Anna of All the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova

Product Details

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• ISBN13: 9781400033782
• Condition: New

Description

In this definitive biography of the legendary Russian poet, Elaine Feinstein draws on a wealth of newly available material–including memoirs, letters, journals, and interviews with surviving friends and family–to produce a revelatory portrait of both the artist and the woman.

Anna Akhmatova rose to fame in the years before World War I, but she would pay a heavy price for the political and personal passions that informed her brilliant poetry. In Anna of All the Russias we see Akhmatova's work banned from 1925 until 1940 and again after World War II. We see her steadfast opposition to Stalin, even while her son was held in the Gulag. We see her abiding loyalty to such friends as Mandelstam, Shostakovich, and Pasternak as they faced Stalinist oppression. And we see how, through everything, Akhmatova continued to write, her poetry giving voice to the Russian people by whom she was, and still is, deeply loved.

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Customer Reviews

Strong in Certain Details but Lacking in Cohesion
Feinstein has researched and written an admirable biography. She selects her details, writes about Anna Akhmatova with detached compassion and rarely if ever allows judgment to haunt her biography. Her research is overwhelming at times and even though the reader can sense her dedication, the work lacks a cohesive element. While Feinstein lists events, actions and reactions to various controversial situations in Akhmatova's life (her marriage and divorce to her husbands, Mandelstam's arrest and exile, her troubled relationship to her son), there is no real strong sense of understanding nor an attempt at psychology. Feinstein records but rarely offers an interpretation.

Every life retold is a story. Akhmatova's life began in comfort and ease but degraded through the Soviet years. She suffered creative suppression under Stalin, constantly burned certain poems and articles that might jeopardize her freedom and the freedom of those around her. She suffered loss and pain when her lover and son were sent to prison.

Feinstein's biography doesn't truly give the reader a feeling of what this remarkable and strong woman went through. We get snippets here and there. We read about this illness and that loss but there is no emotional grounding. The details pile on and the chapters go by but we don't get a sense of a life lived. By the time you finish this book, you'll have read through a list of years, impressions from various journals and eye-witness accounts but again, without some sincere attempt at coalescing and putting Akhmatova's life into a narrative framework, the biography feels more like journalism.

This book is at best a great introduction but not a comprehensive analysis of Akhmatova's great stature in Russian history and literature.

2010-02-03 | Buchlieber (Niagara Region, ON) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 3

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Great poet, fascinating beauty , heart rending Russian history lesson
What a moving , inspiring biography this is !

A Must read.

If you are not acquainted with Anna Akhmatova

And the astonishing artistic creativity in Russia

that miraculously abided

thru unimaginable tumolt and oppression.
This book will do the trick!
Part of this miracle:

how passionate and tender their support towards each other amidst.

What beauty endured.

Amazing, complex and ardent characters in her circle described, too.

And they were real.

Perhaps

one accomplshment of this bio

is that it leaves one

humbeled yet sumptuously entertained in the midst..

My edition , dog eared by now.

What a fascinating woman and time in Russia.

You will fall in love.

2007-08-17 (usa) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 5

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An illuminating and highly readable biography
Elaine Feinstein's engrossing biography of Anna Akhmatova - one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century - makes the woman, her work and her world vividly alive. In chronicling this extraordinarily dramatic life, Feinstein makes use of a broad range of new material, including letters, journals and memoirs, and interviews Akhmatova's surviving friends and relatives.

Feinstein follows Akhmatova from her privileged Russian youth to her free-spirited early adulthood and her first, unhappy marriage to the poet Nikolay Gumilyov. The 1920s were years of starvation in Russia, but for Akhmatova they were also a period of great creativity and many love affairs, some painful, others more fulfilling. In a key encounter, Akhmatova met and fell in love with a married art historian, Vladimir Punin, and lived with him in his apartment, where his unhappy wife and young daughter had to remain.

During this time, Akhmatova's son, Lev, from her first marriage, suddenly re-entered her life. Feinstein gives a heartbreaking account of her relationship with Lev, who was exiled in Siberia for many years. (Despite Akhmatova's many pleas to the Soviet authorities on his behalf, Lev was not rehabilitated until 1956.)

Akhmatova's works were banned in the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1940, but despite ill health and further turmoil, her inner toughness enabled her to continue to write poetry of genius. She remained in Leningrad when the Nazis invaded and then was airlifted out to Tashkent, where she spent the war years.

This immensely readable and profoundly touching study shows how, despite her many hardships, Akhmatova was prepared to give her unstinting support to friends such as Mandelstam, Pasternak and Shostakovich who were victimised by the Stalin regime. And Feinstein sheds invaluable light on the uniqueness of the poems which gave a voice to the people of Russia and which still evoke intense love and admiration for Akhmatova to this day.

Marcus Adams

2007-04-10 (London) | Helpful Votes: 9 | Rating: 5

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Slow but enjoyable
I particularly liked Feinstein's biography of Akhmatova, although is a slow read, it introduces the reader to the human Akhmatova, with all her qualities and imperfections. Her generosity as a friend, her passion for poetry, her frail relationship with her son, the failed marriages and dire love affairs, the everyday struggle for existence and all of these aspects reflected in her poetry. There are many interesting facts about her life like her meeting with Isaiah Berlin and the emotional and political consequence that followed, her marriage to the eccentric Vladimir Shilejko and her strange relationship with Lydia Chukovskaya all of which give a new and complete portrait of Akhmatova as a poet and a soviet citizen.

2006-11-17 | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 3

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The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

Description

ed Roberta Reeder, tr Judith Hemshemeyer

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Customer Reviews

The Complete Poems of Anna Achmatova
A truly amazing and captivating collection of not only all of the Poet's work but also the riveting and heart breaking story of her life and harrowing survival as a writer in Communist Russia.
A must read!

2009-04-08 | poetwannabe (Albuquerque, NM) | Helpful Votes: 1 | Rating: 5

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A true melancholic poetic spirit-though entrenched
AA is a true poetic spirit. If you are interested in finding out how true poets get inspired, here is a good example. I would caution readers though, that there is an a sense of pessimism, sadness and a nauseating mood that permeates many of the poems, but there is diversity though. Here is a human being who, in my opinion, found her hope in her sadness, which, interestingly, was and became expressive of a whole generation of the Russian people. Perhaps this is why she is called a prophet in the sense that she expressed the feelings of the people. This stance is good and many can benefit from it but, what is beyond the relishing in sadness, i would ask?

2008-09-23 | Quintilian (Houston, TX usa) | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 4

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if you want to read Russian poetry
you have to read it in Russian. You CANNOT CANNOT CANNOT, and i repeat, CANNOT (!) read it in translation- its like trading feces for gold. That is literally what it sounds like in comparison to the original. The specificity, brutality, the sumptuous tenderness of the Russian language are all but lost in these translations of one of this century's greatest poets. Although you might enjoy what you are reading, given you do not speak Russian- you honestly cannot even BEGIN to touch the greatness of Akhmatova or any other Russian poet by reading it in translation.

I honestly don't know who came up with the concept of translating poetry- to me its barbaric. A poem is so brief, it is so immediate and so dependent upon every word- no one should ever touch it. If you want it bad enough, learn Russian. And just so you know, reading Russian poetry in its original form is MORE than worth going through the trouble of learning the language. There is nothing in the world like it- nothing. It beats Shakespeare.

2007-02-17 | alisa (Los Angeles,CA,USA) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 1

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Second book critic
This was one of a set of books I gave my daughter so I cannot rate the books so far as contents are concerned. To order it was easy and fast.

2007-01-09 | Helpful Votes: 0 | Rating: 5

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Russian Poets of the 1930s
I am studying Russian writers of the 1930s particularly those who fled to Paris after the Bolshevik Revoltion of 1917. Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva were part of the pre-Revolution intelligencia and suffered terribly from the Reds suppression of artistic freedom. The Complete Poems of AA was helpful to me in this study. The photos, the biography and the dating of individual poems aided my work. Since I am not skilled in Russian, I cannot comment on the quality of the translation but the very moving English version of AA's expression is what I would hope is even better in her native tongue. There is no doubt that even in translation AA and MT were among the great poets of the 20th Century.

William Farragher

2007-01-09 | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4

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Selected Poems

Description

Anna Akhmatova is identified, along with Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak, and Marina Tsvetaeva, as one of the four leading poets of Twentieth-Century Russian literature. Her poetry, classically rhymed and metered but also laconic and highly elliptical, is deeply engaged with predecessors such as Horace, Dante, Shakespeare, Byron, Dostoevsky, Annensky and above all Pushkin, and also with contemporaries such as Mandelstam, T.S. Eliot, and Gumilev, her husband, who was persecuted and finally executed by Stalin. The poems collected, including the masterworks "Requiem" and "Poem without a Hero," conjure intimations of the infinite and profound emotional depth through meditations on the perception of everyday objects and evocative settings, forming a powerful record of spiritual resilience. With an introductory essay by Walter Arndt, acclaimed translator of Russian literature, and translations by Arndt, Robin Kemball, and Carl R. Proffer, this volume provides the most authoritative and readable versions of Akhmatova’s poetry in English.

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Customer Reviews

Could be better
I got this selection of poetry because it's Akhmatova's highlights (e.g. Requiem and Poem Without a Hero) by a reliable publisher, but when I went to read Requiem I was a bit underwhelmed: I've read more moving, less wooden translations of the poem. I've studied Russian (not to the extent that I would be able to understand or appreciate the work entirely in its intended language) and Russian literature (in English) and I think I'll try Walter Arndt's translations (I was pleased by his translations of Pushkin's poetry) next time.

2009-08-11 | Kristine (USA) | Helpful Votes: 3 | Rating: 3

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The poet as witness and hero
The incredible courage of Anna Akhmatova in being true to her art and her homeland through the kinds of sufferings people in the West have known little of the like of is evident in these poems. The desolation and distance of seperation from loved ones is another subject written powerfully about here. I do not know Russian and cannot speak for the quality of translation. But Kunitz's renderings sound like true poetry. In the introduction Max Hayward tells in brief the story of her incredible isolation in life and dedication to her poetry. Her loyalty to her friends in dark times, and to the other three of the ' four of Russian poetry in this century' (Pasternak Mandelstam Tsetayava ) is also poignantly described. As is the role she had for the silent masses as one of those poetic voices who spoke for the suffering of all the Russians both in the wars and through the time of the Stalinist nightmare.

Here are two of the poems that especially moved me.

"The Last Toast"

I drink to our ruined house,
to the dolor of my life,
to our loneliness together:
and to you I raise my glass,
to lying lips that have betrayed us,
to dead- cold, pitiless eyes,
and to the hard realities:
that the world is brutal and coarse,
that God in fact has not saved us.

I AM NOT ONE OF THOSE WHO LEFT THE LAND

I am not one of those who left the land
to the mercy of its enemies
Their flattery leaves me cold,
my songs are not for them to praise.

But I pity the exile's lot,
Like a felon, like a man half- dead,
dark is your path, wanderer;
wormwood infects your foreign bread.

ut here , in the murk of conflagration,
where scarcely a friend is left to know,
we, the survivors, do not flinch
from anything, not from a single blow.

Surely the reckoning will be made
after the passing of this cloud.
We are the people without tears,
straighter than you.. more proud..

2005-03-12 | Shalom Freedman (Jerusalem,Israel) | Helpful Votes: 12 | Rating: 5

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A wonderful book of lyric poetry
Anna Akhmatova was one of the century's greatest lyric poets. D. M. Thomas has selected a fine overview of her poetic accomplishment, and translated the poems stunningly: both lyric cadences and the quality of spoken speech come through in his refashioning of the poems into English. (The Hayward/Kunitz tranlations are also fine, but for a brief introduction this is a wonderful book.)

The volume contains her "Requieum," a ten pagel lyric sequence which is my choice for the greatest poem of the twentieth century, as it combines personal lyricism, social witness, historical density, a primal narrative moment -- in poems which are stunning, one after another.

Perhaps only Yeats has rivalled Akhmatova's exploration of love in modern times, and there are many moments when her symbolism, her brevity, her song-like qualities are reminiscent of the best of Yeats.

This is a wonderful book, a fine introduction to a great, powerful, haunting poet.

2000-09-29 | Helpful Votes: 19 | Rating: 5

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Lost in the translation?
One often wonders, when one hears everyone and their brothers spouting superlatives about a poet from a historically repressive country, whether the superlatives are based on the poet's actual work, or whether they're in some way based on the poet's admirable-- but irrelevant-- ability to perform within a culture that is repressive to the poet's art. In some cases, the superlatives are justified, for example Vladimir Holan's stunning book-length poem _A Night with Hamlet_, written while Holan was officially a non-person in Hungary in the sixties.

Akhmatova has been called "the greatest Russian woman poet ever, and perhaps the greatest woman poet ever." I can't help but think those lauding on these kinds of laurels are looking more at her life than her work. There are certainly flashes of great brilliance here, but to put Akhmativa's work up against that of, say, Elizabeth Bishop, Deborah Allbery, or even the underrated Dorianne Laux would quickly reveal many of its flaws.

This is not to say that Akhmatova's poetry is completely without merit, and one must be forced to consider the viability of the work of any translator who would consider "He, was it, through the packed hall/Sent you (or was it a dream?)" to be the best way to translate anything, much less poetry. And thus, perhaps, the original is far more eloquent than what we receive here. That taken into account, there is still the problem to contend with that much of Akhmatova's work is, for obvious reasons, overtly political, and makes no attempt to convey its message artistically; worse yet, a good deal of that work is imagist, impressionist. The end result is something that's thick, sludgy, and impossible to read.

However, every once in a while a good line will shine through, and occasionally we find ourselves staring at a poem that seems to exist well outside the boundaries of this particular collection:

* * *

Voronezh

And the town is frozen solid, leaded with ice.

Trees, walls, snow, seem to be under glass. Cautiously I tread on crystals. The painted sleighs can't seem to get a grip. And over the statue of Peter-in-Voronezh Are crows, and poplars, and a pale-green dome Washed-out and muddy in the sun-motes. The mighty slopes of the field of Kulikovo Tremble still with the slaughter of barbarians. And all at once the poplars, like lifted chalices, Enmesh more boisterously overhead Like thousands of wedding-guests feasting And drinking toasts to our happiness. And in the room of the banished poet Fear and the Muse take turns at the watch, And the night comes When there will be no sunrise.

* * *

Unfortunately, there's too little of this and too much of the rest. Giving the benefit of the doubt where the translation is concerned, I can still only manage ** 1/2.

2000-04-28 | xterminal (Cleveland, OH) | Helpful Votes: 8 | Rating: 2

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Anna Akhmatova (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets)

Description

A legend in her own time both for her brilliant poetry and for her resistance to oppression, Anna Akhmatova—denounced by the Soviet regime for her “eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference”—is one of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century.

Before the revolution, Akhmatova was a wildly popular young poet who lived a bohemian life. She was one of the leaders of a movement of poets whose ideal was “beautiful clarity”—in her deeply personal work, themes of love and mourning are conveyed with passionate intensity and economy, her voice by turns tender and fierce. A vocal critic of Stalinism, she saw her work banned for many years and was expelled from the Writers’ Union—condemned as “half nun, half harlot.” Despite this censorship, her reputation continued to flourish underground, and she is still among Russia’s most beloved poets.

Here are poems from all her major works—including the magnificent “Requiem” commemorating the victims of Stalin’s terror—and some that have been newly translated for this edition.

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Customer Reviews

One of the greatest translations...
This particular translation of Anna Akhmatova's work by Stanley Kunitz is by far a literary achievement of epic scale. Russian is a language with many nuances. But Kunitz captures the rhythm and texture like no English writer ever has. It's a gem! If you're considering a discovery of Anna Akhmatova, there is no finer translation in the English language. My only wish is that Kunitz had done more, translating Gogol or Chekhov. but we're left with both masterpieces. I for one am eternally grateful.

2009-11-29 | MrLAMPP (Phoenix, AZ) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Anna Ahkmatova - As Soulful as Always
While reading Harrison Salisbury's :Nine Hundred Days" about the seige of Leningrad, I found myself longing to re-read some Russian lit after 35 years. Ahkmatova is as profound and powerful as ever, though still mournful and sad, trying to make sense of a world gone mad with killinmg, jailing and hatred. I read her in college with the hope the world would change, but alas, it has not and the siren song she sang in the 1800's holds the same grip in 2009.She reminds you of the fear and desolation lost love brings while at the same timem finds a glimmer of hope to destroy the hatred that has cost so many, many lives. Beautiful and powerful. Michelle Czerner, 2/2009

2009-02-22 | livingJew (Dallas, Texas) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Excellent
This is a excellent selection of poems by the great Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. The translations are by the noted Russian scholar Max Hayward and the noted American poet Stanley Kunitz. As a non-Russian speaker, I can't really judge the quality of translations but the end product is terrific. There are a number of wondeful short lyrics. The peak of this selection is a powerful version of the great Requiem, Akhmatova's memorial for the victims of Stalin's purges. A truly great poem.

2008-06-11 (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) | Helpful Votes: 2 | Rating: 5

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Great Poet
I grew up in Russia reading Akhmatova, Esenin and other great poets of the "Silver Period". To this day, Akhmatova is the poet I turn to when nostalgia hits. So when I wanted to introduce Russian poetry to my English-speaking husband, I bought this volume.
I am giving this book only four stars because of the somewhat limited selection of the poems: some of her greatest (and best known in Russia) are missing. Kunitz really shines in being able to relay the mood and (surprisingly) the rythm of Akhmatova, even if the actual translatoin is not quite accurate. Overall, this is a great introduction to the poems of a truly talented poet. However, you will soon find yourself shopping for the complete works.

2008-01-27 (Washington) | Helpful Votes: 4 | Rating: 4

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Simplicity and meaning in poetry
I'm not a great poetry lover, but the simplicity and meaning of her poems is even enough to turn me on to poetry!!!! Her words reach my life experiences and touch my soul.

2007-05-10 (New Zealand) | Helpful Votes: 6 | Rating: 5

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You Will Hear Thunder

Description

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The Word That Causes Death's Defeat: Poems of Memory (Annals of Communism)

Description

Sensitive new translations of Akhmatova’s great long poems that document both intense personal suffering and cataclysmic national tragedy.

Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966), one of twentieth-century Russia’s greatest poets, was viewed as a dangerous element by post-Revolution authorities. One of the few unrepentant poets to survive the Bolshevik revolution and subsequent Stalinist purges, she set for herself the artistic task of preserving the memory of pre-Revolutionary cultural heritage and of those who had been silenced. This book presents Nancy K. Anderson’s superb translations of three of Akhmatova’s most important poems: Requiem, a commemoration of the victims of Stalin’s Terror; The Way of All the Earth, a work to which the poet returned repeatedly over the last quarter-century of her life and which combines Old Russian motifs with the modernist search for a lost past; and Poem Without a Hero, widely admired as the poet’s magnum opus.

Each poem is accompanied by extensive commentary. The complex and allusive Poem Without a Hero is also provided with an extensive critical commentary that draws on the poet’s manuscripts and private notebooks. Anderson offers relevant facts about the poet’s life and an overview of the political and cultural forces that shaped her work. The resulting volume enables English-language readers to gain a deeper level of understanding of Akhmatova’s poems and how and why they were created.



Nancy K. Anderson is an independent scholar. She is a highly regarded translator of Russian poetry, including Yale University Press’s translation of Alexander Pushkin’s Little Tragedies, and has taught courses in Russian, Tolstoy, and Dostoevsky at Yale University.

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