Suggested Reading

A short essay cannot begin to capture the full measure of this great poet’s life and work. We offer the following ideas for suggested additional study.

For a wonderful biography of Akhmatova and her times, see Roberta Reeder’s Anna Akhmatova: Poet and Prophet (Picador, $35).

Judith Hemschemeyer has translated all of Akhmatova’s poetry in the wonderful (and weighty) tome, The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova (Zephyr Press, $29 • www.zephyrpress.org). This volume also has an excellent biographical essay by Roberta Reeder, and the portion of Isaiah Berlin’s Memoirs relating to Akhmatova. For a selected bilingual collection of Akhmatova’s verse, see Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova, with translations by Judith Hemschemeyer, edited and introduced by Roberta Reeder (Zephyr Press, $16.95)

Akhmatova’s prose also makes for interesting reading, and a fine collection of selected, translated prose was translated and edited by Ronald Meyer: Anna Akhmatova, My Half Century (Northwestern University Press, $18.95).

Berlin’s essay on Akhmatova can be found in his The Soviet Mind (Brookings, $28.95 – see page 60 of this issue)

For a look at Akhmatova’s life and work through the prism of her meeting with Berlin, see Gyorgy Dalos’ The Guest from the Future: Anna Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin (FSG, $25)

The Akhmatova Journals: 1938-1941, by Lidia Chukovskaya, offers an intimate look at the poet’s life and work, through the vivid words of her close friend and confidante. (Northwestern University Press, $24.95)

A fine, prosaic video was produced about Akhmatova: Fear and the Muse.

Links to purchase all these items can be found online at the Russian Life website (www.russianlife.net).