Poems of Akhmatova - Hardcover

Anna Akhmatova

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 000261622X ISBN 13: 9780002616225

Publisher: HarperCollins Distribution Services, 1974

Synopsis

Witness to the international and domestic chaos of the first half of the twentieth century, Anna Akhmatova (1888-1966) chronicled Russia's troubled times in poems of sharp beauty and intensity. Her genius is now universally acknowledged, and recent biographies attest to a remarkable resurgence of interest in her poetry in this country. Here is the essence of Akhmatova - a landmark selection and translation, including excerpts from "Poem with a Hero."

About this title

From the Publisher

Collectable, beautifully presented hardback of Anna Akhmatova's greatest poems. Edited by D. M. Thomas.
His translations of Akhmatova have been described by John Bayley as ‘a masterly achievement’. He has translated 19 additional poems especially for this Everyman edition.

About the Author

Anna Akhmatova was born Anna Gorenko in 1888 and died in 1966. A popular poet of the Acmeist school, she took a pseudonym when her upper-class father objected to her "decadent" choice of career. She was married to the Acmeist poet Gumilev from 1910 until 1918, and spent time in Paris, where she posed nude for Modigliani. After the Revolution, Akhmatova remained silent for two decades. Her ex-husband was executed in 1921, their son was imprisoned for sixteen years, and her third husband died in a Siberian prison camp. She began publishing again at the outbreak of World War II, and her writings regained popularity despite being harshly denounced by the Soviet regime in 1946 and 1957 for "bourgeois decadence." Ejected from the Writers' Union in 1946, she was made its president two years before her death in 1966. Her greatest poem, "Requiem," gives voice to the suffering of those who, like the poet, spent many years waiting outside prison walls for word of their sons, husbands, or lovers. It was not published in its entirety in Russia until 1987.

Peter Washington is the editor of many of the Everyman's Library Pocket Poets, including Love Poems, and is the author of Madame Blavatsky's Baboon: A History of the Mystics, Mediums, and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America.

Edition details

• Publisher: HarperCollins Distribution Services
• Publication date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 000261622X
• ISBN 13: 9780002616225
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 184
• Editor: Stanley Kunitz, Max Hayward