Paradise by Elena Shvarts, Michael Molnar, Catriona Kelly - 9781852242497

ParadiseSelected Poems\nAuthor(s): Elena Shvarts, Michael Molnar, Catriona Kelly\nFormat: Paperback\nPublisher: Bloodaxe Books Ltd, United Kingdom\nImprint: Bloodaxe Books Ltd\nISBN-13: 9781852242497, 978-1852242497\nSynopsis\nElena Shvarts was the most outstanding Russian poet of her generation. 'Paradise' presents a dual language selection of her earlier poetry, and was a Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.\n\nEach new generation has to reinterpret St Petersburg, the place, the culture and its significance for Russia. Shvarts's haunted and demonic city is nearer Dostoyevsky's than Akhmatova's or Brodsky's. Her poetry draws backwoods Russian folklore with its cruelty, its religiosity and its quaint humour, into stone, cosmopolitan Petropolis. She brings out both the truth and the irony of Peter the Great's 'Paradise', celebrating and reviling her native city as a crossroads of dimensions, a reality riddled with mythical monuments and religious symbols. Despite the blood ben.