Poems

1 hr. 18 min.

Poetry

Language Russian

Author Boris Pasternak

Narrator Vera Pavlova

Description

Reading poems as an actor is different from poetry. An actor always works with a vocal interpretation of the material, whereas, from the poet’s point of view, the poems should “read themselves.” That’s the main difference in the anthology “The Big Four” of the Silver Age, compiled and read by Vera Pavlova, one of today’s leading poetesses.

The collections of Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, and Pasternak published by Cont entMedia are, in some sense, unique for our market. The emphasis is on a professional, “poetic” approach to reciting poems—along with equally professional musical arrangement and no less professional commentary on the poet’s work. The publishers’ main goal was for the form of presenting the material to be fully subordinated to its content, and they achieved this to the fullest extent.

In the continuation volumes, musical instruments also sound—harmonious not with individual poems, but with the poet’s overall image. For Boris Pasternak, that instrument is the piano. The music doesn’t interfere with perception and is aimed exclusively at creating the necessary mood and focusing the listener’s concentration on the poems’ content. In addition, the music emphasizes each poet’s distinctive style and gives every poem an opportunity to be revealed anew. One of the best-known contemporary poetesses, Elena Fanailova, read the afterword to Pasternak’s poems.

Contents:

01. “February. Dip into ink and cry!..."
02. Spring (“What buds, what sticky, tarry rags…”)
03. After the Rain
04. Marburg
05. “You are in the wind, trying itself on a branch”
06. “Waving your fragrant little branch…"
07. Stars in Summer
08. Definition of Poetry
09. Steppe
10. Sultry Night
11. Instant Thunder Forever
12. “Beloved—horror! When the poet loves…”
13. January 1919
14. “The trembling piano will lick the foam from your lips…”
15. “So they begin. For two years…”
16. In the Forest
17. Spring (“Spring, I’m from the street where the poplar is amazed…”)
18. “Here the enigma walked…”
19. “A tall marksman, a careful hunter…”
20. Lyubka
21. Approaching Thunderstorm
22. “Caucasus was all in plain sight…”
23. Second Ballad
24. “All snow, all snow—bear it, that’s all…”
25. “No one will be at home…”
26. “Oh, if only I’d known that it happens like this…”
27. Pines
28. On Early Trains
29. On Passiontide
30. “Don’t cry, don’t wrinkle your swollen lips…”
31. Indian Summer
32. August
33. Separation
34. Meeting
35. Christmas Star
36. Dawn
37. Magdalene
38. “In everything, I want to reach the end…”
39. “To be famous is ugly…”
40. Night
41. In the Hospital
42. Snow is falling
43. The only days
44. Afterword by Elena Fanailova