This is a marvelous book. It is extremely difficult to accurately capture the flavor of the original writing in translation, but Kunitz has done this and more - the English itself is poetry. The book is dual language, so readers of Russian can read the original next to the English. Both are excellent.

The selection is fairly representative of Akhmatova's life work, with early poems from 1909, through her affair with the poet Blok in the teens, the Terror and War, to her deathbed in 1961. I particularly enjoyed the translation of the epic "Requiem". Without a doubt, this is the best English version I have ever read. My only complaint is its berevity - at 40 poems, it merely whets the readers appetite for more - a pity, given the outstanding nature of both poet and translator.

For those who are not familiar with Anna Akhmatova, this is a gem. If you have read some of her work, this is a must-have volume. Enjoy!

This is the volume that introduced me to the works of Anna Akhmatova. After having read this in one evening, I could not sleep - I was so moved by her poetry. The translation must have captured her heart and soul because it certainly captured mine - it inspired me to get up in the middle of the night and draw pictures to go with what I had read. I understood at once the love the Russian people have for her. Since then, I have gobbled up everything translated into English that I can find, but I still think this little volume is the best of all and return to it again and again. Enjoy......

Mayakovsky was one of the foremost futurist poets of the early 20th centuary. He wrote anguished (and mildly egocentric) pieces about being alone and unrequited in love. He also wrote political poems that were supposed to moblize the workers and shock the borgeosie establishment. This book is worth buying for the two epics "A cloud in trousers" and "The backbone flute" alone. The other poems are the icing on the cake, sounding off his thundering poetic voice. His final poem, "Past one o'clock.." starkly contrasts the others with it's muted depression. He would include part of it in his suicide note, changing the line "now you and I are quits" to "now life and I are quits." The Bedbug is a savage satire of Soviet society, and (had he not shot himself) would probably have gotten him arrested during the imminent Stalinist purges. After his death, Mayakovsky was lauded by Stalin. His pro-Bolshevik political verses were glorified and proudly shown off by the state, whilst his other poems and satirical plays were quietly supressed. Get this book if you want to see every side of Mayakovsky, and not just the one that has been publicized for years as propaganda.

His verses are curses,
His words are sharp swords,
His phrases are races
Of animal herds,
He slashes and bashes,
He kicks and he bites,
The world of the uselessness,
Bleeds and than dies.

Well, I love pre-Revolution Russian literature, so I guess I'm a little biased towards this book, but it really is good. Even the introduction is fascinating and inspiring if you ask me.

Highly recommended reading. This is a detailed but very readable account of the years following the revolution as recalled by the wife of one of Russia's leading poets. It is a witty, frank, and intelligent analysis of conditions that contrast so starkly with the premise of the revolution - freedom and equality for all people.

This is one of the most wonderful books i have ever read and a sensational portrait of the russian poet Ossip Mandelstam. The book focus on mandelstam's last years when he was under the pressure and prosecution of Stalin. The prose is beautiful, full of musings on the condition of Art. She also draw a very clear portrait of what Stalinism meant for artists and people in general in Russia. But for me the most important part of the book is to see the way Ossip dealt with horror and Death. For me, this book is one of the best studies about the condition of human beings. A must.

Presents an image of Russia as profound and gripping as Dostoevsky (only it's a memoir, not fiction). Fascinating portrait of one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. One of the 10 books which have meant the most to me since I began reading 40 years ago.

"she said no more." "there was silence in the room." -"you must know everything"

the praiseworthiness of a collection of stories is contingent not upon the praiseworthiness of the writer but the collector(s). how and what to collect. who to have translate. the collection in these regards is a followable one. it offers a fair sampling of babel in different contexts in different pursuits in writing.

the praiseworthiness of the author cannot be to do with the praiseworthiness of a posthumous collection. the work is the work he filled his time with. and he was good at filling his time this way.

the collection is separated into sections specific to types of writings.

know this though simply: babel in "his notebook", "diary", "observations on war," "notes on the stories" is the same babel who by virtue of his stinging brevity (a slap without words glows redder) and perspicacity brought his reader to this page. if you know babel then further pleasingly with this book you shall. if you've yet to then from this begin to:

"'you never say anything, grishchuk,' i said frantically. 'how do you expect me to understand, you tiresome fellow?' he was silent and turned away."

Before anyone should decide whether or not Doctor Zhivago is a good book, they must look into themselves and see what it is they are about, what they love, and what affects them. As with any book, there are going to be those who feel that Zhivago is horrible because famous and illustrious novelists (like Mr. Nabokov) did not agree with the approach Pasternak took to writing his novel (but Nabokov also criticized Dostoevsky's books for quite the same reasons, so does this mean that Crime and Punishment and The Idiot and Karamazov are not artistic novels?). Before anyone decides to defer to Nabokov's opinion, he should realize why Nabokov said those things. Reading a Nabokovian book is so much different from Doctor Zhivago. Nabokov's novels are well planned out, with biblical, Shakespearean, and Poe-etical imagery aplenty. His language in general, in every novel, short story, and poem, is spectacular and to be worshipped. His themes dealt with extraordinary events in common life. Nabokov is an artist in the sense of a Renaissance painter.

But Pasternak is not that way, almost quite the opposite. He set out to write a great novel, and I suppose he has done so in many circles of readers. And of those, I am sure that many think the book is great because of the epic events (the revolution), the epic characteristics (the journey), and the eternal themes (love and war, death and separation). But what great book by Tolstoy doesn't have those? What I see with Doctor Zhivago is the way Pasternak treats everyday, common place events. This is the best book, the only book, I have read to take normal events, ones which I see myself going through everyday, and put them into words that are poetic, flowing, and so representative of the truth. The characters may not rival those of Dickens, or the plot may have loopholes and deadends which scream at you HORRIBLE, but those are not the only, or even the most important, characteristics of a novel which defines its greatness.

For this book to be considered art, it shouldn't be looked at with a mathematician's eye, quantifying how many cardboard characters there are, how often Pasternak expounds his own philosophy in similar ways with different characters, or how many times a chapter pops up which is totally different in style and format to the rest of the book and detracts from the novel's flow. Art is not an additive process, but something that occurs inside of the reader, viewer, or listener. And for a book in the last half of the 20th century to create that makes it special, and something to be respected. At least for me. This book has done more inside of me than any other. Not because of its flimsy characters or loose plot arrangement, but because of how it describes life with the poet's simplicity, and creates art from such a simple life.

As far as Russian literature in this last century goes, this is the best work I have seen. Doctor Zhivago does for the Communist Revolution what War and Peace did for Napoleon's invasion. There can be many comparisons made between the two books. Zhivago's story starts with the suicide of his father, who squandered the family fortune, and moves on from there to the revolution. No punches are pulled here: we see many shockinge effects of that event. Zhivago and his family leave Moscow to avoid the bloodshed and needless deaths, but he heads to more of the same, eventually becoming conscripted into the Red Army against his will to help with medicine. There is also Lara, Zhivago's love, who brings Zhivago to carry on. The decision to release this book was a gutsy one by Pasternak, but it paid off. This is the definitive epic of Soviet literature, and it comes highly recommended by me.

Doctor Zhivago is a work of greatness. It paints a picture so vivid, so real, that you can't help but see it. Boris Pasternak's greatest work, Zhivago won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1958. That he was forced by the Soviet Government to not accept that prize is just another testament to his writing. His life was filled with censure from the government, and he was looked down upon by his people. Doctor Zhivago was rejected by Soviet publishers as counter-revolutionary, and was subsequently smuggled out to Italy where it was originally published in the Russian language. It was not published in Russia until 1988.

All this controversy could not have been generated by a lesser book. Pasternak's style of writing is one to provoke thought: rather than social issues running his characters, it was rather love, faith and destiny that did so. Social issues were considered by Pasternak to be important only in so far as they influence individual human destiny. This style can only be successful with the inclusion of powerful metaphors and intellectual conversations and thoughts; the author does all this and more.

Doctor Zhivago takes place in Russia during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the civil war that followed. This is a time of extreme poverty, and Dr. Yury Andreyevich Zhivago decides to move him and his family out of Moscow and into the country. It also follows the life of Larissa Fyodorovna Guishar (subsequently Antipova), another Moscow native who also finds herself in the country, away from the disease and destitution. The book covers the many chance (or destined) encounters these two characters have had over the years: a party in Moscow, serving together at the front (he as a doctor and she as a nurse) as well as meeting again in the small town of Yuryatin. Yury was an intelligent man. He was of course a doctor, and he was a writer as well (over 30 pages of poems written by him are included in this novel). He is a man of intense feeling, he sees things like we all would like to be able to see. He is highly philosophical, constantly pursuing the meaning of life (much, I suspect, like Pasternak himself). Lara, who becomes his mistress, does not see everything like he does. He loves her for that, and jumps at the chance to be able to recite poetry to her, to educate her in his version of life. But Lara is not stupid. She understands what the revolution means: "Everything established, settled, everything to do with home and order and the common round, has crumbled into dust and been swept away in the general upheaval and reorganization of the whole of society. The whole human way of life has been destroyed and ruined." Yury and Lara try to shelter themselves from the turmoil going on around them in the civil war that followed the revolution. Yet through all this Yury still sees the beauty of life, the reasons for trying to hold on to a single moment, and to try and make this last. Doctor Zhivago is a great story. I love the feelings it portrays, the pictures it paints. Even being translated from Russian seems not to have hurt the artistry. The only weakness in the translation is that the poems at the end of the book are very choppy, and do not resemble poetry that much at all. Yet after reading the novel, I could feel nothing but gratitude to the translators, for making this masterpiece available to the English-speaking world. The novel leaves you with a feeling of sadness. Sadness not just for the characters, but also because Pasternak's life was much like Zhivago's. Forced to live in a place where his views were no longer accepted, Zhivago tries to remain pure, a symbol of artistic incorruptibility. Pasternak did the same, living out his days in an artist colony in disgrace. Pasternak summed up his life with a poem he wrote in 1959 entitled "Nobel Prize", wherein he said: "Am I a gangster or a murderer? Of what crime do I stand Condemned? I made the whole world weep At the beauty of my land." If you are trying to understand Soviet mentality, you should read this book. If you are trying to discover meaning for your life, read this book. If you are looking to read one of the greatest novels of this century, one that will leave you awestruck with it's imagery and enlightened by it's philosophy, then by all means read Doctor Zhivago.