The simple-minded verses of a professor of mathematics brought him victory in the prize "Difference"

MOSCOW. The prize "Difference" was awarded to mathematician and poet Vladimir Aristov.

The Poetry Award “Distinction” was established in 2013. The first to be awarded was the Balkan historian, translator and poet Faina Grimberg. The biography of each subsequent laureate also became an illustration of how winding the paths leading to versification can be. Avant-garde poet Polina Andrukovich - last year’s winner - graduate of VGIK, an animation artist. The biography of Vladimir Aristov is the story of a physicist who did not ignore the makings of lyrics. A doctorate obtained 20 years ago after defending a dissertation is devoted to the study of methods for solving the Boltzmann equation and its application in practice.

The metarealistic direction to which Aristov’s poetry belongs, by the definition of Mikhail Epstein, who proposed this term, is a form of unconditionality that absorbs the figurative meaning of metaphor. Kapitsa drew analogies between a metaphor (the term Konstantin Kedrov) and mathematical transformations, which are so close to the soul of a professor at the Department of Higher Mathematics Aristov. With the criterion of “poetry as a study,” with a variety of approaches and the absence of patterns, his work absolutely matches.

The short list, from the bowels of which the name of the winner was extracted on March 22, included the names of Pauline Barskova, Linor Goralik, Mikhail Shvab, Sergey Zavyalov and Mikhail Aizenberg, underestimated this year’s literary prizes. Each of the nominees was worthy to receive a statuette of authorship by Daria Chapkovskaya, symbolizing a staircase to heaven. But it was Aristov’s collection “In our world with a notebook (simple-minded verses)” that seemed to the high jury the most convincing and was declared the winner in the French cafe “Jean-Jacques” on Maroseyka.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru