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Final Meeting: Selected Poetry
Anna Akhmatova (June 23, 1889 - March 5, 1966) is considered by many to be one of the greatest Russian poets of the Silver Age. Her works range from short lyric love poetry to longer, more complex cycles, such as Requiem, a tragic depiction of the Stalinist terror. One of the forefront leaders of the Acmeism movement, which focused on rigorous form and directness of words, she was a master of conveying raw emotion in her portrayals of everyday situations. During the time of heavy censorship and persecution, her poetry gave voice and hope to the Russian people.
In this dual-language selection of Anna Akhatmova's poetry, Andrey Kneller's translations capture not only the general message, but also strive to preserve the beautiful lyrical quality of the originals.
In this dual-language selection of Anna Akhatmova's poetry, Andrey Kneller's translations capture not only the general message, but also strive to preserve the beautiful lyrical quality of the originals.
129 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2008
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236 people want to read
About the author
Anna Akhmatova
429 books958 followersalso known as: Анна Ахматова
Personal themes characterize lyrical beauty of noted work of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko; the Soviet government banned her books between 1946 and 1958.
People credit this modernist of the most acclaimed writers in the canon.
Her writing ranges from short lyrics to universalized, ingeniously structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935-40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her work addresses a variety of themes including time and memory, the fate of creative women, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism. She has been widely translated into many languages, and is one of the best-known Russian poets of 20th century.
In 1910, she married the poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian.
Nikolay Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for activities considered anti-Soviet; Akhmatova then married a prominent Assyriologist Vladimir Shilejko, and then an art scholar, Nikolay Punin, who died in the Stalinist Gulag camps. After that, she spurned several proposals from the married poet, Boris Pasternak.
After 1922, Akhmatova was condemned as a bourgeois element, and from 1925 to 1940, her poetry was banned from publication. She earned her living by translating Leopardi and publishing essays, including some brilliant essays on Pushkin, in scholarly periodicals. All of her friends either emigrated or were repressed.
Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however. Akhmatova died at the age of 76 in St. Peterburg. She was interred at Komarovo Cemetery.
There is a museum devoted to Akhmatova at the apartment where she lived with Nikolai Punin at the garden wing of the Fountain House (more properly known as the Sheremetev Palace) on the Fontanka Embankment, where Akhmatova lived from the mid 1920s until 1952.
Personal themes characterize lyrical beauty of noted work of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko; the Soviet government banned her books between 1946 and 1958.
People credit this modernist of the most acclaimed writers in the canon.
Her writing ranges from short lyrics to universalized, ingeniously structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935-40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her work addresses a variety of themes including time and memory, the fate of creative women, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism. She has been widely translated into many languages, and is one of the best-known Russian poets of 20th century.
In 1910, she married the poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian.
Nikolay Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for activities considered anti-Soviet; Akhmatova then married a prominent Assyriologist Vladimir Shilejko, and then an art scholar, Nikolay Punin, who died in the Stalinist Gulag camps. After that, she spurned several proposals from the married poet, Boris Pasternak.
After 1922, Akhmatova was condemned as a bourgeois element, and from 1925 to 1940, her poetry was banned from publication. She earned her living by translating Leopardi and publishing essays, including some brilliant essays on Pushkin, in scholarly periodicals. All of her friends either emigrated or were repressed.
Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however. Akhmatova died at the age of 76 in St. Peterburg. She was interred at Komarovo Cemetery.
There is a museum devoted to Akhmatova at the apartment where she lived with Nikolai Punin at the garden wing of the Fountain House (more properly known as the Sheremetev Palace) on the Fontanka Embankment, where Akhmatova lived from the mid 1920s until 1952.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 49 reviews
February 5, 2018
The Don runs softly in the night,
The yellow crescent walks inside.
It enters, with its hat askance –
And sees a shadow in a trance.
It’s a woman, who needs help,
It’s a woman, by herself,
Her spouse - dead, her son – in jail.
I am she. Please, say a prayer
The yellow crescent walks inside.
It enters, with its hat askance –
And sees a shadow in a trance.
It’s a woman, who needs help,
It’s a woman, by herself,
Her spouse - dead, her son – in jail.
I am she. Please, say a prayer
December 27, 2022
I had been meaning to read some poetry from Akhmatova for some time, and now I have, I feel a sense of satisfaction, and the real need to read more of her in the next couple of months.
Her writing evokes sadness, right down the core of despair, but also weaved through this, is the appreciation of what is beautiful in the world. I felt her emotion leap right from the page, creating this sorrowful atmosphere while I read.
This collection contains poetry from over the years of Akhmatova's life so the earlier works are about her experience with love, and the latter are about Russia, and the losses she suffered there.
Akhmatova had a startlingly beautiful way with words, and this collection was dark, honest and laced with all that I love in a writer.
~
'In my room, there is a serpent,
Slow and gorgeous to behold…
She is calm and introverted
Much like I, and just as cold.
As I’m writing in the evening,
She is sitting by my side,
Her indifferent eyes won’t leave me,
Shining emerald in the night.
In the dark, I sob and whimper
But the icons don’t reply...
My requests would be so different
If it wasn’t for those eyes.
In the morning, when I’m weary,
Like a candle, melting thin,
A black ribbon slithers freely
Down across the shoulder skin.
~
I don’t think of you often at all
I’m not interested much in your fate,
But the imprint you left on my soul
On our trivial meeting won’t fade.
I avoid your red house by design,
Your red house overlooking the water,
But I know I disturb every time
Your sun-pierced peaceful order.
It was probably some other person,
Who begged for my love, chest to chest,
And it wasn’t your golden verses
That immortalized my unrest, —
But I’m reading the future, repeating
All the spells when the evening is blue,
And I foresee an additional meeting,
An inescapable meeting with you.
Her writing evokes sadness, right down the core of despair, but also weaved through this, is the appreciation of what is beautiful in the world. I felt her emotion leap right from the page, creating this sorrowful atmosphere while I read.
This collection contains poetry from over the years of Akhmatova's life so the earlier works are about her experience with love, and the latter are about Russia, and the losses she suffered there.
Akhmatova had a startlingly beautiful way with words, and this collection was dark, honest and laced with all that I love in a writer.
~
'In my room, there is a serpent,
Slow and gorgeous to behold…
She is calm and introverted
Much like I, and just as cold.
As I’m writing in the evening,
She is sitting by my side,
Her indifferent eyes won’t leave me,
Shining emerald in the night.
In the dark, I sob and whimper
But the icons don’t reply...
My requests would be so different
If it wasn’t for those eyes.
In the morning, when I’m weary,
Like a candle, melting thin,
A black ribbon slithers freely
Down across the shoulder skin.
~
I don’t think of you often at all
I’m not interested much in your fate,
But the imprint you left on my soul
On our trivial meeting won’t fade.
I avoid your red house by design,
Your red house overlooking the water,
But I know I disturb every time
Your sun-pierced peaceful order.
It was probably some other person,
Who begged for my love, chest to chest,
And it wasn’t your golden verses
That immortalized my unrest, —
But I’m reading the future, repeating
All the spells when the evening is blue,
And I foresee an additional meeting,
An inescapable meeting with you.
March 8, 2019
I've only recently discovered Akhmatova's poetry and this book is a selection of her work. It's a beautiful introduction for me because it alternates between the poem in Russian poem followed by its translation. I don't read Russian but still very much enjoyed seeing the original first. The poet wrote during the time of heavy censorship and persecution of Stalin's politics of terror and her poetry apparently gave voice and hope to he Russian people. I can see why because she is a master of conveying raw emotion which must have resonated in people's minds. I will definitely look out for more publications of her work in the future!
December 30, 2014
Excellent. I don't know Russian, so I can't comment on the closeness of the translations. That said, I've now read at least three versions of many of these poems, and found this edition to be the most attentive to maintaining rhyme. When dealing with another language, that has to be very difficult. And yet, as I read these versions, I felt, maybe for the first time, a sense of Akhmatova's delicate and precise voice. Note that the e-book price for this book is an incredible value.
October 5, 2016
I saw a biography of Anna Akhmatova at the library a few years ago. If it isn't lost, this book of her poems has inspired me to want to read it.
These poems cause me to think of snow, sleet, and diamonds falling softly from the sky. I envision Russia eighty to seventy years ago. I also see love tormented or lost, pain, longing, melancholy, cold and immaculate rooms with polished antiques, rivers flowing through Russian cities, those who loved Christ standing before His crucifixion, and the loneliness and silent terror of the victims of the Stalinist years. As I got deeper into this volume I liked it more and more. Very quiet, tragic, and lovely poetry.
This book contains both poems in the original Russian (which I can't read) and the English translation which to me is very lush and beautiful.
These poems cause me to think of snow, sleet, and diamonds falling softly from the sky. I envision Russia eighty to seventy years ago. I also see love tormented or lost, pain, longing, melancholy, cold and immaculate rooms with polished antiques, rivers flowing through Russian cities, those who loved Christ standing before His crucifixion, and the loneliness and silent terror of the victims of the Stalinist years. As I got deeper into this volume I liked it more and more. Very quiet, tragic, and lovely poetry.
This book contains both poems in the original Russian (which I can't read) and the English translation which to me is very lush and beautiful.
March 20, 2016
The earthly glory is like smoke,
I wanted much more than this.
In all my lovers I evoked
The feelings of joy and bliss.
One is still in love somewhere
With a friend from long ago,
The other stands in the city square,-
A statue of bronze in the snow.
I wanted much more than this.
In all my lovers I evoked
The feelings of joy and bliss.
One is still in love somewhere
With a friend from long ago,
The other stands in the city square,-
A statue of bronze in the snow.
September 12, 2025
Autumn, whispering through the maples,
Pleaded: "Die here with me!"
i'm partial to her longer pieces, though perhaps that's an effect of the translation (metre feels tighter). requiem is, of course, a masterpiece. the jury (me) is still out on acmeism: initial reporting states subject (still me) prefers modernist poetry to favour a lyrical style over the clipped irregularities of the modernist form. judge (somehow also me) orders a reading of Nikolai Gumilev to settle the matter.
Pleaded: "Die here with me!"
i'm partial to her longer pieces, though perhaps that's an effect of the translation (metre feels tighter). requiem is, of course, a masterpiece. the jury (me) is still out on acmeism: initial reporting states subject (still me) prefers modernist poetry to favour a lyrical style over the clipped irregularities of the modernist form. judge (somehow also me) orders a reading of Nikolai Gumilev to settle the matter.
March 7, 2015
Disclosure: I read and am rating this book at the invitation of the translator.
Always love Akhmatova's poetry. I actually read this side by side with two other translations. Not all the same poems were in each book, a nice thing about collections is you get a little variety with each.
I will say that Andrey Kneller's translation is far superior to the Penguin book translated by D.M. Thomas. The Mariner book edition translated by Stanley Kunitz, however, was also excellent. It really depended on the poem which I liked better. An interesting afternoon, having three books of poetry side by side and reading three different translations. Andrey, a wonderful job with the epilogue to "Requiem". I had tears in my eyes.
The only negative. I wish there was an introduction by the translator explaining his thought process. I always read this (in prose as well as poetry) and usually find very helpful insights. An idea to consider for future books.
Always love Akhmatova's poetry. I actually read this side by side with two other translations. Not all the same poems were in each book, a nice thing about collections is you get a little variety with each.
I will say that Andrey Kneller's translation is far superior to the Penguin book translated by D.M. Thomas. The Mariner book edition translated by Stanley Kunitz, however, was also excellent. It really depended on the poem which I liked better. An interesting afternoon, having three books of poetry side by side and reading three different translations. Andrey, a wonderful job with the epilogue to "Requiem". I had tears in my eyes.
The only negative. I wish there was an introduction by the translator explaining his thought process. I always read this (in prose as well as poetry) and usually find very helpful insights. An idea to consider for future books.
June 29, 2020
I have found that poetry is like being in love. And reading the same poet/poetess is like being touched by the same lover multiple times. The initial surprise and goosebumps gives way to complacency if he is not creative enough.
This is my third reading of Akhmatova and I have still got goosebumps.
“You don’t allow me to smile or sing,
You’ve forbid me to pray long ago.
And I’m glad to lose everything
Just so long as you don’t let me go!
Thus I live, without singing at all.
Neither the sky nor the earth is for me.
From both, hell and heaven, you stole
My spirit, which used to be free.”
This is my third reading of Akhmatova and I have still got goosebumps.
“You don’t allow me to smile or sing,
You’ve forbid me to pray long ago.
And I’m glad to lose everything
Just so long as you don’t let me go!
Thus I live, without singing at all.
Neither the sky nor the earth is for me.
From both, hell and heaven, you stole
My spirit, which used to be free.”
August 15, 2018
"You’re always enigmatic and new,
And I am ready to serve your desire,
But the love that I’m getting from you
Is a trial by iron and fire.
You don’t allow me to smile or sing,
You’ve forbid me to pray long ago.
And I’m glad to lose everything
Just so long as you don’t let me go!"
And I am ready to serve your desire,
But the love that I’m getting from you
Is a trial by iron and fire.
You don’t allow me to smile or sing,
You’ve forbid me to pray long ago.
And I’m glad to lose everything
Just so long as you don’t let me go!"
September 13, 2020
Russian to English translations of Akhmatova's poetry could cause a headache to the polyglot readers who read her poetry in different languages and get confused by obvious dissimilarities between various translations of the same stanzas.
Here is an example from her poem "The Guest":
A-
"And his lusterless eyes
Did not move from my ring.
Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing."
- by Carl Proffer
B-
"His torpid eyes were fixed
unblinking on my ring.
Not a single muscle stirred
in his clear, sardonic face.
Oh, I see: his game is that he knows
intimately, ardently,
there’s nothing from me he wants,
I have nothing to refuse"
- by Kunitz and Hayward
C-
"And his eyes, dully gazing,
Never lifted from my ring.
Not a single muscle shifting
Beneath that evil-glistening.
O, I understand: to know, passionately
And intensely, is his delight,
That there’s nothing that he needs,
And nothing I can deny."
- A. S. Kline
Frustrating and confusing, eh?
No wonder than that many of the non-Russian speaking readers are skeptical about why she is internationally considered by the literary critics as the most remarkable poet of Acmeism (Russian modern school of poetry. The acmeists revolted against symbolism's vagueness and attempted to privilege emotional suggestion over clarity and vivid sensory images) and arguably one of the greatest poets of all time.
My favourite poem in this selection is "Epilogue", a poignant tribute by Akhmatova to her friends who supported her when she has suffered from censorship, prison and the persecution of her family, for both her husband, the writer Gumilev, and her son were victims of the oppression by the authorities:
"I wish I could call each by name, but the list
Was taken away and no longer exists.
For all of them, I wove this gorgeous shawl
From fragments of phrases I took from them all.
I think of them always, wherever I go.
I'll never forget them in new times of woe.
And soon, when my mouth is sealed once again, -
The mouth that screamed for a million men, -
Let them remember me in a similar way, -
On the eve of my future memorial day."
Andrey Kneller's translations of Akhmatova's poems (and of many other poets like Blok, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva) are acclaimed by most of the critiques.
This selection in english successfully conveys the meanings enclosed in the verses, cautiously without to forsake the form, the substance, the direct and implicit messages, all with a notable attention given to the original scansion (The rhythm of a line of verse).
Many other translations has failed to convey the closure of the original lyric and to transmit the melancholic and the tragic mood that mirrors Akhmatova’s shaken psyche, as well as the directness and the obliquity in her poetry.
Wether the translator adheres to the formal prosody (literal translation of the original verse) or recasts the original (by interpretation or "imitation"), these translations alter the rhetorical flow in Akhmatova's original verse, its idioms and metaphors, its beautiful lyrical quality and moreover ruin its rhymes (rich of polysyllabic Russian words), which weaken the stanzas' structure..
As Marjorie Parloff sums Akhmatova's style:
« Her poems are almost always written in short rhyming stanzas, in which melopoeia, to use Pound’s term for verse music, trumps not only logopoeia (“the dance of the intellect among words”), but also phanopoeia (the “casting of images upon the visual imagination”).
Rhyme, anaphora, assonance, alliteration—this dense musical chiming, central to Akhmatova’s lyric, cannot be carried over into English".
http://marjorieperloff.com/reviews/ak...
On this subject I recommend this essay by the great Nobel prize laureate poet J. Brodsky
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
I have previously wrote notes on the devaluation of translated poems in a review of a Selection of poems by Borges [in Arabic]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
and in another very short review of a catastrophic English to Arabic translation of Rilke's poems from the collection “The Essential Rilke”.
I'll copy here part of it because it is very relevant to the points I briefly highlighted above:
"(..) In order to make you forgive my very modest writing skills in English, I will briefly interfere in order to put side to side some major quotes upon which I have pondered a lot. Consider it as a puzzle-review, feel free to reverse them in order to make your own opinion.
“Poetry wasn’t written to be analyzed, it was meant to touch without reason”, says [Nicholas Sparks].
No need to say then, the beauties [linguistic, melodic, ect..] of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, moreover when poetry is considered to be the most challenging part of any language.
The translator of the foreign text becomes essential as much as its author, no doubt. Joseph Brodsky has even wrote that “translating a poem is like writing another one”.
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation” [Robert FROST] and “The original is unfaithful to the translation” [Jorge Luis Borges].
Worse, a bad translation of one single verb can turn silly even a great foreign text. Not to mention the complex intellectual process to transmit the meters, rhymes ect..
I know it because I have tried to read Rilke in Arabic two years ago, but it was a painful experience. On the other hand I have enjoyed the French editions of Letters to A Young Poet, my FAVORITE, by Grasset and by Livres de Poche.
Certainly, when translated to a foreign tongue, “Translation is very much like copying paintings” - [Boris Pasternak]. But translation is essential, I would even say vital for every civilization, because “Without translation, we would be living in provinces bordering on silence” - [George Steiner]
To conclude this very short parenthesis, I personally adhere to Yevtushenko’s humorous thought: "Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful".. Sarcastic yet very pertinent.
Here is an example from her poem "The Guest":
A-
"And his lusterless eyes
Did not move from my ring.
Not a single muscle quivered
On his radiantly evil face.
Oh, I know: his delight
Is the tense and passionate knowledge
That he needs nothing,
That I can refuse him nothing."
- by Carl Proffer
B-
"His torpid eyes were fixed
unblinking on my ring.
Not a single muscle stirred
in his clear, sardonic face.
Oh, I see: his game is that he knows
intimately, ardently,
there’s nothing from me he wants,
I have nothing to refuse"
- by Kunitz and Hayward
C-
"And his eyes, dully gazing,
Never lifted from my ring.
Not a single muscle shifting
Beneath that evil-glistening.
O, I understand: to know, passionately
And intensely, is his delight,
That there’s nothing that he needs,
And nothing I can deny."
- A. S. Kline
Frustrating and confusing, eh?
No wonder than that many of the non-Russian speaking readers are skeptical about why she is internationally considered by the literary critics as the most remarkable poet of Acmeism (Russian modern school of poetry. The acmeists revolted against symbolism's vagueness and attempted to privilege emotional suggestion over clarity and vivid sensory images) and arguably one of the greatest poets of all time.
My favourite poem in this selection is "Epilogue", a poignant tribute by Akhmatova to her friends who supported her when she has suffered from censorship, prison and the persecution of her family, for both her husband, the writer Gumilev, and her son were victims of the oppression by the authorities:
"I wish I could call each by name, but the list
Was taken away and no longer exists.
For all of them, I wove this gorgeous shawl
From fragments of phrases I took from them all.
I think of them always, wherever I go.
I'll never forget them in new times of woe.
And soon, when my mouth is sealed once again, -
The mouth that screamed for a million men, -
Let them remember me in a similar way, -
On the eve of my future memorial day."
Andrey Kneller's translations of Akhmatova's poems (and of many other poets like Blok, Mandelstam, Mayakovsky, Tsvetaeva) are acclaimed by most of the critiques.
This selection in english successfully conveys the meanings enclosed in the verses, cautiously without to forsake the form, the substance, the direct and implicit messages, all with a notable attention given to the original scansion (The rhythm of a line of verse).
Many other translations has failed to convey the closure of the original lyric and to transmit the melancholic and the tragic mood that mirrors Akhmatova’s shaken psyche, as well as the directness and the obliquity in her poetry.
Wether the translator adheres to the formal prosody (literal translation of the original verse) or recasts the original (by interpretation or "imitation"), these translations alter the rhetorical flow in Akhmatova's original verse, its idioms and metaphors, its beautiful lyrical quality and moreover ruin its rhymes (rich of polysyllabic Russian words), which weaken the stanzas' structure..
As Marjorie Parloff sums Akhmatova's style:
« Her poems are almost always written in short rhyming stanzas, in which melopoeia, to use Pound’s term for verse music, trumps not only logopoeia (“the dance of the intellect among words”), but also phanopoeia (the “casting of images upon the visual imagination”).
Rhyme, anaphora, assonance, alliteration—this dense musical chiming, central to Akhmatova’s lyric, cannot be carried over into English".
http://marjorieperloff.com/reviews/ak...
On this subject I recommend this essay by the great Nobel prize laureate poet J. Brodsky
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archi...
I have previously wrote notes on the devaluation of translated poems in a review of a Selection of poems by Borges [in Arabic]
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
and in another very short review of a catastrophic English to Arabic translation of Rilke's poems from the collection “The Essential Rilke”.
I'll copy here part of it because it is very relevant to the points I briefly highlighted above:
"(..) In order to make you forgive my very modest writing skills in English, I will briefly interfere in order to put side to side some major quotes upon which I have pondered a lot. Consider it as a puzzle-review, feel free to reverse them in order to make your own opinion.
“Poetry wasn’t written to be analyzed, it was meant to touch without reason”, says [Nicholas Sparks].
No need to say then, the beauties [linguistic, melodic, ect..] of poetry cannot be preserved in any language except that in which it was originally written, moreover when poetry is considered to be the most challenging part of any language.
The translator of the foreign text becomes essential as much as its author, no doubt. Joseph Brodsky has even wrote that “translating a poem is like writing another one”.
“Poetry is what gets lost in translation” [Robert FROST] and “The original is unfaithful to the translation” [Jorge Luis Borges].
Worse, a bad translation of one single verb can turn silly even a great foreign text. Not to mention the complex intellectual process to transmit the meters, rhymes ect..
I know it because I have tried to read Rilke in Arabic two years ago, but it was a painful experience. On the other hand I have enjoyed the French editions of Letters to A Young Poet, my FAVORITE, by Grasset and by Livres de Poche.
Certainly, when translated to a foreign tongue, “Translation is very much like copying paintings” - [Boris Pasternak]. But translation is essential, I would even say vital for every civilization, because “Without translation, we would be living in provinces bordering on silence” - [George Steiner]
To conclude this very short parenthesis, I personally adhere to Yevtushenko’s humorous thought: "Translation is like a woman. If it is beautiful, it is not faithful. If it is faithful, it is most certainly not beautiful".. Sarcastic yet very pertinent.
September 11, 2015
I only recently heard of this poet and I was keen to read something by her, I really enjoyed this book and her poetry lived up to the expectations I had when I first read a recommendation about her work, and so I will be returning to this book regularly to become more familiar. I have recommended it to family, and to my sons in particular who enjoy literature and poetry. Andrey Kneller is the author please take a look at his profile and you will see that he is eminently qualified for translating this work from Russian, and is driven by a love for Russian poetry and a desire to make it more known in the English speaking world. I highly recommend this book.
November 10, 2023
Possibly 3.5?
The first half was okay but the second half was much better!
The first half was okay but the second half was much better!
November 2, 2015
Anna Akhmatova is a brilliant poet, that much we all know. It is worth reading every single one of her poetry collections, but I wasn't feeling duty-bound to write a review for this collection, until, at the very end, I chanced upon her poem "Epilogue". Sweet heavens! A beautiful monster. It had all the free-spiritedness that is the hallmark of almost every Akhmatova poem, but it also had that soul-crunching weight of despair crushing the verses that is evident in only the greatest poets. Pick up this collection, if only for Epilogue. All poems preceding it are extremely worthy appetisers. And then read Epilogue again, and again.
January 3, 2022
Amazing poetry. Akhmatova evokes emotions through little details. In one poem she talked about staying with an abusive lover, and I realized it was more about the Russian government than any lover she had. I think I've read another more formal translation, and I liked the informal feel of this one.
2022 re-read: I still loved this short book of moody poems. Last time I read it I thought the translation was informal, but this time I felt like it was a bit too much on the literal side, if anything. Poetry is really hard to translate! I'm especially haunted by "He didn't glorify or scold me..." (pg. 59).
2022 re-read: I still loved this short book of moody poems. Last time I read it I thought the translation was informal, but this time I felt like it was a bit too much on the literal side, if anything. Poetry is really hard to translate! I'm especially haunted by "He didn't glorify or scold me..." (pg. 59).
June 28, 2014
Местами в переводе стихотворений на английский не сохраняется рифма, местами выходит немного не тот смысл. Однако, я приятно удивлён, ибо не думал, что вообще возможно передать сии произведения с такой точностью, с какой они представлены в данном сборнике. Неплохо.
February 27, 2018
These poems span the poet's life, moving from early poems about lovers to later ones about the losses of a lifetime lived in Russia. So much sadness, but also quite a bit of beauty, both in the words and the depictions. I'm glad I finally got around to reading some of her poetry.
February 24, 2020
A great poetic treat.
Simple but powerful and subtle work of poetry. Brought me to tears.. intense and real, honest and crude. A great poet that she is.
Simple but powerful and subtle work of poetry. Brought me to tears.. intense and real, honest and crude. A great poet that she is.
January 14, 2024
the first half of this book didn’t really grip me but the further into it i got, the more utterly enthralled i was by these poems!! they hold a tragic sort of beauty, full of depth and grief and love and so much all at once.
i don’t speak russian so i can’t comment on how accurately translated they were, but i personally found the translated versions to read beautifully and definitely hold that raw emotion that should be conveyed through poems like these.
a haunting but gorgeous read!!
i don’t speak russian so i can’t comment on how accurately translated they were, but i personally found the translated versions to read beautifully and definitely hold that raw emotion that should be conveyed through poems like these.
a haunting but gorgeous read!!
December 28, 2014
Disclosure: Mr. Kneller invited me to review his collection of translations.
For several years now I have been a student of the relationship between state-making projects and state-resistant peoples, between totalitarianism and the humanities, between oppression and resistance.
Naturally this means I have also been a student of Russia, her history, her politics, her literature and her language.
Russian is notoriously difficult to translate--the terse, heavy sentences cluster like firs in a boreal forest, yielding their meaning to the outsider only after much practice and study, not only of the language, but of the culture, of idiom, of context.
Mr. Kneller believes that translation should not only convey (as accurately as possible) idiom and meaning, but also the form in which the idiom and meaning were originally conveyed. Accordingly, Mr. Kneller's translations scan appropriately, and rhyme where they should.
I can't help but feel that Akhmatova, herself the undisputed master of Acmeist poetry (concerned with form and rigor and with using words in their most direct and unsettling meaning), would be very pleased with Mr. Kneller's efforts at translation.
Final Meeting assembles, in largely chronological order, Akhmatova's stormiest love poems, many of which are nearly haiku-like "complete fragments" of dark, rich coloration, sonorous and devastating. The work concludes with an excellently translated and annotated [Requiem[/i], considered rightly to be Akhmatova's crowning work and one of the best, most enduring works of Soviet literature.
Reviewing translations is hard work, involving the comparison of several different translated versions of poetry along with the contemplation of the poems as singular works. Mr. Kneller provides half the footwork for the reader by providing Russian originals alongside his translations NOTE TO POETRY TRANSLATORS: DO THIS ALWAYS, and a few print and online translated collections provide a basis for comparison.
Largely, Mr. Kneller's translations are more faithful to the original poetry in terms of form and idiom--where earlier translations might forsake form for the conveyance of meaning, or attempt to convey the meaning of a line within the strict limits of literal interpretation, Mr. Kneller patiently, laboriously constructs in English emotionally and functionally faithful replicas of Akhmatova's Russian poems. As stated above, this is no small feat and any serious appreciation of Anna Akhmatova should begin with his translations.
Compare, for example, the first half of "Reading Hamlet", a poem from the perspective of Ophelia.
Here's a translation from Tanya Karshtedt:
And here's Kneller's version:
Not only is Kneller's version more accurate in terms of form and scansion, his translation really pulls through Akhmatova's fierce pride and Ophelia's dazed hopelessness.
Here's another comparison, this time the opening stanza of a poem about early love and sexuality.
First, the lines from Judith Hemschemeyer:
And now for Kneller's translation:
Again, Kneller captures the languid sexuality of the stanza much more accurately, and the lines scan without sacrificing any meaning. One can easily imagine Akhmatova's lazy smile as she devastates a room of other poets (many of whom were male, all of whom were admirers) with the two opening lines at a reading in some salon.
There are a few minor missteps sprinkled throughout (the occasional use of passive voice, one or two small grammatical tics), but they in no way tarnish the greatness and faithfulness of Kneller's translations.
There's no possible way that Mr. Kneller could have guessed that I have been (very slowly) teaching myself Russian, and that I am in the process of translating a play by Anna Akhmatova's first husband, Nikolai Gumilev. My meager studies and feeble attempts at translation allowed me to puzzle through the original Russian alongside his translations, not only allowing me a glimpse into Akhmatova's original language, but also allowing me to appreciate greatly his efforts at faithful translation.
If you've read Russian poetry or Akhmatova and been put off by the awkward diction that seems to clog up the lines, you owe it to yourself to read through Mr. Kneller's translations. He has done a superb job and I will certainly read his translations of other poets.
For several years now I have been a student of the relationship between state-making projects and state-resistant peoples, between totalitarianism and the humanities, between oppression and resistance.
Naturally this means I have also been a student of Russia, her history, her politics, her literature and her language.
Russian is notoriously difficult to translate--the terse, heavy sentences cluster like firs in a boreal forest, yielding their meaning to the outsider only after much practice and study, not only of the language, but of the culture, of idiom, of context.
Mr. Kneller believes that translation should not only convey (as accurately as possible) idiom and meaning, but also the form in which the idiom and meaning were originally conveyed. Accordingly, Mr. Kneller's translations scan appropriately, and rhyme where they should.
I can't help but feel that Akhmatova, herself the undisputed master of Acmeist poetry (concerned with form and rigor and with using words in their most direct and unsettling meaning), would be very pleased with Mr. Kneller's efforts at translation.
Final Meeting assembles, in largely chronological order, Akhmatova's stormiest love poems, many of which are nearly haiku-like "complete fragments" of dark, rich coloration, sonorous and devastating. The work concludes with an excellently translated and annotated [Requiem[/i], considered rightly to be Akhmatova's crowning work and one of the best, most enduring works of Soviet literature.
Reviewing translations is hard work, involving the comparison of several different translated versions of poetry along with the contemplation of the poems as singular works. Mr. Kneller provides half the footwork for the reader by providing Russian originals alongside his translations NOTE TO POETRY TRANSLATORS: DO THIS ALWAYS, and a few print and online translated collections provide a basis for comparison.
Largely, Mr. Kneller's translations are more faithful to the original poetry in terms of form and idiom--where earlier translations might forsake form for the conveyance of meaning, or attempt to convey the meaning of a line within the strict limits of literal interpretation, Mr. Kneller patiently, laboriously constructs in English emotionally and functionally faithful replicas of Akhmatova's Russian poems. As stated above, this is no small feat and any serious appreciation of Anna Akhmatova should begin with his translations.
Compare, for example, the first half of "Reading Hamlet", a poem from the perspective of Ophelia.
Here's a translation from Tanya Karshtedt:
The lot by the graves was a dusty hot land;
The river behind -- blue and cool.
You told me, "Well, go to a convent,
Or go marry a fool..."
Princes always say that, being placid or fierce,
But I cherish this speech, short and poor --
Let it flow and shine through a thousand years,
Like from shoulders do mantles of fur.
And here's Kneller's version:
The graveyard, wasteland, and the shore,
Where the river shines cool and blue.
You told me: “Get to a nunnery or
Find a fool to marry you…”
That’s the sort of thing princes say, I know,
But I’ll never forget this one, –
Like an ermine mantle let your words shine and flow
For many years, and on, and on.
Not only is Kneller's version more accurate in terms of form and scansion, his translation really pulls through Akhmatova's fierce pride and Ophelia's dazed hopelessness.
Here's another comparison, this time the opening stanza of a poem about early love and sexuality.
First, the lines from Judith Hemschemeyer:
In my room lives a beautiful
Slow black snake;
It is like me, just as lazy,
Just as cold
And now for Kneller's translation:
In my room there is a serpent,
Slow and gorgeous to behold…
She is calm and introverted,
Much like I, and just as cold.
Again, Kneller captures the languid sexuality of the stanza much more accurately, and the lines scan without sacrificing any meaning. One can easily imagine Akhmatova's lazy smile as she devastates a room of other poets (many of whom were male, all of whom were admirers) with the two opening lines at a reading in some salon.
There are a few minor missteps sprinkled throughout (the occasional use of passive voice, one or two small grammatical tics), but they in no way tarnish the greatness and faithfulness of Kneller's translations.
There's no possible way that Mr. Kneller could have guessed that I have been (very slowly) teaching myself Russian, and that I am in the process of translating a play by Anna Akhmatova's first husband, Nikolai Gumilev. My meager studies and feeble attempts at translation allowed me to puzzle through the original Russian alongside his translations, not only allowing me a glimpse into Akhmatova's original language, but also allowing me to appreciate greatly his efforts at faithful translation.
If you've read Russian poetry or Akhmatova and been put off by the awkward diction that seems to clog up the lines, you owe it to yourself to read through Mr. Kneller's translations. He has done a superb job and I will certainly read his translations of other poets.
Read
April 28, 2019“If only you, the fool from long ago,
The favorite of every single friend,
The carefree sinner of the Tsarskoe Selo,
Could see your future to its full extent.”
—Requiem, IV
Here in the middle of Requiem, her poetic cycle on the Stalinist purges, Russia’s favorite poet wonders what her favorite poet, Pushkin, might have thought of the turns that history has taken since his death. But in me a different question is raised by this slim volume: what might the young Akhmatova have thought of the turns her own life had taken. The translator has included a selection of youthful poems, poems of individual angst and love, and juxtaposed them with Requiem: and between the two eerie concurrences abound. The lost lovers, the despairing musings, the pain of contact and of separation: Akhmatova’s very constitution, from the beginning, seems to have been such as to foreshadow the excruciating drama of her later life, when, husband murdered and son imprisoned, she would stand for seventeen months amid the hushed crowds before the Kremlin gates. She writes: "I have foreseen this sunny day,/ The vacant home, the desolation;" and I take a peculiar heed of such lines, as I'll try to illustrate with an example.
Here is an untitled poem from 1910:
“In my room there is a serpent,
Slow and gorgeous to behold…
She is calm and introverted,
Much like I, and just as cold.
As I’m writing in the evening,
She is sitting by my side,
Her indifferent eyes won’t leave me,
Shining emerald in the night.
In the dark I sob and whimper
But the icons don’t reply…
My requests would be so different
If it wasn’t for those eyes.
In the morning, when I’m weary,
Like a candle melting thin,
A black ribbon slithers freely
Down across the shoulder skin.”
And here’s the first poem of Requiem:
“They took you at dawn, I remember,
As though to the wake, I trailed,
Children wept in a darkened chamber,
And the icon candle grew frail.
Your lips kept the icon’s chill.
Deathly sweat—I remember it all!
Like the wives of the streltsy, I will
Moan for you by the Kremlin Wall.”
These are beautiful poems (the first is possibly my favorite in the volume), on widely different themes, but three things, as far as I can see, tie them together across thirty years of life and work. The first is stylistic, and is common to all the poems. Akhmatova’s school, called Acmeism, favors direct speech and a rigid approach to meter. (The translator has reproduced rhyme patterns throughout the book, which is often deleterious in translation, since meaning has to be bent to fit the form. Here, the directness of the language might mean that more similes are available to choose from, such that the original meaning can be retained. Not speaking Russian, I am not qualified to judge. In any case, one eventually finds the rhythm of the book, and is not too disturbed.) The second is a consistency in emotional valence. The angsty and analytical character of a young poet is sometimes soothed by marriage and steady work: but Akhmatova’s marriage, not to mention her entire social fabric, was destroyed just as she passed beyond youth. And the third is that symbolic motif: “the icons don’t reply,” “the icon candle grew frail.” There’s a lesson here, for young poets like myself: develop a poetic vocabulary which is flexible, which can be adapted to new situations. A poetic sensibility is one which invests certain objects with a surcharge of meaning: and a surcharge means enough meaning to go around.
The favorite of every single friend,
The carefree sinner of the Tsarskoe Selo,
Could see your future to its full extent.”
—Requiem, IV
Here in the middle of Requiem, her poetic cycle on the Stalinist purges, Russia’s favorite poet wonders what her favorite poet, Pushkin, might have thought of the turns that history has taken since his death. But in me a different question is raised by this slim volume: what might the young Akhmatova have thought of the turns her own life had taken. The translator has included a selection of youthful poems, poems of individual angst and love, and juxtaposed them with Requiem: and between the two eerie concurrences abound. The lost lovers, the despairing musings, the pain of contact and of separation: Akhmatova’s very constitution, from the beginning, seems to have been such as to foreshadow the excruciating drama of her later life, when, husband murdered and son imprisoned, she would stand for seventeen months amid the hushed crowds before the Kremlin gates. She writes: "I have foreseen this sunny day,/ The vacant home, the desolation;" and I take a peculiar heed of such lines, as I'll try to illustrate with an example.
Here is an untitled poem from 1910:
“In my room there is a serpent,
Slow and gorgeous to behold…
She is calm and introverted,
Much like I, and just as cold.
As I’m writing in the evening,
She is sitting by my side,
Her indifferent eyes won’t leave me,
Shining emerald in the night.
In the dark I sob and whimper
But the icons don’t reply…
My requests would be so different
If it wasn’t for those eyes.
In the morning, when I’m weary,
Like a candle melting thin,
A black ribbon slithers freely
Down across the shoulder skin.”
And here’s the first poem of Requiem:
“They took you at dawn, I remember,
As though to the wake, I trailed,
Children wept in a darkened chamber,
And the icon candle grew frail.
Your lips kept the icon’s chill.
Deathly sweat—I remember it all!
Like the wives of the streltsy, I will
Moan for you by the Kremlin Wall.”
These are beautiful poems (the first is possibly my favorite in the volume), on widely different themes, but three things, as far as I can see, tie them together across thirty years of life and work. The first is stylistic, and is common to all the poems. Akhmatova’s school, called Acmeism, favors direct speech and a rigid approach to meter. (The translator has reproduced rhyme patterns throughout the book, which is often deleterious in translation, since meaning has to be bent to fit the form. Here, the directness of the language might mean that more similes are available to choose from, such that the original meaning can be retained. Not speaking Russian, I am not qualified to judge. In any case, one eventually finds the rhythm of the book, and is not too disturbed.) The second is a consistency in emotional valence. The angsty and analytical character of a young poet is sometimes soothed by marriage and steady work: but Akhmatova’s marriage, not to mention her entire social fabric, was destroyed just as she passed beyond youth. And the third is that symbolic motif: “the icons don’t reply,” “the icon candle grew frail.” There’s a lesson here, for young poets like myself: develop a poetic vocabulary which is flexible, which can be adapted to new situations. A poetic sensibility is one which invests certain objects with a surcharge of meaning: and a surcharge means enough meaning to go around.
July 13, 2014
Anna Akhmatova's poetry is deep emotional universe where love, emotion and loneliness create tragic atmosphere. In 'Final Meeting: Selected Poetry of Anna Akhmatova' Andrey Kneller's russian-english translation shows that the different languages can preserve the specific of the lyrical expression of the author, her absorption and primordial alienation. Chronologically the poems follow psychological states of Akhmatova's painful anticipation, her look at both the past and future. Thanks to this book, we can view the works of Akhmatova in two different linguistic dimensions, to compare them and to rediscover her poetry.
August 31, 2021
Delectable.
Fave Poems: The Teacher, Death, Epilogue, The Guest, Dedication, In the Evening
But there are times when wild gusts of spring,
Or word arrangements in some casual book,
Or someone's smile suddenly will draw
Me back into the life that did not happen.
In such a year this could have happened,
And in such - this: to travel, ponder, see,
And to recall, and enter a new love,
Like entering a mirror, with blunt awareness
Of treason and the wrinkle that did not exist
A day ago...
But if, from the life that I've lost,
I could have looked and seen my present life,
At last, I'd know what envy truly is...
Fave Poems: The Teacher, Death, Epilogue, The Guest, Dedication, In the Evening
But there are times when wild gusts of spring,
Or word arrangements in some casual book,
Or someone's smile suddenly will draw
Me back into the life that did not happen.
In such a year this could have happened,
And in such - this: to travel, ponder, see,
And to recall, and enter a new love,
Like entering a mirror, with blunt awareness
Of treason and the wrinkle that did not exist
A day ago...
But if, from the life that I've lost,
I could have looked and seen my present life,
At last, I'd know what envy truly is...
September 14, 2022
When at night I’m waiting her arrival, Life, it seems, is hanging by a thread. Glory, youth, and freedom cannot rival The joy she brings me, with a flute in hand. She enters and before I can discern her, She stares at me with an attentive eye. “Were you,” I ask, “the cause of the Inferno For Dante?” – And she answers: “I.” 1924, Kazanskaya 2
March 14, 2023
Haunting and Beautiful
This collection is filled with amazing poetry. As impressed as I am with the original work I am equally impressed by Andrey Kneller’s translations.
I’m always blown away when I read things that are so old and the emotions sound so fresh and alive. It shows me the human condition doesn’t change much over time.
This collection is filled with amazing poetry. As impressed as I am with the original work I am equally impressed by Andrey Kneller’s translations.
I’m always blown away when I read things that are so old and the emotions sound so fresh and alive. It shows me the human condition doesn’t change much over time.
September 18, 2015
Beautiful. I now place this particular copy/ translation among my favorite books of poetry.
August 14, 2017
Beautifully written collection of poems, mostly reflecting on the human impact of the Stalinist purges. Very accessible and powerful.
January 26, 2019
“Come closer, sit here by my side, Be gentle with me, treat me kind: This old blue notebook – look inside – I wrote these poems as a child.“
April 22, 2024
Anna's poetry deeply resonates with the heart. It is not read as words, but the act of reading immediately transports the reader out of time and place, and you feel you are in her world. Her poems are, of course, known for their haunting beauty and timeless relevance. She speaks clear and evocative words that share her suffering and the loss she lived through during the Russian Revolution and the Stalinist repression. Her subjects include the loss of her husband and son, and her own time in prison.
This collection includes the well-known Requiem and Crucifixion. Whether this is your first reading or your last meeting of Anna's lovely and piercing poetry; you will find her words unforgettable.
"When a person dies,
His portraits change.
His eyes gaze differently and his lips
Smile with a different smile."
-Lines from 1940, Leningrad
March 12, 2025
From the vanities of a carefree world just before the fall of Czarist Russia to a life marked by loss, despair, poverty and oppression under Stalin’s regime, we experience in brief Akhmatova’s personal journey in this slender volume of poetry.
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