Review | Anna of All the Russias - A Life of Anna Akhmatova by Elaine Feinstein

Prologue

Since the publication of Amanda Haight’s Biography of Akhmatova, Anna Akhmatova: A Poetic Pilgrimage in the 1980s, interest in Akhmatova has been growing. Since Haight’s work, several other biographies about the great Russian poet have been published: Poet and Prophet by Roberta Reeder and the book in question, Anna of All the Russias – a life of Anna Akhmatova by British author Elaine Feinstein. Published in 2005, and since translated into numerous languages, Feinstein’s Akhmatova is likely the most famous biography about the poet today. Feinstein herself was a poet and is well known for her biographies of other poets such as Ted Hughes, Aleksandr Pushkin, and Marina Tsvetaeva, as well as for her Tsvetaeva translations. 

Elements of Feinstein’s work have been criticised over the years (her Tsvetaeva translations have incurred some censor) and upon reading this book I can see why. Regardless of these criticisms, it is clear that Feinstein was responsible alongside biographers Amanda Haight, Roberta Reeder and translator Judith Hemschemeyer for bringing the golden verse of one of Russian civilization's finest poets to English readers.

The Book Itself

What I appreciate the most about Feinstein’s book is the information about the Poet’s life which was previously unknown to me as an aficionado of Reeder’s Akhmatova. This information mostly had to do with the Poet’s personal life and seems to have been derived from the publication of the Poet’s third common law husband, Nikolai Punin’s diaries. I do not think that Reeder ignored this information when writing her biography of the poet in 1994 but that this information only became available later when Feinstein was writing her book (Reeder authored a new addition of her book in 2007, including this and other newer sources) the inclusion of this information makes Feinstein’s book, if not more accurate, than at least more up to date. 

I found the book interesting because of the emphasis put on the poet’s personal life. (This fact also leads to what I did not appreciate about the book). Feinstein goes to great lengths to show Akhmatova at her most vulnerable, and at times, her absolute worst. This is something not often done by Akhmatova scholars, and is a risk on Feinstein’s part. Akhmatova was known for being stoic and dignified throughout her life, and as such this is what most biographers and scholars tend to focus on. Feinstein however, seems to be attempting to get behind this persona of the poet which she takes to be only a mask hiding a fragile truth. To an extent Feinstein may be right about this, it does seem to be of some consensus that Akhmatova became a person of strong, dignified bearing because of the many difficulties and heartaches that bedecked her life from a young age. However, though her bearing may have been a consequence of life, so was her poetry and her personal philosophy. Therefore , while it is interesting to read about the tragic mishaps of Akhmatova’s life for the sake of context, to view her stature and way of existence as being only a mask is to discount the evidence to the contrary i.e. her poetry.

This brings me to my main points of contention with Feinstein’s book: willful ignorance of the poetry and the casting of Akhmatova in a pathetic role. If Feinstein had given more attention to Akhmatova’s poetry in the composition of this book, then it might have been more apparent that in her poetry we see a similar stoic silhouette as was cast by the poet in her daily life — which to some extent discounts the notion of Akhmatova’s strength and dignity as being only a mask. Unlike Reeder’s Poet and Prophet, Feinstein’s Anna Of All The Russias does not make very many citations of the poet’s work, the emphasis is instead on the Poet’s personal life — and the tribulations thereof. While this is not entirely unusual for a biography of a poet, I think it diminishes the impact of Akhmatova’s poetry and skewes the readers’ understanding of her. 

 It is possible that Feinstein set out to write a book about the life of Akhmatova, rather than a book about the poetry of Akhmatova. This seems to have been the intention, and is contained in the subtitle of the book itself — a life of Anna Akhmatova. The fact that Feinstein chose a life over the life of Anna Akhmatova is itself interesting. It lends a subjective tone to the title, and to the book itself. Feinstein seems to get the facts straight (which unfortunately cannot be said for all biographers and writers) and even goes so far as to discount faulty tales about the Poet (at least the old gossip that Akhmatova and Aleksandr Blok were lovers is discounted, which again cannot be said of all writers on this topic) Where the subjectivity does come into Feinstein’s work is in style and interpretation. 

The style of the book borders at times on the gossipy. There were instances in the book where I felt that I was kibitzing over tea with Elaine about Anna Andreevna, rather than reading a seminal book on Akhmatova written by Feinstein. Part of this has to do with Feinstein’s emphasis on all the gritty and banal details of the Poet’s personal life, primarily the topic of failed marriages and loves. It also has to do with the way Feinstein writes about these aspects of the Poet’s life — her tone; often confiding and denoting of intrigue.

If I had not already read biographies of Akhmatova, I would hazard a guess that I would not have found her a very interesting poet or a very remarkable person — tragic and doomed? Yes. interesting and remarkable? No. This is how Akhmatova appears in much of Feinstein’s book. She is presented as a helpless, pathetic depressive, moaning about the tragedy of ill fated love and Stalin while comparing her son to Christ. At other times she is presented as an egomaniac of epic proportions, who thinks herself responsible for the start of The Cold War (this much is somewhat true). These likely were aspects of the woman Akhmatova at various points in her life, but I cannot say they were at the crux of the poet Akhmatova. Regardless or perhaps because of mistakes made in her youth Akhmatova was in her later years, preoccupied with the atonement for past sins — her’s and her nation’s. This aspect of her work is briefly mentioned by Feinstein on the subject of Requiem and Poem Without a Hero, but it is not emphasised as seems appropriate.

This tendency of Feinstein’s; to ignore the deeper side of the poet, is the greatest inconsistency with other books on the subject and in some cases amounts to an indignity against the poet. Not only is it seen in regards to the treatment of Akhmatova’s moral fibre, but also in regards to the treatment of her work and person as a whole. Many who knew Akhmatova, and those who wrote of her, have said that she was a person of tremendous spiritual strength and inspiration. Her poetry from early times takes on spiritual themes; those of prophecy often predominate above others that include: sin and atonement. The notion of Akhmatova as a prophet runs deep. This is the crux of Reeder’s book, but is also seen in others’ writings and those of the poet-prophet herself. It is thought that Akhmatova predicted the First World War, and that she had an inkling of what the Bolshevik Revolution would entail for her generation of the intelligentsia.

While such notions can be reduced to coincidence in some cases, the fact remains that Anna Akhmatova was a highly attuned person. She remains an almost objective observer from her earliest poetry and continues as such unto her latest writings from the 60s. What Feinstein does wrong, in my opinion, is in discounting this side of the poet. Without doubt Akhmatova was flawed, she committed errors in her life, but her sensitivity, spirituality, and strength lie at the core of her writing and her being. To reduce her to just another post-decadent poet of 20th century Russia is to reduce her poetry to a heap of Daily Mails left standing in the rain. 

Epilogue

Overall there are many good things about Feinstein’s book. It is responsible for many being introduced to Akhmatova, It includes up to date information about the poet’s life — providing insight into the personal life of the poet — though often at the expense of the spiritual and working life. Despite the ubiquity of the book, I do not recommend it to those who are seeking Akhmatova without any prior reading or understanding of the life or the poetry of that famous poet. For that I recommend Roberta Reeder’s Poet and Prophet, then perhaps give Feinstein a read. Regardless of the criticisms I have made of this book, Elaine Feinstein is responsible for bringing poets such as Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva to a culture otherwise ignorant of Russian literature. This along with her personal contributions to English, and Russian-Jewish literature cannot be diminished or underestimated. For this we are indebted. 

References 

Anna of All the Russias – A Life of Anna Akhmatova, Elaine Feinstein, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2005

Poet and Prophet, Roberta Reeder, St Martin's Press, New York, 1994