Russian literature 20th century

Oddly enough I really like Anna Akhmatova's (Ahmatova's) poems, though I don't speak Russian and I can only read the translations. I used to carry a paperback copy of her selected poems with me until the book disintegrated. I could not find this poem using Google, so here's a rendering by heart. "Three things in the world he loved. Evensongs, peacocks, old maps of America. Hated children crying and rashberry jam for tea. Could not stand female hysteria. And I was his wife."

The translation (or what I remember of it) is by D.M. Thomas, a notable author himself. Thomas' Flute Player actually has characters like Akhmatova and her friends (Osip Mandelstam and Elena Tsvetayeva). Thomas seems to have translated Pushkin and Yevtushenko, too. Yevtushenko is a skilled poet but I found him a bit too eager to please the audience and the public opinion. Interestingly the Wikipedia article about him poses him as a great critic of bureaucracy, stalinism and indifference in the USSR, even a sort of anti-communist. In reality even his autograph carried a sickle and a hammer during the USSR era.

In this months New Yorker there was a new translation of Akhmatova's poem. I liked Thomas' better.

Vladimir Mayakovsky is a bit childish compared to Ahmatova, but his poetry is fun and provocative at its best. In the 1990's I managed to trace down translations of all his plays, too, though some of them were only published as dialogue sheets for actors. The plays were quite good, really tackling the issues of bureaucracy and indifference. No wonder Mayakovsky commited a suicide when he noticed where Stalin and his mates were taking the country.