SELECTED POEMS
by Anna Akhmatova

The poems collected, including the masterworks "Requiem" and "Poem without a Hero," conjure intimations of the infinite and profound emotional depth through meditations on the perception of everyday objects and evocative settings, forming a powerful record of spiritual resilience.

A Captive Spirit shows Marina Tsvetaeva's genius at the peak of its power.

"The Russianness of Tsvetaeva's poetry and prose-singularly direct and forceful are they are—consists in an obvious authenticity of the emotions. Everything is felt instantly and strongly; everything is strashny and vesely—terrible and joyful—and yet about this directness there is nothing histrionic, sloppy, or self-indulgent." —JOHN BAYLEY, The New York Review of Books

Critics as far apart as Gleb Struve ("One of the most interesting and original works in the whole of Soviet literature") and Pravda ("Olesha's style is masterful, his psychological analysis infinitely subtle, his portrayal of negative characters truly striking") have praised the novel, and one of the signs of its universality is the fact that it has been claimed by nearly every school of critics and interpreted as everything from a submerged homosexual story to a 10th century Notes from the Underground.

Translated with an introduction by Robert Dessaix

Translated by Walter Arndt The Bollingen Prize Translation in the Onegin Stanza with Critical Articles and Notes.