Svobodnoye Dykhaniye Pechali (the Serene Breathing of Sadness)

Anatoly Yakobson (April 30, 1935, Moscow-September 28, 1978, Jerusalem) can be called without any exaggeration an outstanding literary scholar and teacher. In his fate and his creativity, he personified the time in which he happened, for the short time he had, to live in it. He was a born man of the sixties, of the Thaw, which he fervently supported; he lived in it and survived it, embodying it with all its essence and tragic ruin. In 1973 the New York Chekhov Publishing Corporation (Edward Kline & Max Hayward) brought out in Russian The End of Tragedy-his book about Alexander Blok. Like his favorite poet, Yakobson too parted ways with life, being unable to learn how to breathe in new conditions, in new spaces and times. Before emigration, A. Yakobson was for a while a teacher of history, literature, and Russian language in one of the best Russian schools. He students still remember and honor this remarkable teacher, a man of rare naturalness, decency, and education. Anatoly Yakobson left a bright mark in the history of the Soviet human-rights movement; to his pen belong unique examples of journalism and criticism. He was one of the first drafters and editors of the famous Chronicle of Current Events, a journal detailing the political repression and social struggle in the USSR which the authorities were not able to suppress or trample. Yakobson's exquisite literary taste and his capacity for poetic composition could not be adequately realized in much original work of his own. But his translations are highly appreciated by the best specialists and lovers of poetry. The current edition is the first complete collection of his translations of Petrarca, Verlaine, Lorca, Hernandez, Gauthier, Mickiewicz, and other poets from Europe, Latin America, and Africa, made between 1959 and 1978 and published now in remembrance of the 40th anniversary of his tragic death. This book contains translations which were published in many collections in his homeland, as well as in A. Yakobson. Soil and Fate (Vilnius-Moscow 1992, Vest' Publishers) and in the Memorial Web-Page (MCC) of A. Yakobson at the Internet portal Jerusalem Anthology http: //www.antho.net/library/yakobson/index.html. In the Addendum, readers can find Yakobson's famous article about translations of Shakespeare's 66th Sonnet, selections from his diary, and his lecture on poetry translation. This book is addressed to professional scholars of poetry, to historians and admirers of Russian literature, and to all those who value full-blooded poetic speech, for whom poetry is life itself, its very air.