Selected Poems
A selection from Russia's greatest Symbolist poet, including The Twelve, his poem of the 1917 revolution.
A selection from the work of Aleksandr Blok, the leading poet of Russian Symbolism, whose Verses on the Beautiful Lady, The Stranger and the great revolutionary poem The Twelve trace the movement from mystical love lyric to the street language of Petrograd in 1917. Blok welcomed the revolution as an elemental force and fell silent under it; he died in 1921. Translated with an introduction placing the poems in their historical setting.
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Robert Service
He centred on a rabble that was roaming through the streets of Petrograd at the end of 1917. And he used this very refined language that he had developed many years earlier and he combined that with snatches of folksong and street jargon that make for one of the really great pieces of Russian poetry – and also world poetry – in the first half of the 20th century.
Interview · January 2010
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