Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics: Russia, Poland, and the West

by Clare Cavanagh

Lyric Poetry and Modern Politics explores the intersection of poetry, national life, and national identity in Poland and Russia, from 1917 to the present. As a corrective to recent trends in criticism, acclaimed translator and critic Clare Cavanagh demonstrates how the practice of the personal lyric in totalitarian states such as Russia and Poland did not represent an escapist tendency; rather it reverberated as a bold political statement and at times a dangerous act.

Cavanagh also provides a comparative study of modern poetry from the perspective of the eastern and western sides of the Iron Curtain. Among the poets discussed are Blok, Mayakovsky, Akhmatova, Yeats, Whitman, Frost, Szymborska, Zagajewski, and Milosz; close readings of individual poems are included, some translated for the first time. Cavanagh examines these poets and their work as a challenge to Western postmodernist theories, thus offering new perspectives on twentieth-century lyric poetry.

Genres: Nonfiction, Poetry

344 pages, Paperback

First published January 5, 2010

Reviews

[Nick · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this book, Clare Cavanagh poses interesting questions about the different functions of poetry in the West and in Eastern Europe, where it is taken so much more seriously, even in politics. One only has to counterpose Senator Yeats, the acknowledged legislator, and Osip Mandelstam, whose unwritten verse about Stalin got him exiled.
In the first essay Cavanagh contrasts Yeats and Aleksander Blok, and there is some similarity there with fuzzy mysticism that turned political; unlike Yeats, Blok died before his enthusiasm for change did. The second, comparing Whitman and Vladimir Mayakovsky, is less successful although one can't recall dispute that both where capacious blowhards. I'm not sure that the comparison does Mayakovsky any favors, with Whitman's greater impact of the corpus of poetry and ability to capture the tragedy of war.
But it's the rest of the book that's more revelatory, including stretches on the great names of Polish and Russian poetry, like Anna Akhmatova, Czeslaw Milosz, and Wislawa Szymborska, but also commentary on more recent movements in Poland. Unlike a lot of critics, Cavanagh talks to people about their sense of the poetry--imagine doing that in the U.S.--unearthing, for example, some criticism of Szymborska because of her youthful verse in support of the Communist regime. This no doubt reflects my taste and reading history, but I was moved by the segments on Blok's later verse, Akhmatova's "Poem without a Hero" and Milosz's migratory career.

[Jesse Hilson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhat backwards is my reading. On occasion I’ll read the novelist’s biography before I read their novels themselves, or, in this case, the criticism of the poetry before reading the poetry itself. I’d read some Akhmatova and some Symborska and Zagajewski. But not enough, and not recently enough. Accordingly, this book dragged for me in many places. Note to self: stop reading things backwards.

I characterized this book in an obnoxiously pithy way based on its Introduction as: Wordsworth vs Stalin. That’s a gross oversimplification. But the major questions had to do with the personal lyric often marked with the letter “I” and its place in the communist societies of 20th century Europe. Collectivist economies and nations leave little room for poetry that deals with the individual. Again, an oversimplification. But you’d have to read the book to get more.

A funny note: Clare Cavanagh must really really love the word “willy-nilly” for she seems to drop it on every other page in the book. Something could be extracted from that but I don’t know what.