Half-Light & Other Poems

Half-Light & Other Poems brings together the most important and enduring poems by this neglected writer, one of Russia's great 19th century poets. In a new translation by Peter France, the philosophical, social and literary struggles of Russia under Tsar Nicholas I are brought to vivid life.

Yevgeny Baratynsky (1800-1844) was a contemporary and friend of Aleksandr Pushkin. For Joseph Brodsky he was fully Pushkin's peer, yet even today his work is barely known outside Russia. His beautifully constructed lyric poems, by turns tragic, philosophical, nostalgic, witty and fantastic, expressed a heroically clear-eyed, Leopardi-like vision of life in a despotic post-Enlightenment world. For all his pessimism, his faith in poetry remained constant.

The present bilingual volume offers the first complete translation of his essential collection, Half-light, together with some of his most remarkable poems from elsewhere.