Alone with Huge Stars...

Eduard Bagritsky is the greatest Soviet poet of the generation of the first "revolutionary romantics," who came into literature following the poets of the Silver Age and matured during the Civil War and revolution, inspired by its ideals. The early death of Bagritsky (he was 38 years old) cut his life short at the peak of his creative powers, and in the following years, his image became one of the Soviet legends—a figure of a herald of the new world, bound together by "steel and lead." Meanwhile, Bagritsky's work extends far beyond the Soviet era and its ideology. "The most carnivorous of the Flemish," with the "bloody heat" of his verses and indomitable zest for life, Bagritsky was able to perceive words "like fruit juice" and enthralled his literary peers—contemporaries and descendants—with the force of his imagery and the rich warmth of his colors, satisfying the discerning tastes even of such poetic gourmets as Joseph Brodsky. This edition presents selected poems and poems by Eduard Bagritsky: the most significant collections of poems ("South-West," "Victors," "Last Night"), the unfinished poem "February," one of the peaks of his creativity (work on the poem was interrupted by death), as well as a number of poems not included in his lifetime collections.