The 8th annual Isaiah Berlin Day in Riga will take place on June 9 at the “Splendid Palace” historical cinema, featuring the Isaiah Berlin Memorial lecture delivered by Anatoly Naiman, Russian poet and writer.
PROGRAMME
17:00 – 18:00 The Jay
Interview with Isaiah Berlin: In Quest of Our Civilisation, London Weekend
Television, 1975.
In English with simultaneous translation
into Latvian.
18:30 – 20:00 8th Isaiah
Berlin Memorial Lecture "The Impact of 1945 on Isaiah Berlin's Attitude to
Russia" by Anatoly Naiman, Russian poet, publicist, translator
and author of the book on Isaiah Berlin “Sir”.
In Russian with simultaneous translation
into Latvian and English.
Anatoly Naiman (1936) is a
Russian poet and writer. A member of the group of Leningrad poets (along with
Dmitry Bobyshev, Joseph Brodsky and Yevgeny Rein) close to the Russian poet
Anna Akhmatova and united by friendship, free-thinking and disobedience against
the totalitarian system. From 1960 he was the literary secretary of Anna
Akhmatova. Until 1989 in the Soviet Union he could only publish
translations. However, he was widely known in samizdat (self-published,
underground literature). He was never a member of the USSR Union of Writers.
Anatoly Naiman is the author of numerous memoirs
including “Remembering Anna Akhmatova” (1989), “Sir” (2001) about Sir Isaiah
Berlin, and “Novel with "Samovar"” (2006) about the famous Russian
restaurant "Samovar" in New York, a popular place for Russian bohemia
and celebrities whose founders were the poet Joseph Brodsky, ballet dancer
Mikhail Baryshnikov, and entrepreneur Roman Kaplan.
Naiman publishes his thoughts and reflections,
including on current affairs in Russia and the world, in his column in the
independent Russian newspaper “Novaya gazeta”. Lives in Moscow.
The event was organised by the Foundation for an Open
Society DOTS in cooperation with the Representation of the
European Commission in Latvia.
