Lev Ozerov's Singular Portraits Without Frames

At LARB, Tom Teicholz considers "a singular work of literary biography: a history of Soviet-era literature and culture that is also a masterful poetic sequence in its own right," Portraits Without Frames (NYRB, 2018), by Russian poet Lev Ozerov (1914–1996). More:

Portraits is divided into sections of artists: “The Poets,” “The Prose Writers,” “The Yiddish Poets,” “Soviet Ukraine,” “The Visual Artists,” and “Music, Theater, and Dance.” And the collection concludes with a supplemental portrait, of Ozerov’s father, which underscores the project’s intimate, personal dimension.

In these portraits, we see the legendary Akhmatova glowing in Ozerov’s praise. And we hear her plaintive exhortation from one poet to another to “Do something for Shengeli, / don’t forget about him, / please reread his poems.” Georgy Shengeli, the subject of a separate portrait, became a persona non grata in Soviet poetry following a dispute with Vladimir Mayakovsky. We are made to see how petty battles among writers had lasting personal consequences during the period.

Between the lines, we witness the palpable cruelty and moral bankruptcy of the Soviet regime: Ozerov encounters great authors and artists who cannot publish or exhibit, or who were arrested and spent long years in forced labor camps, like Varlam Shalamov, author of Kolyma Stories, and the poet Nikolay Zabolotsky. There are portraits of poets such as Ksenia Nekrasova, who died young, before attaining recognition...

Read the full review at LARB.