The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova

From the artistic passion of the St Petersburg poets and bohemians, to the collective suffering of a nation through this turbulent century, Akhmatova spoke to, and for, the soul of her people. Born in 1889, Anna survived upheavals, refusing to abandon either Russia or her craft despite vicious attacks on her name and censorship of her work. When committing poems to paper threatened to cause her arrest, a few close friends faithfully memorized her lines. By the time she died in 1966, Anna was recognized as one of the world's great poets. This book contains 800 of her poems, an extensive photo-essay, a preface by the translator, an introduction Anatoly Naiman (Akhmatova's literary agent during the 1960s), and a reprint of Isaiah Berlin's memoir of Anna from his book "Personal Impressions".

These two fat volumes, a 100th-anniversary tribute to the great Russian poet Akhmatova (1889-1966), are clearly a labor of love. Editor Reeder's book-length introduction is a meticulous, well-documented account of the poet's life and poetry through the ebullience of modernist Petersburg, the grim deprivation of two world wars and the 1917 revolutions, the poverty and repression (including the repeated imprisonment of her son) of the interwar years and the vicious official attacks after World War II, and the last years of international honors. This life has made Akhmatova emblematic both of the unbowed intelligentsia and of the unsung heroism of millions of Russian women. The second volume begins with two impressionistic essays by Akhmatova's disciple, the Soviet poet Anatoly Naiman, and distinguished expatriate writer Sir Isaiah Berlin's account of his two meetings with her (Leningrad, 1945, and Oxford, 1965). The edition is lavishly illustrated with the known iconography of Akhmatova herself, her contemporaries, and the Petersburg-Leningrad settings that were her spiritual home. These rich secondary materials make a worthy frame for Akhmatova's glorious poetry, pre sented side by side in Russian and English and arranged, in exemplary fashion, with respect for choices the poet made in lifetime editions. American poet Hemschemeyer devoted well over ten years to the translations, learning Russian for that purpose; her equally exem plary translator's preface explains her working methods and the inevitable compromises involved in the valiant ef fort to create English equivalents for Akhmatova's spare and musical verse. This book will be a treasure for poetry lovers everywhere.
- Mary F. Zirin, Altadena, Cal.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.