This anthology is ambitious – in scope, biographical apparatus and in what it expects of its translators. Although the chronological arc is shorter than that of the granddaddy anthology, Dimitri Obolensky’s The Penguin Book of Russian Verse (1965), which included medieval oral poetry and a pair of important 18th-century literary writers, Lomonosov and Sumarokov, the present editors generously represent and expand – in both directions – the Pushkin era and the 20th century. There are names in the 200-year constellation sprawling between Gavrila Derzhavin (1743-1818) and Marina Boroditskaya (1954-) that will be unfamiliar even to educated Russian readers.
A bigger departure from the Obolensky model, and a bigger problem for English readers, is that the current editors present only verse translations: no Russian texts, no literal prose cribs. Although Robert Chandler is the major contributor, the diversity is considerable, and there is usually more than one hand at work translating a major poet (Pushkin has no fewer than eight different translators). Relatively few of the translators are poets themselves; demanding to be read as poems in their own right, the English versifications shoulder a hefty load.
Continue reading...
