Nikolai Zabolotsky
Play for Mortal Stakes

This book, first published in 1994, was the first critical study to appear in English on Nikolai Zabolotsky, one of the great poets of twentieth-century Russia.

Darra Goldstein (Author)

9780521025690, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 20 April 2006

324 pages, 12 b/w illus.
21.6 x 14 x 2 cm, 0.43 kg

"...Darra Goldstein's Nikolai Zabolotsky: Play for Mortal Stakes, the first critical biography of the poet to appear in English, is an important, and long overdue, contribution to our understanding of a previously underrated, and rarely read, poet. For the foreseeable future, it will be required reading for anyone writing about, or teaching, Zabolockij....Play for Mortal Stakes should provide the impetus for further research and interpretation of Zabolockij's life and poetry." Anthony Anemone, Slavic and East European Journal

Nikolai Zabolotsky (1903–1958) was one of the great poets of twentieth-century Russia. As the last link in the Russian Futurist tradition and the first significant poet to come of age in the Soviet period, Zabolotsky wrote poetry both highly experimental and classical. This book, first published in 1994, was the first critical biography of Zabolotsky to appear in English. Goldstein examines not only Zabolotsky's poetic career but also his life, from his obscure origins in the Russian countryside to his arrest and imprisonment in the 1930s. At the same time, Goldstein highlights the deep ambiguity of Zabolotsky's era by exploring the ways in which the poet was influenced both by the artistic avant-garde and by the Soviet scientific establishment.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Emergence
2. The last Russian modernist
3. Visions of a brave new world
4. Mad wisdom: the long poems
5. Autumnal observations
Appendix
Notes
Selected bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: from c 1900 - [DSBH]