Russian Poetry and the Politics of Sorrow: Appropriating Anna Akhmatova
This book argues that ongoing debates over the literary value of the poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) are part of a broader cultural discourse within which Russians debate what it means to be Russian. Within the idea of being "really Russian" circulates a notion of authenticity that often is suffused with sorrow. Nearly a century of consumption of "Akhmatova"—by scholars, poets, journalists, and artists—contributes to the construction and circulation of Russian and American notions of taste, identity, and nationalism that by turns valorize and disparage sorrow, grief, mourning and their converse, stoicism.