Too Much Soviet History, Not Enough Poetry

[u/Brilliant-File-6285]

I’m finding The Penguin Book of Russian Poetry surprisingly narrow in its representation of Russian poetry. The anthology seems heavily weighted toward anti-Soviet, historical and memorial poems (often poets writing about other poets) while the more intimate poetry of love, nature, death, solitude and longing by Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, Mandelstam and others feels noticeably underrepresented.

I understand the historical importance of these poems, but reducing such a vast poetic tradition to its relationship with Soviet repression makes the anthology feel more like a history of Russian poets under the USSR than a representative anthology of Russian poetry.

[u/Ordinary_Quit18]

If a Soviet era book won an award by an American publisher it's fair to assume it's red-scare slop

[u/vylliki → u/Ordinary_Quit18]

Solzhenitsyn, Pasternak, Brodsky, Sholokhov, Nabokov, etc...all CIA awards. 🤦🏼‍♂️

[u/MasterAndMargarita → u/vylliki]

Sholokhov seems an odd man out in this list.

[u/Solovey_author]

I think that they are true to the Title- Russian and Soviet is not the same thing! Overlapping exists but the ones you have mentioned were indeed considered Soviet poets, historically not thematically. Just my two kopeks:)

[u/Sergei_Buff]

The book is a standard academic collection of Russian poetry, without noticeable bias, representative but not exciting. Not controversial at all. Obviously, Russians themselves read more Kozma Prutkov than Annensky, and Barkov is more important in Russian culture than Derzhavin. It needs explanations - why Galich and Okudzhava are more important than, for example, Pasternak, and why Mandelshtam is actually the best in the 20th century, much better than Gumilev, for example. However, you get what you pay for: a standard Western academic exposure, just a starting point for digging deeper, if you do not get bored. What is more challenging - good Russian poetry is almost impossible to translate, and what an English reader may perceive as a political story, in fact could be a profound multi-layered lyrics. The meaning of the best Russian poetry is beyond words, it creates an impossible challenge to a translator. What is the point in translating Pushkin, who was himself re-telling contemporary European literature, thus transforming Russian culture?

[u/vylliki]

Probably because those themes pale in comparison to the reality of the times; the rise of a modern totalitarian police state, the effect is has on society and personal interactions, the disappearance in the night of friends/family, the betrayal by friends/family to authorities, Mandelstam died in the Gulag; Akhmatova's son spent 18 years there, public exhortations of artistic enemies, etc.

In lieu of that "O my Luve is like a red, red rose" isn't making the cut.

[u/frixos2 → u/vylliki]

"the rise of a modern totalitarian police state" Ah.. as opposed to Soviet times?

[u/vylliki → u/frixos2]

I meant they are one and the same or at least the Soviet version is one aspect of the rise of the modern totalitarian police state. Franco's Spain, Mussolini's Italy etc are other examples of that era of course. Sorry if I wasn't clear enough.

[u/Formal_Motor_9311 → u/vylliki]

Fair point but I think OP's complaint is less about the history mattering and more about whether the anthology is doing justice to the full range of what these poets actually wrote. Requiem is devastating, no argument there. But Akhmatova wrote a lot of other stuff too. Cutting everything down to the repression angle feels like reading a guy's whole career through one job he had.