Mikhail Kuzmin: Selected Writings.

Mikhail Kuzmin: Selected Writings

Michael A. Green and Stanislav A. Shvabrin, editors

Bucknell University Press

c/o Associated University Press

2010 Eastpark Blvd., Cranbury, NJ 08512

0838756018 $45.00 www.bucknell.edu 1-609-655-4770

Skillfully translated from Russian and edited with notes and an introduction by expert scholars Michael A. Green and Stanislav A. Shvabrin, Mikhail Kuzmin: Selected Writings presents one of Russia's least known, non-conformist authors, Mikhail Kuzmin (1872-1936). Kuzmin's earlier "decadent" aesthetic works praising worldly delights have received some accord, but Mikhail Kuzmin: Selected Writings particularly focuses upon Kuzmin's later works, which reflected his endurance and struggle to survive during the early Soviet years. These works, long censored in the Soviet Union due to their absolute loathing of how the state denied individual liberties, to the extent of drawing an allegory between Nero's Rome and Stalin's Russia. Kuzmin as a literary theoretician was a key figure in the reaction against Symbolism for the new generation, and ultimately influential in Russian art, despite a totalitarian state's severe attempts to subdue and utilize art for its own propaganda. Prose, poetry, and plays including "The Trout Breaks the Ice", "Thrall", and "Alexandrian Songs" fill this strongly recommended addition to classic literature shelves.