Selected Poems - Softcover

Anna Akhmatova

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140424644 ISBN 13: 9780140424645

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2006

Synopsis

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is among the most moving and revered voices in Russian literature. A poet of passion and conscience, she was persecuted after the Revolution and under Stalin, but chose to remain in Russia and bear witness. Her works capture a rich emotional world - poems such as 'A Ride' and 'By the Seashore' reflect a complex attitude to love or explore the duality of her own nature, while others, such as 'Courage' and 'In 1940', evoke the horrors of war. And in her two great poem cycles, Requiem and Poem without a Hero, she creates a heart-rending depiction of a mother waiting outside a prison for news of her son and a magical layering of the old, joyous St Petersburg upon a tormented Leningrad.

About this title

Review:

"A genius of Russian poetry" (Sunday Times)

"Once, when young, she had written the lines which lovers quoted to one another. Later she provided words which thousands of men and women repeated under their breath, as they suffered, feared and waited." (Observer)

"The greatest Russian poetess of the twentieth century" (Joseph Brodsky)

"Her fortitude and independence, the breadth of her compassion and the clarity of her realistic vision erased the line between herself and others; her intensely personal lyrics became the void of her nation's tragedy" (New York Times Book Review)

"The extraordinary misery of her life and the extraordinary merits of her poems make Anna Akhmatova one of the great literary figures of modern times" (Economist)

Book Description:

A new edition of the selected poems of Russia's greatest twentieth-century poet, published to celebrate her 120th anniversary.

About this edition

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0140424644
• ISBN 13: 9780140424645
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160