Poetry. Letters. Translated from the Russian by Rawley Grau. Edited by Ilya Bernstein. It is only in the past quarter-century or so that Yevgeny Abramovich Baratynsky (1800-1844) has gained
wide recognition in Russia as one of the great poets of the 19th century. While the psychologically acute love elegies and meditations he wrote in the early 1820s earned him some fame during
his lifetime, his later lyric verse was ignored or misunderstood by most of his contemporaries. Yet it is this body of work in particular, where he explores fundamental questions about the
meaning of existence from an analytical epistemological perspective, that today seems remarkably modern. The poet’s radical skepticism, as well as his increasing sense of isolation from the
literary world, is reflected most profoundly in his lyric masterpiece, the book Dusk (Sumerki, 1842)—translated in its entirety in this volume—a work that is notable, among other things, for
being the first collection of poems published in Russia as a coherent literary cycle (a practice that would become standard only 60 years later).
Featuring some 75 poems, from the early elegies to poems from his final years, Baratynsky’sA SCIENCE NOT FOR THE EARTH will be the first representative collection of the poet’s lyric verse in
English.
The translations by Rawley Grau aim to be as semantically close to the original as possible while still conveying a strong sense of the formal aspects of the verse. A selection of Baratynsky’s
letters, reflecting his critical thoughts on writing as well as his personal struggles, is also included. The book is guest-edited by Russian-American poet Ilya Bernstein.
