Plisetskaya. Element by the name of Maya. Portrait against the backdrop of an era

Brodskiy and Akhmatova are iconic names in the history of Russian poetry. In his Nobel lecture, Brodskiy named Akhmatova one of the 'sources of light' to whom he owed his poetic fate. Meetings with Akhmatova and her poetry connected Brodskiy to the poetic tradition of the Silver Age.
The Petersburg philologist Denis Akhapkin examines episodes from the lives and works of the two poets in his book, showing the profound interconnection between the two poetic systems. Life events are whimsically refracted through the prism of poetic lines, becoming facts not just of biography, but literary biography — and some features of Akhmatova's poetic language are well heard in Brodskiy's verses. The book combines a discussion of the poets' destinies with a conversation about specific poems and their slow reading.