Innokenty Annensky Poems

Annensky, renowned for his great learning, was the director of the lycée in Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg where many poets from Alexander Pushkin to Anna Akhmatova were educated. His poems are refined and somewhat cold, recalling the autumnal severity of that town and reflecting themes of weariness and futility, conquerable only through love or art. Though Annensky was not celebrated in his own time, his lack of mysticism and his clarity of expression, which became important to the Acmeists (in contrast to the reigning Symbolists), influenced many Russian poets, in particular Vladislav Khodasevich and to some extent Boris Pasternak.