I have accepted what they themselves would have been well able to alter if they had so wished. Since I am not primarily concerned with generalized themes and individual native traditions, I have preferred to follow chronology even when it permits certain figures to intrude in what might otherwise have been, notably in the case of the Russian poets born between 1889 and 1893, significant clusters. Within an inevitably heterogeneous structure a certain homogeneity seems nevertheless to emerge. The reader will decide upon the strengths and weaknesses of the book as a whole. The essays, brief as they are, are meant to encourage him to read or re-read the poetry to which they refer. If anything I write should discourage him from doing so, I hope he will turn to the poems themselves, in whatever form he finds them most accessible, and share my conviction that the last century and a quarter has been one of the most fertile periods for poetry in the long history of European literature. Reading, 1981 -12- |