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Article: Love, pain & lyricism.(The Word that Causes Death's Defeat)(Book Review)
- Article from:
- National Review
- Article date:
- December 31, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 National Review, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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The Word that Causes Death's Defeat, by Anna Akhmatova, translated by Nancy K. Anderson (Yale, 352 pp., $30)
In the white fields I became a quiet girl,
With the voice of a bird I cry out for love.
--Akhmatova
EVEN though the greatest lyric poets cannot be translated--imagine trying to translate Keats into Russian, let alone Chinese-Anna Akhmatova should be known at least biographically and thematically to everyone interested in literature, and here scholar Nancy K. Anderson has done a superb job. Akhmatova-I take this somewhat on faith-is one of the great lyric poets of the 20th century, and in the company of Yeats, Eliot, and Borges. Her lyrics ...