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Verse from Pushkin and others
English, Russian (translation)
Hardcover
Published January 1, 1971
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July 3, 2024
“The Russian novel has long been open to the English reader; but with Russian poetry he is much less familiar. It is not, in the same measure as the novel, an international possession; and it offers, like all poetry, special discouragement to the translator.”
How true: I come across any number of translations of Russian novels into English and I’ll-die-on-this-hill defenders of particular translations - but I enjoy comparing translations, which up until, has been prose. I first encountered comparing translations of Akhmatova’s poetry (and, you know, each translation more or less worked, each in its own way).
I guess Pushkin isn’t that popular with Goodreads readers. Here I have a volume printed in 1935 - and on the Enoch Pratt Library shelves by July of that year: amazing! But not yet an even a single Goodreads review.
Lengthy excerpts from long poems, including Evgeny Onegin [which I heard so much about, so many references to,..] {and I’ve decided to re-visit this poem but accompanied by an audiobook} but I have to say, and I know Pushkin is revered-and then some-in Russia (and I don’t mean for this to be heresy), but I liked the poetry of Akhmatova better…she wrote in a way that spoke to me…
And in this volume, Akhmatova is allotted just one poem - really? Blok is allotted a mere handful. And one each to Nekrasov and Tyuchev.
This gross underrepresentation of other poets brings down the rating of this book
How true: I come across any number of translations of Russian novels into English and I’ll-die-on-this-hill defenders of particular translations - but I enjoy comparing translations, which up until, has been prose. I first encountered comparing translations of Akhmatova’s poetry (and, you know, each translation more or less worked, each in its own way).
I guess Pushkin isn’t that popular with Goodreads readers. Here I have a volume printed in 1935 - and on the Enoch Pratt Library shelves by July of that year: amazing! But not yet an even a single Goodreads review.
Lengthy excerpts from long poems, including Evgeny Onegin [which I heard so much about, so many references to,..] {and I’ve decided to re-visit this poem but accompanied by an audiobook} but I have to say, and I know Pushkin is revered-and then some-in Russia (and I don’t mean for this to be heresy), but I liked the poetry of Akhmatova better…she wrote in a way that spoke to me…
And in this volume, Akhmatova is allotted just one poem - really? Blok is allotted a mere handful. And one each to Nekrasov and Tyuchev.
This gross underrepresentation of other poets brings down the rating of this book
Displaying 1 of 1 review