Portraits without Frames

by Lev Ozerov

Other authorsRobert Chandler (Editor), Boris (Introduction), Maria Bloshteyn (Translator), Irina Mashinski (Translator)
Paperback, 2018

Status

Available

Call number

891.71

Collection

Publication

NYRB Classics (2018), 280 pages

Description

Isaac Babel, Dmitry Shostakovich, and Anna Akhmatova star in this series of portraits of some of the greatest writers, artists, and composers of the twentieth century. "We stopped and Shklovsky told me / quietly, but clearly, / 'Remember, we are on our way out. / On our way out.' And I recalled / ... the wall of books, / all written by a man / who lived / in times that were hard to bear." Lev Ozerov's Portraits Without Frames offers fifty shrewd and moving glimpses into the lives of Soviet writers, composers, and artists caught between the demands of art and politics. Some of the subjects--like Anna Akhmatova, Isaac Babel, Andrey Platonov, and Dmitry Shostakovich--are well-known, others less so. All are evoked with great subtlety and vividness, as is the fraught and dangerous time in which they lived. Composed in free verse of deceptively artless simplicity, Ozerov's portraits are like nothing else in Russian poetry.… (more)

Language

Original language

Russian

Original publication date

1999

Physical description

280 p.; 7.97 inches

ISBN

1681372681 / 9781681372686

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