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Writing within the contexts of Russian culture and modernist poetics, Sukhanova (CUNY) argues that it was Russian modernist poets who most fully appreciated and articulated the possibilities of Shakespearean texts. For Sukhanova, “Shakespeare offers a unique dialogue situation whose analysis provides valuable insight on the mechanism of assimilation of foreign texts by Russian modernist poetry as contrasted with the preceding epochs of Russian literature.” Although she has some interesting things to say about poets, her real achievement is the careful and illuminating readings of such underappreciated poets as Akhmatova, Pasternak, Mandelstam, and Blok. A fundamental objective of Russian modernist poets was the transcendence of the temporal and geographical limitations that had hindered Russian poetry; this naturally led to an affinity for Shakespeare, whose writings they viewed as especially fluid and open to multiple interpretations. Underpinned by the theory of Lotman and Bakhtin, this short volume is well-written but really too short to do sufficient justice to such a complex topic. Summing up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.

D. Pesta, Oklahoma State University
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