Moscow Memoirs Memories of Anna Akhmatov

Osip Mandelstam and Anna Akhmatova stood at the pinnacle of twentieth-century Russian literature, and their works continue to stand as monuments of literary achievement, yet they also suffered brutally under Stalin's regime, martyrs to its paranoia and its suppression of free thought. In the early 1960s Akhmatova encouraged Emma Gerstein to record her memories of Mandelstam, but Gerstein's vivid and uncompromising account was not at all what she had expected. When first published in Moscow in 1998, her memoirs provoked a wide array of responses, from condemnation to rapturous praise. A shrewd observer and serious literary specialist in her own right, Gerstein was uniquely qualified to remove both poets from their pedestals, and to bring the extraordinary atmosphere of the Soviet 1930s back to life. Part biography, part autobiography, this book radically alters our view of Russia's two greatest twentieth-century poets and provides memorable vignettes of numerous other figures, Boris Pasternak among them, from that partly forgotten and misunderstood world. Gerstein's integrity and perceptive comments make her account compulsively readable and enable us to reexamine that extraordinary epoch.

"Born to a man who became a high-ranking Soviet physician, Gerstein (1903-2002) rebelled against her father's political affiliations early on. After a string of unsatisfying jobs, she followed a desire to write, establishing herself as a literary scholar and ensconcing herself among the literati of Soviet Russia. Her life changed dramatically in 1928, when she met Mandelstam and his wife, Nadezhda; Gerstein now had access to a quite famous living poet and his circle of friends, eventually including Akhmatova. The group suffered through the political woes of the time but also reveled in its literary excitement. Weaving biographical threads with autobiographical filaments, as well as selections from the poetry and letters of these two Soviet literary giants, Gerstein offers insightful glimpses into their world. She recalls how, when in transit, Akhmatova would paste an inoffensive poem over a more offensive one (the poem on Stalin that got Mandelstam repeatedly exiled was too hot to write down), as well as the way Akhmatova aged before Gerstein's eyes when she learned of her son's imprisonment. While the standard first-person account of Mandelstam is his wife's Hope Against Hope, Gerstein's portraits provide angles absent in that great work, despite a flat translation." Publishers Weekly (Copyright Reed Business Information, Inc.)

Gerstein's collected memoirs were first published in Russian in 1998, when she was 95; they knocked the socks off the critics, and they knocked Akhmatova and Mandelstam from the pedestals where the great poets had long resided. In this first English translation of her memories of the Soviet 1930s, Gerstein--a specialist on early 19th century Russian literature who died in 2002--offers a forthright description of her friendship with the poets, who became literary martyrs of the Stalinist era. Gerstein breaks through the legend that surrounded Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, and others, restoring a human dimension to their lives, their works, and their deaths. With scattered b&w images.
Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)