{"product_id":"portraits-without-frames-isbn-9781681372686","title":"Portraits without Frames","description":"\u003cb\u003eIsaac Babel, Dmitry Shostakovich, and Anna Akhmatova star in this series of portraits of some of the greatest writers, artists, and composers of the twentieth century.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"We stopped and Shklovsky told me \/ quietly, but clearly, \/ 'Remember, we are on our way out. \/ On our way out.' And I recalled \/ ... the wall of books, \/ all written by a man \/ who lived \/ in times that were hard to bear.\" \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLev Ozerov’s \u003ci\u003ePortraits Without Frames\u003c\/i\u003e offers fifty shrewd and moving glimpses into the lives of Soviet writers, composers, and artists caught between the demands of art and politics. Some of the subjects—like Anna Akhmatova, Isaac Babel, Andrey Platonov, and Dmitry Shostakovich—are well-known, others less so. All are evoked with great subtlety and vividness, as is the fraught and dangerous time in which they lived. Composed in free verse of deceptively artless simplicity, Ozerov’s portraits are like nothing else in Russian poetry.Nominated for the 2020 Read Russia Prize\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ozerov’s [poems] provide a formula for reading life as art. Closing the book, I found myself viewing my own interactions with Ozerov’s empathetic eye. If literature cannot inspire this kind of empathy, what can?” —Amelia Glaser, \u003ci\u003eTimes Literary Supplement\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Attention. That word rings over and over through the poem-filled pages. This gentle attention is what makes the collection such a treasure.” — Alisa Goz, \u003ci\u003eRussian Art \u0026amp; Culture\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e \"Few traces of youthful sentimentality are evident in \u003ci\u003ePortraits without Frames\u003c\/i\u003e, Ozerov’s last poetic work and first to be made available in English. Originally published posthumously in Russia in 1998, \u003ci\u003ePortraits \u003c\/i\u003eis  an anthology of fifty free verse tableaux based on encounters with  Soviet writers, artists, and cultural figures ranging from the  world-famous (Anna Akhmatova, Boris Pasternak, Dmitry Shostakovich) to  the lesser-known (Yiddish poets Leyb Kvitko and Dovid Hofshteyn,  arrested and shot on Stalin’s orders in 1952)....By telling their stories, preserving their portraits, Ozerov has done  what is hard: to speak about that which one cannot change. But harder  still to change that about which one will not speak.\" —Alexander McConnell, \u003ci\u003eCleveland Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"The name Lev Ozerov may strike non-connoisseurs of 20th century Russian  literature as an atypical choice on the part of the New York Review of  Books Publishing House, which in this same “Classics” collection has  published Tsvetaeva, Pasternak, and Mandelstam. It’s no wonder: leafing  through, we realize at first glance that beyond his own capacity of  poet, editor, and translator, this Ozerov is singular in his position of  witness...There isn’t much to say about the translation beyond that it is  excellent. Never does a poem lose its essential spirit. It’s difficult  enough to co-translate a book, much less group-translate. This requires  the sacrifice of complete invisibility—or, better, of transparency. It  is notable that it is a very approachable translation, quite neutral and  modern.\" —Andreea Scridon, \u003ci\u003eAsymptote Journa\u003c\/i\u003el \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Ozerov’s poems offer the reader poignant Soviet portraits-in-poetry,  illuminated lives of the everyday and the literary Soviet saints. In  these translations the finely wrought poems shine with their original  wistfulness, love, and dedication: tramps, poets, and friends mingle in  short deft snatches of stories.” —Sasha Dugdale \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\"In this long and profoundly moving cycle of poems, Ozerov recalls his  meetings with the great and notable in Russian arts over the Twentieth  Century, and the results are breathtaking....Ozerov certainly mixed with just about all the great and good in Soviet  art, and the fifty accounts of his meetings with them reminded me just  how many incredible artists the country and the era produced – even if  they had to write for the drawer a lot of the time. Each poem is  preceded by an introduction outlining the life and work of the subject;  each translation is individually credited; notes are provided when  necessary to illuminate the poems; so this really is an exemplary volume  and a flawless reading experience.\" —\u003ci\u003eKaggsy's Bookish Ramblings\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eLev Ozerov\u003c\/b\u003e (1914–1996) was born Lev Goldberg in Kyiv, Ukraine, then part of the Russian Empire. He began to publish poems in the early 1930s, and as his literary career took off, he adopted a Slavic-sounding pseudonym (from \u003ci\u003eozero\u003c\/i\u003e, the Russian word for “lake”), though he never rejected his Jewish roots. Ozerov was a close friend of many prominent Yiddish poets, including Leyb Kvitko and Shmuel Halkin, whose work he translated into Russian. He was also one of the first to write, in both prose and verse, about the Babi Yar massacre in 1941. His commitment to giving voice to the voiceless also found expression in his work as a critic and editor. In 1946, while serving on the staff of the journal \u003ci\u003eOctober\u003c\/i\u003e, Ozerov helped the great poet Nikolay Zabolotsky return to print after eight years in the Gulag. Ozerov’s review of a 1958 collection of Anna Akhmatova’s verse broke the so-called “blockade” against her work, and the edition he published of Boris Pasternak’s poems in 1965 marked the beginning of that poet’s slow posthumous rehabilitation after the \u003ci\u003eZhivago\u003c\/i\u003e affair of 1957–1958. But perhaps Ozerov’s greatest contribution—as both a poet and an advocate for the unjustly silenced—is his collection \u003ci\u003ePortraits Without Frames\u003c\/i\u003e, which was published in 1999, three years after his death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRobert Chandler\u003c\/b\u003e’s translations from Russian include works by Alexander Pushkin, Teffi, Vasily Grossman, and Andrey Platonov. He has also written a short biography of Pushkin and has edited three anthologies of Russian literature: \u003ci\u003eRussian Short Stories from Pushkin to Buida\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eRussian Magic Tales from Pushkin to Platonov\u003c\/i\u003e, and, with Boris Dralyuk and Irina Mashinski, \u003ci\u003eThe Penguin Book of Russian Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e. His translation of Vasily Grossman’s \u003ci\u003eStalingrad\u003c\/i\u003e will be published by NYRB Classics in 2019. He runs a monthly translation workshop at Pushkin House in London.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBoris Dralyuk\u003c\/b\u003e is the executive editor of the \u003ci\u003eLos Angeles Review of Books\u003c\/i\u003e. His recent translations include Isaac Babel’s\u003ci\u003e Red Cavalry\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eOdessa Stories\u003c\/i\u003e and Mikhail Zoshchenko’s \u003ci\u003eSentimental Tales\u003c\/i\u003e. He is the editor of 1917: Stories and Poems from the Russian Revolution.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMaria Bloshteyn\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Saint Petersburg and emigrated to Canada when she was nine years old. She is the author of \u003ci\u003eThe Making of a Counter-Culture Icon: Henry Miller’s Dostoevsky\u003c\/i\u003e and the translator of, most recently, Anton Chekhov’s \u003ci\u003eThe Prank\u003c\/i\u003e (available from NYRB Classics).\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eIrina Mashinski\u003c\/b\u003e was born in Moscow and emigrated to the United States with her family in 1991. She is the author of nine books of poetry in Russian and edits the journal \u003ci\u003eCardinal Points\u003c\/i\u003e. Along with Robert Chandler and Boris Dralyuk, she edited \u003ci\u003eThe Penguin Book of Russian Poetry\u003c\/i\u003e.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46301840408805,"sku":"NP9781681372686","price":16.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681372686.jpg?v=1767734988","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/portraits-without-frames-isbn-9781681372686","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}