Russians!

Francine Hirsch, the UW Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor of History has a newish book:

Soviet Judgment at Nuremberg: A New History of the International Military Tribunal After World War II

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Globus Books of San Francisco – what an amazing resource for Russian poetry!

We just stumbled across these wonderful people and have started sharing information and ideas:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCogNzhgTorWuUGb0MWIUg0w

David Foster Wallace on Joseph Frank’s five volume biography of Dostoevsky – a must read for fans of either writer.  The full text is in his book of essays, Consider the Lobster, also available in full text on Scribd

And an essay about the essay: https://www.misfitpress.co/blog/david-foster-wallace-on-dostoevsky

David Foster Wallace on Dostoevsky’s “ingenious and radiantly human fiction”

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Akhmatova set to music

Our 2019 show, Anna Akhmatova and the Engineers of the Human Soul, still exerts a powerful hold on me.  Her poetry and her life story, so intertwined as they are, give pause to the idea that art is able to heal and make us view the world in a more positive way.  During the development of the performances, I chanced across an album by the American folk singer Iris Dement called Trackless Woods.  Dement had, by chance, picked up a selection of Akhmatova’s verse and began to set some of the poems to music.  At first I did not care for it – her quirky (but interesting voice) and piano accompaniment made it hard to hear the words.  But as I listened more, and learned the words to the poems, I came to like it more and more, to the point now that I play it every night at bedtime.  The album is available on Youtube and below is a list of the poems.  Most use the Babette Deutsch translation – not the one preferred by scholars, but they preserve the rhymes and so work well as songs. – David Simmons

She begins with the devastating verse, To My Poems:

You led me into the trackless woods,
My falling stars, my dark endeavor.
You were bitterness, lies, a bill of goods.
You weren’t a consolation—ever.
[1961]

Here is the list of tracks:

1. “To My Poems” translation by Lyn Coffin, Poems of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1983)
2. “Broad Gold” (1915) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 189 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
3. “And This You Call Work”
4. “From The Oriental Notebook”
5. “Prayer” (1915) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 189 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
6. “Not With Deserters” (1923) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 191-192 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
7. “All Is Sold” (1921) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 190 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
8. “Reject The Burden” (1923) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 191 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
9. “From An Airplane”
10. “Oh, How Good” (1940) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 193 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
11. “Like A White Stone” (1916) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 189 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
12. “Song About Songs” (1916) translation by Lyn Coffin, page 31 Poems of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1983)
13. “Listening To Singing” (1961) translation by Lyn Coffin, page 90 Poems of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1983)
14. “Lot’s Wife” (1924) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 192 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
15. “Upon The Hard Crest” (1917) translation by Babette Deutsch, page 190 A Treasury of Russian Verse (1949)
16. “The Souls Of All My Dears”
17. “The Last Toast” (1934) translation by Lyn Coffin, page 50 Poems of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1983)
18. “Not With A Lover’s Lyre / Anna Akhmatova’s Recitation of The Muse” “It’s Not With A Lover’s Lyre” translation by Lyn Coffin