In Living paintings From Polina Barskova, a book haunted by the Leningrad blockade (1941-1944), a detail nestled in a footnote acts as a photographic revealer. An aspect of the daily life of the besieged ignites the imagination. “In winter, Leningrad, deprived of electricity, was plunged into darkness. To avoid rushing into it, passers -by wore phosphorescent tokens on their clothes that were recharged in daylight or a candle. ” And we believe it is to see in the darkness of the ancient city of the Tsars a poor walking people, shocking in the snow, in search of food, wood, transformed into a multitude of shiny verses.
The poet Polina Barskova, born in Leningrad in 1976, now an American citizen, is a academic specialist in the literature produced during the siege by the German army which killed nearly a million civilian people. His book mixes with finesse and depth of autobiographical escapes and real history. “The blockade is not over, she writes, It is infinite, the blockade is not buried, it has not yet said its last word when, however, it has produced an incalculable, delirious amount of words! With the intimate newspapers only one could fill out entire parts, containers of
