Poetry of the Silver Age: The Various Voices of Russian Modernism (Artes Liberales

This book presents sixteen leading poets of the Silver Age of Russian poetry, so called only because the designation of "Golden Age" already belonged to the age of Pushkin. In fact, the Silver Age produced more poets of undoubted greatness, originality and universal appeal than the Golden Age. All of the poets introduced, with Innokenty Annensky, a symbolist, the oldest and the first to die (1856-1909), Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), a futurist, the youngest, and the acmeist Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) the last to die, were each in his or her own way "modernists" in poetic technique, world-view, and aesthetics. This book is addressed mainly to the reader who does not read Russian, but takes an interest, academic or otherwise, in Russian poetry and would like to learn more about it than could be learned from an anthology or from a history of Russian literature. Enough poems by each poet are presented to give the reader an idea of the poet's main topics, devices, and idiosyncratic poetic vision. Enough biographic, literary, and contingent background is provided to facilitate the understanding of each poem.