'Before oblivion arrives', the lives of two Russian poets forced to remain silent by Stalinism

If one knows, even briefly, the life (also the works, but above all the lives) of the Russian poets Anna Akhmatova (1889-1976) and Marina Tsvietaeva (1892-1941), surely, as the novelist and literary critic Ana Rodríguez Fischer, would have devised some way to make us see both as figures of the same personal and historical drama or tragedy.

The results would have been very different, surely never as clearly narrative as those obtained by the author in her novel

From Her Before Oblivion Arrives

.

The risk of this novel was falling into biographism or remaining in the description of the multitude of unfortunate situations, much less than the happy ones, that the protagonists had to live through.

The risk of this novel was falling into biographism or remaining in the description of the multitude of unfortunate situations, much less than the happy ones, that the protagonists of this story had to live through, full, above all, of affliction and hopelessness.

Rodríguez Fischer designs a notebook in which, as if it were a letter, the poet Anna Akhmatova tells us in the first person the life of Marina Tsvetaeva.

These women saw each other in person only twice in their lives.

But it was always poetry, especially the one that Marina dedicated to her bosom friend Anna.

Anna and Marina belonged to equivalent well-off and cultured families in pre-revolutionary Russia.

They both got married and had children, both capsized in some loves and also felt like owners of their destiny, one infinitely more unfortunate than the other.

Anna's story is moving to the extent that Marina's life enters into it.

Anna outlived Marina by several years.

Their respective children also suffered hunger, exposure and consecutive and inhumane imprisonment, like their parents.

They were only saved from suicide, as happened with Marina, and from death by shooting, as happened with Anna's husband, the poet Nikolai Gumiliov.

And above all, suffering the most perverse methods of Stalinism to force them to remain silent.

Ana Rodríguez Fischer achieves a novel of radiant narrative effectiveness.

It moves us through the lives of both poets.

And the amazing thing is that she does it alongside her destinies, her aesthetic ambitions, her groundbreaking poetic models.

There is not even a hint of exegetical rhetoric.

There is only pure literature.

And inspired.

Look for it in your bookstore

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