Akhmatova
Tom Jones's translation of Akhmatova's 'Midnight Verses' and 'The Dog Rose Blossoms' was published by Perdika Press in 2007.
The poems
Osip Mandel'shtam famously observed that Anna Akhmatova ‘brought to the Russian lyric the wealth of the nineteenth-century Russian novel'. These two late, seminal sequences - haunted by Akhmatova's inspirational meeting with her ‘guest from the future', Isaiah Berlin - amply bear out that assertion, epitomising in deeply personal terms the tragedy that had befallen Russia. In a brilliant and scrupulous translation, innovatory poet and critic Tom Jones allows Akhmatova's characteristic combination of searching irony and cosmic aspiration to be heard again in all its defiant poignancy.
