I know the power of words, I know the tocsin of words—not the words that are applauded in theatre-boxes, but those which make coffins break loose and walk off on their four oaken legs. At times they discard you, unprinted, unpublished, but the word gallops on, tightening the saddle-girth, it rings for centuries, and railwaytrains creep up to lick poetry’s calloused hands. I know the power of words. It looks a trifle, like a fallen petal beneath a dancer’s heel. But man in his soul, his lips, his bones . . .

(Vladimir Mayakovsky was the poet of the Russian Revolution. He alternated his political verse with passionate lyrics. He committed suicide in 1930, and the above was the last fragment scribbled in his notebook.)

PROPHETS
Poets the world over often come to tragic ends. Perhaps the depth and strength of the emotion they experience predisposes them to unhealthy life experiences. Or perhaps they may exceed the capacity of the human brain, and end in psychological darkness. The dangerous history of Russia and the Soviet Union has provided plenty of opportunity for this tragic tendency to find fruition.

Interestingly, prophets often experience similar fates. Within the Judeo-Christian tradition there are tales of prophets being stoned and sawed in half. Depressed at his calling, Jonah spent days in darkness, the weight of a sea pressing down on him. The apostles suffered similarly. And of course, Christ epitomized the prophetic experience. Rejected in his own land. Weeks of contemplation in the wilderness. Betrayal. Martyrdom.

It is actually a commonplace in Russia to identify poets with prophets. The comparison began with Aleksandr Pushkin, if not earlier. In his poem “Prophet” he imitates the Old Testament calling of a prophet, being anointed by a seraph and commanded to “Arise, O prophet, see and hear, be filled with My Will, go forth over land and sea, and set the hearts of men on fire with your Word.” Many poets have felt they had a calling. Particularly in the Soviet era, with the squelching of actual religion, poets became a spiritual wellspring for the people. And Russians on the whole take their poets and poetry much more seriously than do Americans.

And if a prophet is not just a spokesman for God (and certainly there were some Russian poets who very much disdained religion), not simply a foreteller, but a forth-teller, someone who speaks forth, speaks out, expresses either what the people need to say or what they need to hear, then the Russian poetic tradition is a veritable canon, a collection of writings made holy by their truth and sealed with the blood of final witness. If so, then The Heritage of Russian Verse is a sampling of that scripture.

The Heritage of Russian Verse, Introduced and edited by Dimitri Obolensky.
1976, Indiana University Press, ISBN: 0-253-32736-9

Originally published in1962 as The Penguin Book of Russian Verse, this collection is ubiquitous among Russian departments in universities across the globe. Its goal is to provide a thorough survey of Russian poetry from the beginning to the 1960s. In all, 61 authors are represented by a few hundred poems. They are indexed by author and title/first line. We are given a short but useful paragraph about each artist, including biographical information and some notes regarding their importance.

The volume begins with a lengthy introduction by Obolensky that aptly surveys the history and context of poetry in Russia and the Soviet Union. This knowledge is essential. He follows it with a short note examining Russian versification, explaining the structures of Russian poetry. The body of the text goes from poet to poet, chronologically by date of birth. Most poems are complete, but only excerpts are provided of longer poems, such as Pushkin’s “Bronze Horseman” or Anna Akhmatova’s “Poem Without a Hero”. And it may seem disproportionate that minor poets are represented with a few pieces, while majors like Boris Pasternak rarely have more than ten. But the fact is that it’s relatively easy to find collections of major poets’ work, while the only exposure to minors like Yakov Polonsky you may receive is in a collection like this.

Each page is divided horizontally, the original poems above, their plain prose translations into English beneath. In some ways it is disappointing that the translations are not in verse, but the goal of precision in translation is rightly prioritized. In any case, the form of these poems can rarely be captured in translation because of the particular applications of the Russian language—not only rhyme but elegant structuring would be lost. For the most part, the translations are good, and the strength of the poems’ meaning is conveyed. But if you can’t read Russian, you will miss out on the beauty of form most of these poems display, and a few important turns of phrase.

CONTENTS
Obolensky begins by offering samples of the often neglected medieval poetic tradition in Russia. Unfortunately, these samples are few. They include “The Lay of Igor’s Campaign” (even featuring the pre-Soviet Russian alphabet!) the bylinas “Ilya of Murom and Nightingale the Robber” and “Sadko and the King of the Sea”. The other side of the coin in Medieval Russia was the Church, and there are some spiritual verses collected here as well, such as “The Dream of the Most Holy Mother of God” and “Joseph’s Lament”. This is barely enough to whet the appetite for those interested in heroic epics, religious verse, or medieval literature in general, but it should broaden some horizons.

Obolensky gets serious in the 18th Century, with offerings from Lomonosov and Derzhavin, and even some fables from Krylov. Zhukovsky follows, paving the way for the 19th Century and Pushkin, the greatest of all Russian writers. Extracts from Eugene Onegin, Ruslan and Lyudmila and Boris Godunov join shorter works. One of the first in the long line of tragic figures, Pushkin suffered for his liberal views, and died in a duel. It may sound bold to say so if you aren’t aware of him, but Pushkin is to Russia what Shakespeare is to England and America. Read it to believe it.

Pushkin and his contemporaries, all well-represented by Obolensky, formed a Golden Age for Russian Verse, and although public tastes began to stray by his time, Pushkin’s successor Mikhail Lermontov also enjoyed great success. Unfortunately, he emulated his hero even in death, claimed by a duel at the age of 27. The rest of the 1800s are fleshed out with poems from Alexei Tolstoy, Fet, Nekrasov, Soloviev and others.

The Silver Age of Russian poetry, the Symbolists, Futurists, and Acmeists of the turn of the century, and the early Soviet poets receive the greatest attention from Obolensky. Ivanov, Bunin, Bryusov, Bely, Blok, Khlebnikov, Gumilev and others are interspersed with giants like Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Osip Mandelshtam, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Vladimir Mayakovsky. The trauma of the revolution and the repression of these artists shine through their words like a beacon. In some cases, initial jubilance at the upheavals is gradually replaced by dark disappointment and either suicide or the Gulag.

‘Peasant poets’ like Sergey Esenin and Evgeny Evtushenko complete the compilation, along with offerings from their less well-known contemporaries. The most recent poet featured is Bella Akhmadulina, and the collection as a whole is unsatisfactory by at least 1950.

REACTIONS and RECOMMENDATION
A man like me can drown in the depths of the Russian Soul. There is patriotism here. Aspiration, love, beauty, nature, and God. There is also disillusionment, despair and death. This is the substance, the being, essence and life of Russia. With the focus on the early Soviet era, this book can impart an understanding of those turmoils on a personal, emotional level.

But I must again say that this collection will disappoint if you are interested in particular poets. What? Only four poems from Bunin! You know he won a Nobel Prize don’t you? Yes. If you want a particular poet, if you want translations formatted in verse, if you want medieval or recent poetry, try something else. It’s not hard to find a collection of Pushkin, Pasternak or Evtushenko. Collections of bylinas, heroic epics, are becoming more common. This particular compilation adequately fills the necessary role of the survey. Its long life in the classroom is evidence of its value. For the student of Russian, it is wonderful to read the original verses and enjoy the beauty of their form with the aid of clear translations to elucidate meaning.

An annoyance I must mention is that the table of contents is very ineffective. The biographical paragraphs of the poets are included not in the body of the book, but in the table of contents. This results in the table covering 30 pages—hardly useful when you just want to flip to a poet. Thankfully the index assists in that. But it would have been much wiser to have a more standard table of contents, and include the biographical information at the beginning of each poet’s section instead. Additionally, I should state that this isn’t a pretty book. There are no pictures, and it’s fairly obvious the layout had as a primary goal the conservation of our planet’s forests.

Nevertheless, this is a consummate overview for anyone who really wants to steep themselves in Russian poetry. That is not to say I agree with all of Obolensky’s selections. Where is Akhmatova’s Requiem? Where is Blok’s The Twelve? Where is Tsvetaeva’s best work? But in a compilation this large, there will always be perceived omissions.

Truthfully, poetry is the meaning of life. It is the reality behind all the things we do. It is the signified that our jobs, our learning, our pastimes, our relationships signify. And the Russians represented in this volume wrote it with a sweetness and sorrow so strong it puckers the mouth. Take it in small doses, slowly, daily. It will awaken you.

- Panguitch

My age, my beast, who will be able to look into the pupils of your eyes and stick together the vertebrae of two centuries with his blood? The blood that builds gushes out of earthly things; the parasite only trembles on the threshold of the new days. . . .

. . . And the buds will swell again, and the green shoots will sprout. But your spine has been smashed, my beautiful, pitiful age. And you look back, cruel and weak, with an inane smile, like a beast that has once been supple, at the tracks left by your own paws. - “The Age” by Osip Mandelshtam

Recommended: Yes