SOURCE: Eshelman, Raoul. “Axmadulina and the Female Minimal Self in Early Russian Postmodernism.” Die Welt Der Slaven, 44, no. 2 (1999): 307-28.

In the following essay, Eshelman explores how Akhmadulina’s postmodern sense of self grew out of Axmatova’s poetry.

1. the Minimal Self

The minimal self as I am using it here refers to a literary persona who seems to be of limited mental capacity or competence. The appearance of such a self is normally accompanied by some sort of irony, since we must assume that there is a difference between the limited self presented in the text and the persona of the real author. In contrast to narrative prose, where mentally limited characters or narrators are common, stylizations of limited consciousness in lyric poetry are rare. This is because the minimal self can appear only when the sovereign authority traditionally ascribed to the lyrical persona is undermined in some...