Akhmadulina, Bella

Akhmadulina, Bella

(Izabella Akhatovna Akhmadulina), 1937–2010, Russian poet, b. Moscow, grad. (1960) Gorky Literary Institute, Moscow. Her first poem was published in 1955 and her earliest collection, Struna [the string], appeared in 1962. During the 1960s, in the period of artistic freedom following Stalin's death, she and such other poets as YevtushenkoYevtushenko, Yevgeny Aleksandrovich
, 1933–2017, Russian poet, b. Zima Junction, Siberia. Along with Andrei Voznesensky and several others he helped revive the tradition of Russian lyric poetry. Yevtushenko's first book of poems was published in 1952.
..... Click the link for more information.
 (her first husband) and VoznesenskyVoznesensky, Andrei Andreyevich
, 1933–2010, Russian poet, b. Moscow. Voznesensky studied at the Moscow Architectural Institute and later became a close friend and protégé of Boris Pasternak.
..... Click the link for more information.
 recited their verse to audiences in packed stadiums. Her poems, traditional in form and apolitical in content, are noted for their brilliant imagery, bold metaphors, inventive rhymes, and intensely personal vision. Among the best known of her many poetry collections are Oznob [fever] (1968), Sad [the garden] (1987), and Larets i kliuch [casket and key] (1994). She also wrote short stories. Akhmadulina was an outspoken supporter of persecuted Russian writers, which provoked Soviet disapproval, but following the easing under GorbachevGorbachev, Mikhail Sergeyevich
, 1931–, Soviet political leader. Born in the agricultural region of Stavropol, Gorbachev studied law at Moscow State Univ., where in 1953 he married a philosophy student, Raisa Maksimovna Titorenko (1932?–99).
..... Click the link for more information.
 (see also glasnostglasnost
, Soviet cultural and social policy of the late 1980s. Following his ascension to the leadership of the USSR in 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev began to promote a policy of openness in public discussions about current and historical problems.
..... Click the link for more information.
) she received enthusiastic official recognition.

Bibliography

See English translations of her works in Fever and Other New Poems (1969) and The Garden and Selected Poetry and Prose (1990); S. I. Ketchian, The Poetic Craft of Bella Akhmadulina (1993).

Akhmadulina, Bella Akhatovna

 

(also Izabella). Born Apr. 10, 1937, in Moscow. Soviet Russian poetess; graduated from the Gorky Institute of Literature in 1960.

Akhmadulina’s work was first published in 1955. The collection of poems The String was published in 1962 and the collection Music Lessons in 1970. She is also the author of the narrative poem My Genealogy (1964) and of essays, screenplays, and translations of poems—from Georgian and other languages, including a collection of poems by the Georgian poetess Anna Kalandadze, Fly, Leaves (1959).

REFERENCES

Ognev, V. “Struna” (review). Literaturnaia Rossiia, Mar. 8, 1963.
Tsurikova, G. “Poeziia, igra, zhizn’.” Literaturnaia gazeta, Mar. 17, 1964.