Nayman, A. (2023). Russian Long Poem. Moscow: Alpina non-fiction. (In Russ.)

Abstract

Anatoly Nayman’s Russian Long Poem is devoted to six landmark works of Russian literature: opening with a discussion of I. Bogdanovich’s Dushenka, A. Pushkin’s The Bronze Horseman [Medniy vsadnik], and N. Nekrasov’s Red-Nosed Frost [Moroz, Krasniy nos], the book goes on to analyze 20th-c. experimental long poems, including V. Mayakovsky’s A Cloud in Trousers [Oblako v shtanakh], A. Blok’s Dvenadtsat [The Twelve], and A. Akhmatova’s Poem without a Hero [Poema bez geroya]. The author proposes a new angle for viewing the poems, shifting the reader’s focus from preconceived interpretations to the poetics of the texts, which function primarily as a cultural rather than historical fact. Nayman’s book shows accurate appreciation of the uninterrupted tradition passed down among the poems and points out their ties with a common European context, such as C. Baudelaire’s poetry or Dante’s Divine Comedy. The author details the development of poetic writing, its form and meaning determined by cultural and historical circumstances.