New Russian Poetry Website

[andrew wachtel]

Dear Colleagues,

I believe that the site described below will prove very useful for
all of us who teach Russian and Russian literature, and I hope it
will also be a pleasure to sample.

Please let me know what you think about it.

Andrew Wachtel

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russianpoetry.net
December 5, 2001
Contact:
Andrew Wachtel
847.491.3950
a-wachtel at northwestern.edu

A new bilingual anthology of Russian verse, From the Ends to the Beginning:
A Bilingual Anthology of Russian Poetry, is now available free on the
Internet at www.russianpoetry.net. The aim of this innovative project is to
provide an intelligently chosen, well-translated, and comprehensive
anthology of Russian poetry from its beginnings in the 18th century to the
contemporary scene. The anthology breaks new ground the in study and
appreciation of Russian poetry by including multimedia elements that would
have been impossible in any other format:

  Facing texts of Russian originals and English translations of 250 poems
that broadly represent more than 225 years of Russian poetry.

  38 detailed resource pages on the various poets containing extensive
biographical information, bibliographies, and links. For many of these
poets, russianpoetry.net is the only English-language source of information
on the Internet.

  75+ previously unavailable archival recordings of poetry performed by
Akhmatova, Mandelshtam, Mayakovsky, Pasternak, Esenin, Bunin, and others.
When recordings by the poets themselves are not available, the site contains
performances by
leading Russian actors or musical renditions of the works.

  400+ illustrations of authors, monuments, and manuscript versions of many
poems.

  A search engine that enables free-text and Boolean searches of the
collection.

We plan to constantly add and update materials, especially for contemporary
poets. Another distinguishing characteristic of the anthology is its primary
structure: It begins with the contemporary poetry scene and traces back
through two centuries of Russian heritage to the beginnings of the poetic
tradition. Comparing the history of Russian poetry to a tree, Ilya Kutik
states in the anthology's introduction that "the chief goal of this
anthology is to show the roots - the 18th and 19th centuries - that produced
the crown of Russian poetry, the 20th century."

Kutik points out that are numerous ways to enjoy and use the collection: "It
is no mere anthology in the sense of a collection of poems by a set of
authors. It is rather a book fundamentally constructed on the principle of
the "root and crown." If you enter the "Search" section of our site, you can
see, for instance, how the epithet "golden" has entirely different meaning
for each poet. It then becomes apparent WHY it means something different."
The collection is designed for research and classroom use. It can serve as a
textbook for an upper-level undergraduate or introductory graduate course on
Russian poetry. It is also ideal for use in a survey of Russian culture
class. Finally, by using the extensive audio content, the site can also be
incorporated in any level Russian language program. The project is a
collaborative effort. It was edited by Andrew Wachtel and Ilya Kutik
(Northwestern University) and designed, developed, and maintained by Michael
Denner (Stetson University). Tanya Tulchinsky, Andrew Wachtel, and Gwenan
Wilbur translated the poems.

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