Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry
"A rare literary contribution to the English-speaking world."—Booklist
"The present volume [of Russian poetry] contains a superb 20-page explanatory introduction and excellent selection of hundreds of poems which will serve to open to the Western world the unique contribution Russia has made in this pleasurable art form."—Virginia Quarterly Review
"As an anthology of modern Russian poetry, this handsome volume offers a discriminating and generous selection, equal if not superior to any other of its kind."—Germano-Slavica
This celebrated anthology, first published in 1978 as Russian Poetry: The Modern Period, provides a much-needed panoramic overview of Russian poetry since the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.
Major features of this collection include a new and expanded introduction, a substantial new section of glasnost-era poetry, a generous sampling of postrevolutionary poetry in Russia, full representation of poets of the first and second post-World War II generations, and poetry of the successive emigrations, flights, or expulsions from Russia.
Twentieth-Century Russian Poetry makes an important contribution to our continuing understanding of a changing world order. This anthology should be read by all those who wish to know more about the poetry of Russia, those interested in international cultural and literary history, and all Slavicists.
Contents
Introduction
Part I: Pre-World War II Poetry in Russia
Aleksandr Blok,
Night, a street,…
On the Plain of Kulikovo
Visitor
Vladimir Mayakovsky,
A Cloud in Trousers
A Good Attitude to Horses
Velemir Khelbnikov,
Me and Russia
The Burning Field (from The Laundress)
I went out…
To Everyone
Once more, once more
Trumpet, Shout, Carry!
The One Book
Iranian Song
Hey…y! Uh…hm!...
Lonely Masquerader
Nikolay Klyuev,
October, a copper-crawed cock
Can I tell you my love with a portrait
You twist your death in nooses
The sky lies blue—like a sea
A Conversational Melody, a Good Verse
Mother Sabbath
Sergey Yesenin
Winds, winds, winds
For My Sister Shura
Field upon field upon field
The golden birch grove’s
I regret nothing,…
Mysterious, ancient world of mine
Nikolay Gumilyov
The Streetcar That Lost Its Way
Childhood
First Canzone
Moon at Sea
Fragments 1920-1921
The Porcelain Pavilion
Pre-memory
A Baby Elephant
Osip Mandelshtam
The valley bleeds with Roman rust
I am deaf
Because I let go your hands
Insomnia…
Like grumbling Roman plebs
Notre Dame
Leningrad
In this cool transparent spring
I drink to the ashes of war…
Where can I hide in January
I hate the light
On stony Pierian spurs
Lamarck
Anna Akhmatova
So, I remained alone
We do not know how to say goodbye
A Dream
There is a boundary…
The Visitor
Requiem
Maria Petrovykh
The air is motionless with heat
Maximilian Voloshin
Holy Russia
Boris Pasternak
A Sultry Night
To love,…
Storm, an Endless Instant
The Mirror
Don’t Touch
Moochkap
As with Them
Let the words…
To be famous isn’t decent,…
Nikolay Zabolotsky
The Face of a Horse
Snakes
All that my soul possessed…
The Loop Canal
At the Fishmonger’s
Nocturnal Garden
Poem about Rain
Popryshchin
Yesterday reflecting upon death
Metamorphoses
Warning
Daniil Kharms
Death of the Wild Warrior
Aleksandr Vvedensky
Where
Joseph Utkin
The Tale of Red-Haired Motele, Mister Inspector, Rabbi Isaiah and Commissar Blokh
Ilya Ehrenburg
Our grandsons will be astonished
Nikolay Tikhonov
Fire and rope, bullet and axe—
Part II: Pre-World War II Émigré Poetry
Marina Tsvetayeva
The Horn of Roland
To kiss a forehead is to erase worry—
An Ancient Song
An Attempt at Jealousy
Poems to Blok
Anatoly Steiger
It is an ancient custom
They will not ask us:…
Nobody waits…
How can I shout,…
How do we break the habit…
…Not an epilogue…
Friendship
The dull rattle of shutters
Until the sun sinks…
We believe books and music
Boris Poplavsky
Another Planet
Don Aminado
Our Sunday Rest
Vladislav Khodasevich
Music
Monkey
The Automobile
The Bride
Dactyls
On the Death of my Tomcat Murr
A Monument
Dovid Knut
I was walking…
I remember a dim evening…
Vyacheslav Ivanov
The Winter Sonnets
Aleksandr Vertinsky
I remember the night
Part III: Post-World War II Poetry in Russia
Pavel Antokolsky
From Son
Ilya Selvinsky
I Saw It!
Olga Berggolts
A Wish
To My Sister
The Blockade Swallow
Don’t turn around…
My insatiable memory…
Indian Summer
Boris Slutsky
The Bathhouse
Law…
God
Horses in the Ocean
The Hospital
My Friends
Coppers
My old men are dying—
Semyon Gudzenko
Before the Attack
Sergey Narovchatov
In Those Years
Vladimir Soloukhin
The Wind How to Drink the Sea
For the Tree to Sing
The Apple
Konstantin Vanshenkin
We came back late from visiting
Rain
The forest in winter!...
The girl dreams of her lover…
The Path
The sunset fades…
Yevgeny Vinokurov
When the Parachute Does Not Open
I don’t remember him
Eyes
Objects (from the cycle “History”)
I do not like the circus
Adam
Has the time come…
All Grows Old
Bulat Okudzhava
François Villon
I never soared,…
Once there was a soldier boy
Save us, the poets, save us…
Bella Akhmadulina
A Chill
Fifteen boys, or perhaps even more
Lunatics
The Snow Maiden
A Queen
I was so buoyant
Yevgeny Yevtushenko
Dwarf Birches
A hundred miles from the Capital City of Hope
Andrey Voznesensky
Mayakovsky in Paris
The Beatnik’s Monologue
Striptease
A New Year’s Letter in Warsaw
From the Window of a Plane
Yunna Morits
Memorandum
The Leader
The Fisherman
Aleksandr Kushner
A Picture
Don’t bother about the news!
The Airman
The Oak
The star burns out over the tree tops
To B. P.
Robert Rozhdestvensky
The Winter of Thirty-Eight
They Killed the Lad
Nostalgia
Maya Borisova
The dry birch tree stood
It’s not when they leave
Viktor Sosnora
Do you envy, my comrades-in-arms
Where are our horses, our black horses?
The Owl and the Mouse
The Footsteps of an Owl and His Lament
Novella Matveyeva
I’m no fighting man, he says
The Ginger-Haired Girl
The eggplants have pins and needles
Re-Conversion
Vyacheslav Kupriyanov
For a long time he tried to survive
A Lesson in Natural History
Everything gets forgotten
Part IV: Post-World War II Émigré Poetry
Nina Berberova
To Shakespeare
Nikolay Morshen
In superstitious panic
A Storm
At the Lighthouse
The Andreyevsky Church
Georgy Ivanov
The old man shuffles to the fish market
Oh, how fastidious you once were
A quarter century of exile has passed
Should I tell of all the absolute fools
Unharnessed, the white horse ambles along
On the boundary of snow and melting
Not so long ago, the world was complete—
Yury Odarchenko
Only for you my tea roses
The path I’m following…
Claudia Petrovna
Yury Ivask
Shall we forget the shiver
Emily Dickinson
Ode for the Dancing Khlysty
Igor Chinnov
Do you think we might go to Hell too?
A black bird…
A gust of memory…
In the land of Schlaraffenland
An instance of fore-ordained harmony
Ivan Elagin
My murderer is no thief
Amnesty
Boris Nartsissov
A Marated Bastilled age
Part V: The New Wave in Russia
Yury Galanskov
The Intellectual
Murder
I am in pain
The Last Platform
The bird-cherry was my wife
It shames one to look
Vladimir Burich
Precepts for City Living
Vsevolod Nekrasov
And I Speak of Cosmic Things
Genrikh Sabgir
Radio Gibberish
Igor Khomin
They drank. That ate. They smoked
They met at the Tagansky subway station
A dike, a flower bed, a bare linden tree
Sergey Chudakov
Suicide is a duel with yourself
When the cry goes up: “Man overboard!”
Dmitry Bobyshev
Indifference
Sergey Morozov
Poem about the Blue Horse
Nikolay Novikov
White on white’s a flatness
From the cycle Stone and Sky
Mikhail Yeryomin
Faceted grains of wisdom
Vladimir Uflyand
It has for ages been observed
The peasant
The working week comes to an end
Now, at last, even NIkifor’s a suitor
Yevgeny Rein
Monastery
Breakfast on the Balcony
Viktor Krivulin
The Idea of Russia
Southwest
And the silver age…
Two in a Room
Guard
Yelena Shvarts
Imitation of Boileau
My heart’s cloth I shall spread before the Savior’s feet
Gennady Aygi
Death
Rustle of Birches
Poppies of This Year
A. Velichansky
Trunks of birches, like scrolls
The policeman does not blow his whistle
In the evil time
Kalmyk poppies, horde of pan-Mongol tulips
The flame’s speech is confused. The muttering of the water is hollow
Memory of the past grows paler with each day
The infant is white, like down. And the youth dark-complexioned, like shingle
Part VI: The Newest Émigré Wave
Joseph Brodsky
Lagoon
From Sonnets on the Statue of Mary, Queen of Scots, in the Luxembourg Gardens, Paris
Mikhail Grobman
In mass graves the bodies of plants
Andrey Amalrik
Lake Baskunchak
Natalya Gorbanevskaya
Square of the Holy Passion…
A curse! Joy! Writing!
The savage cold of Russian winters
Hold out a handful of snow
Hurry, take pleasure in the oblique caress of rain…
Drought, malevolent stepmother
That time I did not save Warsaw…
It is time to think…
Yury Iofe
A Thing or Two about Childhood
The Olsanski Cemetery
Naum Korzhavin
We can string words…
Aleksandr Galich
Hospital Gypsy Song
The Goldminers’ Waltz
Edward Limonov
As if a quiet branch drew a line
From Secret Notebook
Lev Mak
Behind the Slaughterhouse, Evening
Farewell to Russia
Pyotr Vegin
“Moscow” Pool
Explanation of a Sign
Lev Loseff
Conversation with a New York Poet
The Petrograd Side
“I know—the Mongol yoke, the years of famie…”
Aleksey Tsvetkov
Like a ruddy child you fall asleep in September
To the apostles of history
Yury Kublanovsky
In Memory of John Keats
From In Petrograd