Anna of All the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova
By the time the famed Russian poet Anna Akhmatova died in 1966, at the age of 77, she had witnessed the colossal changes that overtook Russia, from the last days of the czarist regime through revolution to Stalin's Terror and subsequent Soviet rule. Though born into a comfortable situation, she often lived in abject poverty and relied on the mercy of friends when governmental whim forced her poetry out of circulation. Feinstein, a poet, translator and biographer of Pushkin and Ted Hughes, has produced a thorough, workmanlike biography that runs more to giving times and dates than truly bringing this extraordinary woman to life. Feinstein gives enough (at times too many) details to hint at the complexity and contradictions that made up Akhmatova's character, but never delves deeply enough for a fully fleshed portrait. And while Akhmatova's poetry was intensely personal throughout her long career, Feinstein seems more interested in asserting which of her many lovers and acquaintances Akhmatova wrote about than in assessing the poems' power as works of art that transmuted the regular round of human life as well as the horrors of 20th-century Russia into poetry still revered by Russians today. 16 pages of b&w photos.(Mar. 20)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.