Reviews for Avtobiograficheskaڽiڹa proza

The average rating for Avtobiograficheskaڽiڹa proza based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-05-01 00:00:00 Wesley Gregory I'm not entirely sure what to think about this book - so I'll comment as generously as I am able. The text of this narrative resembles a concatenation of notes more closely than the text of any other biography that I can remember reading - all arranged so that the information in them appears in chronological order, all transferred to the page in complete, simple sentences. Much of what I expect to find in literary biography is missing from this book, especially an exploration, in detail, of the inner life of the writer, a narrative of its genesis, the emotional and intellectual events that occurred there, and so on. But I also have to think that this particular composition is the product of the biographer's intention - her design for the book that she wanted to write. What is it that Feinstein achieves - and achieves splendidly - through this design and technique? A decidedly vivid impression of the presence, the public persona of the poet, that the poet constructed, refined and maintained over most of her life and that displaced any other element of self that AA may have possessed. I chose these words deliberately. The AA I encounter in Feinstein's book brought immediately to mind remarks about W. B. Yeats that appear in the first pages of Foster's biography, vol. 1. In 1914 WBY's childhood friend George Moore commented on WBY with "disapproval of his old friend's adoption of a mask, an artistic persona, a preoccupation with style." (p. xxv) To this Foster adds this: "In his own heroic self-construction ... WBY painted many layers over the portrait of himself as a young man." (ibid.) My sense - today - is that the most valuable result of Feinstein's research and writing is her account of this same sort of "self-fashioning," a continuing refinement of a mask, a projection, that AA undertook in her adolescence, that became habitual, and that ultimately displaced every other element of self. What happened? Feinstein provides all the events that many, many observers of AA's life recorded. Her book documents the results of only a very halting and uncertain attempt at delineating the trajectory of her subject's inner life. Here's my attempt. It seems to me that during early adolescence AA discovered her genius for poetry and at that time she took up her vocation as poet. Very quickly her vocation - and her devotion to her gifts - displaced nearly every other concern. [Not unlike Emily Dickinson's response to similar discoveries.] But what to write about? Suffering. AA appears to have drawn upon a very pronounced strain of masochism in her behavior for material. She chose and encouraged abusive men, "the kaleidoscope of A's so-called husbands". (p. 142) Regarding her second, insanely jealous, possessive and egocentric husband, AA wrote: "I felt so filthy, I thought it [her marriage] would be like a cleansing, like going to a convent, knowing you are going to lose your freedom." (p. 78) "Something in her welcomed this necessity for self-sacrifice."(p. 83) "A's poems about her relationship with S. suggest he was a monstrous bully on whom she remained utterly dependent emotionally even as she expressed her bewilderment at his oppression" in her poetry. (p. 83) And on and on. She seems incapable of sustaining a connection with most any other human being who couldn't or didn't offer the intensity of abuse and suffering that she needed both to slake an insatiable appetite for emotional pain, that furnished the subject-matter of her poetry, and that also allowed her to pursue a secondary vocation - fashioning a certain public pose - quite as if she were creating the AA brand. My first clue: "Soon A. began to make a significant mark upon members of the artistic community, not only with her beauty and her poetic gifts but also with a presence of majestic sadness." (p. 36) I also noticed that once her current husband or lover, of whom there were scores and scores, had inflicted the last version of abuse in his inventory of abuses, AA suddenly lost interest and moved on to fresh sources of abuse - time for something entirely different - new material. "As another critic observed, N. was able to discern the steel backbone within the elegantly languid poetess." (p. 62) And there were payoffs, of course. An observer formed the impression that "the fame of her poetry was once again the most sustaining prop of her self-esteem." (p. 94) Another remark: "her life itself is empty, so much so that at times it frightens even me." (p. 107) With WWI "her subject matter was beginning to widen and include the suffering of her country, as well as the pain in relations between man and women." (p. 54) With WWII: "The transformation of the 'gay little sinner from Tsarskoye Selo' into the voice of a whole people's suffering had begun." (p. 170) Whole new realms, domains and dominions of suffering to explore and to transform into art of the 'highest' sort. And certain observers noticed, some quite hostile, in fact: "She is saucy, egotistical, plays at being the good queen and has ceased to live her own life, for she lives only biographically with an eye on the gesture and the word 'for the future'." (p. 216) More charitably Joseph Brodsky wrote: "Her genuine pain was transmuted once she came to write poems. ... As a poet 'submits to the demands of the muse, the language, it is a greater truth than the truth of experience ... ." (p. 248) I now chant my mantra - yet once more - Never believe what you think.

Review # 2 was written on 2016-10-13 00:00:00 Paul Bondy «¿Quién llorará ahora a esta mujer? ¿Acaso su pérdida no significa nada? Tan sólo mi corazón no olvidará jamás a la que dio su vida por una mirada» 💕 💕 💕 «Anna de todas las Rusias»(1889-1966), como la llamó Marina Tsvetaeva, fascinada por ella como todos cuantos la conocieron, fue una poeta rusa que en el marco del acmeísmo buscaba el reflejo de la realidad y de su mundo interior a través de objetos reales, sensaciones tangibles, lenguaje sencillo. De ahí que sus poemas sean a día de hoy aún memorizados por sus versos pegadizos que son universales ya que hablan del amor, de la muerte, de las injusticias, de las penalidades, de la amistad, por millones de rusos que siguen viendo en ella «su voz». 💕 💕 💕 Su vida fue tan convulsa como intensa. A pesar de su carácter flemático y de que la acusaran en ocasiones de arrogante y fría, lo cierto es que Ajmátova se aferró a la vida con una pasión inconmensurable. Rodeada de hombres que la acompañaron con devoción toda su vida (Gumiliov, Punin, Pasternak) y de mujeres que fueron para ella sus amigas, confidentes, hermanas (Lidia Chukovskaia, Olga Sudeikina, Anna Kamínskaia...) la vida de Anna fue de todo menos contemplativa. Su primer marido fue ejecutado, su hijo se pasó media vida de gulag en gulag (algo de lo que él culpaba su madre y marcó su compleja relación), su obra fue censurada durante años y numerosas amistades sufrieron el exilio, la persecución y la tortura. Aún así Ajmátova soportó la tristeza, la miseria y el olvido con dignidad encontrando en la poesía el clavo que la salvó de la locura y de la muerte. Isaiah Berlin dijo de ella que su coraje fue algo ejemplar para desmentir a quienes afirmaban que «los individuos no podían enfrentarse al avance de la historia». 💕 «La miel salvaje huele a libertad el polvo, a rayos de sol; a violetas la boca de una muchacha, y el oro, a nada en absoluto. Pero nosotros aprendimos para siempre que la sangre tan sólo huele a sangre». 💕 #LeoAutoras #AnnaAjmátova #Niundíasinpoesía #GrandesbiografíasdeGrandesmujeres