In her recent introduction to the poetry of Dr. Kristina Zolatova, Per Caritatem blogger Cynthia R. Nielsen writes,

Zolatova describes herself as an “impure” boundary-transgressing philosopher, who takes no offence whatsoever at being called a poet. In fact, she welcomes the denomination, receiving it as a high compliment.

In this citation of a self-description, Nielsen betrays the betrayal at the heart of Zolatova’s poem “Hollow Soundings”: we are not to assume merely that “hollow” indicates an emptiness in the clearing of being [очистка быть] wherein Zolatova herself utters in pure vocality the call of such clearing, of such being. Instead, hollowing and hallooing is the pure anarchic call itself that shows itself as the possibility of calling. In this pre-dialectical dialogic, the de-nominated poet/philosopher ascertains the very depth of being [самой глубине бытия] amid the elemental, yet it still remains nevertheless tethered to the most high compliment. In the aporetic frontier between this and that, the most high and the most low, self and other, us and them, Zolatova thickens the discursive repertoire of “subjectivity” she places under erasure; she notes,

The word “subject” in line 2 and in the second to the last line should have a double strike-through

as if subjectivity could un-name itself under the weight of its own legibility. The transgressive boundary bundles the unbounded boundlessness of being as language–that infamous temple of being [позорная храма бытия]–languages the very being of the being for whom being is at issue, at risk, at stake, and in question. The hermeneutical circle of homonymic heterodisaffectivities collapses while expanding infinitely, unmooring the synchronic difficulty of the “to say”: Tрудно сказать indeed.

Something tells me that Comrade Zolatova will be traveling–and travailing–for many years to come: (Oна не здесь).

Она никогда не была здесь. Perhaps, as Gertrude Stein reminds us, there really is no “there” there.