Anna of All the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova

What a moving , inspiring biography this is ! A Must read. If you are not acquainted with Anna Akhmatova And the astonishing artistic creativity in Russia that miraculously abided thru unimaginable tumolt and oppression. This book will do the trick! Part of this miracle: how passionate and tender their support towards each other amidst. What beauty endured. Amazing, complex and ardent characters in her circle described, too. And they were real. Perhaps one accomplshment of this bio is that it leaves one humbeled yet sumptuously entertained in the midst.. My edition , dog eared by now. What a fascinating woman and time in Russia. You will fall in love.

Elaine Feinstein's engrossing biography of Anna Akhmatova - one of the greatest poets of the twentieth century - makes the woman, her work and her world vividly alive. In chronicling this extraordinarily dramatic life, Feinstein makes use of a broad range of new material, including letters, journals and memoirs, and interviews Akhmatova's surviving friends and relatives. Feinstein follows Akhmatova from her privileged Russian youth to her free-spirited early adulthood and her first, unhappy marriage to the poet Nikolay Gumilyov. The 1920s were years of starvation in Russia, but for Akhmatova they were also a period of great creativity and many love affairs, some painful, others more fulfilling. In a key encounter, Akhmatova met and fell in love with a married art historian, Vladimir Punin, and lived with him in his apartment, where his unhappy wife and young daughter had to remain. During this time, Akhmatova's son, Lev, from her first marriage, suddenly re-entered her life. Feinstein gives a heartbreaking account of her relationship with Lev, who was exiled in Siberia for many years. (Despite Akhmatova's many pleas to the Soviet authorities on his behalf, Lev was not rehabilitated until 1956.) Akhmatova's works were banned in the Soviet Union from 1925 to 1940, but despite ill health and further turmoil, her inner toughness enabled her to continue to write poetry of genius. She remained in Leningrad when the Nazis invaded and then was airlifted out to Tashkent, where she spent the war years. This immensely readable and profoundly touching study shows how, despite her many hardships, Akhmatova was prepared to give her unstinting support to friends such as Mandelstam, Pasternak and Shostakovich who were victimised by the Stalin regime. And Feinstein sheds invaluable light on the uniqueness of the poems which gave a voice to the people of Russia and which still evoke intense love and admiration for Akhmatova to this day. Marcus Adams