Customer Reviews

Selected Poems (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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..

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.

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.