Gaps, Moments: the Prose of Bella Ulanovskaia

Abstract

This paper attempts to locate the prose of Bella Ulanovskaia within a Russian and international context. Ulanovskaia’s work is a central expression of the Soviet-Russian and international unofficial culture of the 1960s and 1970s. Her extremely dense lyrical-poetic prose throws into question several basic assumptions about prose fiction. Without a traditional narrative, without story and a primary theme, using a female narrator who questions writing as gendered activity, the prose of Bella Ulanovsksia centers on the description of moments and the analysis of the gaps between moments. In a prose broken and fragmented like the world it describes, Ulanovskaia turns to nature, weakness and ‘non-understanding’ to suggest an alternative to a violent, logocentric tradition.