1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution is a collection of literary responses to one of the most cataclysmic events in modern world history, which exposes the immense conflictedness and doubt, conviction and hope, pessimism and optimism which political events provoked among contemporary writers – sometimes at the same time, even in the same person. This dazzling panorama of thought, language and form includes work by authors who are already well known to the English-speaking world (Bulgakov, Pasternak, Akhmatova, Mayakovsky), as well as others, whose work we have the pleasure of encountering here for the very first time in English.
Edited by Boris Dralyuk, the acclaimed translator of Isaac Babel’s Red Cavalry (also published by Pushkin Press), 1917 includes works by some of the best Russian writers – some already famous in the English-speaking world, some published here for the very first time. It is an anthology for everyone: those who are coming to Russian literature for the first time, those who are already experienced students of it, and those who simply want to know how it felt to live through this extreme period in history.
POETRY:
• Marina Tsvetaeva, ‘You stepped from a stately cathedral ‘, ‘Night. – Northeaster. – Roar of soldiers. – Roar of waves.’
• Zinaida Gippius, ‘Now’, ‘What have we done to it?’, ’14 December 1917′
• Osip Mandelstam, ‘In public and behind closed doors’
• Osip Mandelstam, ‘Let’s praise, O brothers, liberty’s dim light’
• Anna Akhmatova, ‘When the nation, suicidal’
• Boris Pasternak, ‘Spring Rain’
• Mikhail Kuzmin, ‘Russian Revolution’
• Sergey Esenin, ‘Wake me tomorrow at break of day’
• Mikhail Gerasimov, ‘I forged my iron flowers’
• Vladimir Kirillov, ‘We’
• Aleksey Kraysky, ‘Decrees’
• Andrey Bely, ‘Russia’
• Alexander Blok, ‘The Twelve’
• Titsian Tabidze, ‘Petersburg’
• Pavlo Tychyna, ‘Golden Humming’
• Vladimir Mayakovsky, ‘Revolution: A Poem-Chronicle’, ‘To Russia’, ‘Our March’
PROSE:
• Alexander Kuprin, ‘Sashka and Yashka’
• Valentin Kataev, ‘The Drum’
• Aleksandr Serafimovich, ‘How He Died’
• Dovid Bergelson, ‘Pictures of the Revolution’
• Teffi, ‘A Few Words About Lenin’, ‘The Guillotine’
• Vasily Rozanov, from ‘Apocalypse of Our Time’
• Aleksey Remizov, ‘The Lay of the Ruin of Rus”
• Yefim Zozulya, ‘The Dictator: A Story of Ak and Humanity’
• Yevgeny Zamyatin, ‘The Dragon’
• Aleksandr Grin, ‘Uprising’
• Mikhail Prishvin, ‘Blue Banner’
• Mikhail Zoshchenko, ‘A Wonderful Audacity’
• Mikhail Bulgakov, ‘Future Prospects’
QUICK VIEW
