The Books of My Life: Anna Akhmatova

I have mentioned before that I have a strong interest in Russian culture. It is not surprising, therefore, that at some point I would get around to reading Roberta Reeder's massive biography of Anna Akhmatova, Anna Akhmatova (New York: Picador, 1994). Reeder notes on page 484 of her biography, critical analysis of Akhmatova's poetry, cultural and intellectual history of late Tsarist and Soviet Russia, and study of those in the Russian and Soviet intelligentsia who intersected with Akhmatova over her life, that Akhmatova was not a saint but a human being. Despite this claim, however, Akmatova comes off as yet another one of those saintly suffering Russian women in Reeder's book.

On the plus side Reeder's book is the most thoroughly researched biography of Akmatova in the English language that I know of and her analysis of Akhmatova's poetry--and what wonderful poetry it is--is quite impressive and quite compelling. On the "bad" side, Reeder's book reads more like a dictionary of somewhat related chapters rather than a tightly woven biography and cultural history largely because Reeder seems to throw everything she knows about Akhmatova into the book regardless of whether it is significant or not. As a result Redder ends up falling prey to the historian's folly and fallacy of trivial pursuit. On the ugly side, Reeder gives us an Akhmatova who is a romantic and prophetic suffering servant making her book more akin to the hagiographies of earlier epochs than a critical biography of the 20th century. Reeder's saintly "realist" approach means that the author lacks the requisite critical distance from her subject that would allow her to write a critical biography of Akhmatova.

Despite all its warts I still recommend Reeder's book particularly if you are interested in Russian culture, Russian literature, and Russian poetry. Reeder's book is likely to remain the authoritative biography of Anna of all the Russias in the English language for some time.