated to Israel in 1990.
Ignatova also penned the substantial historical and cultural survey
Notes on Saint Petersburg, in which she conveys her vision of the city
on the occasion of its 300th anniversary.
Sibelan Forrester has translated the work of numerous Russian poets,
as well as stories from Serbian and Croatian, and has written scholarly
works on Russian literature, especially Modernist poetry. She is an
associate professor of Russian in the Department of Modern Languages and
Literatures at Swarthmore College.
