Visiting writer Ilya KUTIK is an acclaimed poet, essayist, and scholar working across Russian and Scandinavian literatures. He has published many volumes of poetry and translations, most recently The Death of Tragedy, and several books of essays and criticism. Other recent titles include The Ode and The Odic: Essays on Mandelstam, Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, and Mayakovsky; Hieroglyphs of Another World: On Poetry, Swedenborg, and Other Matters; and Writing as Exorcism: The Personal Codes of Pushkin, Lermontov, and Gogol. At Northwestern University, he teaches courses in Russian and Scandinavian literature, film and visual arts in the Department of Slavic languages and literatures.