Methods of Narrating Disaster: Poetry of the Siege of Leningrad

The poetry written during the Siege of Leningrad consists not only of the mainstream poems distributed through official media sources, but also of “underground writings” that have received attention from researchers in recent years. Comparing the official poems of Olag Bergholz with the underground poems that represent a kind of“post-avant-gardism,” we observe a sharp difference in the methods of narrating disaster: the former has a more obvious audience, applies dialogue in the writing, expresses care for the besieged citizens, and espouses beliefs such as patriotism, collectivism, and morality to encourage and strengthen a“body of collectivism”; the latter applies various kinds of experimental writing techniques in describing the conditions of the besieged area, reveals a despairing mood between the lines, and uses the siege as a symbol for the end of the world, especially highlighting the circumstances of the“individual body” in the disaster. The difference between these two narrative perspectives reflects the deviation between the officials and the people in understanding the disastrous events of the siege.