Adrian Wanner's Bilingual Muse: Self-Translation among Russian Poets is a thorough, well-written study that will appeal to readers of any of these poets, specialists in translation studies, and anyone interested in the psychology of bi- or multilingualism. Individual chapters deal with self-translation from Russian into German, French, and English (with a few additional language vectors), focusing on seven poetic self-translators: Elizaveta Kul΄man, Vasily Kandinsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, Vladimir Nabokov, Joseph Brodsky, Andrei Gritsman and Katya Kapovich. All but Kul΄man were translating their works outside Russia; the names reveal a salutary balance of gender. Wanner draws on his own comfort in multiple languages, and his translations are clear and accurate, enabling useful comparison even for readers who have no Russian. This topic has not been much studied, and readers may assume that an author's own translation automatically will or should be exactly adequate. Wanner explains what the translations actually do with available linguistic resources to achieve the desired effects.

Kul΄man (1808–1825) presents the trickiest example, as most of what we know comes from her teacher and mentor, while Wanner wants to address intention in self-translations and poets’ reasons for choosing a certain language for both original and translation. Kul΄man grew up bilingual in German and Russian but moved into other languages, especially Italian. Here and throughout, the book provides poems in the original languages and offers new translations of any not already in English. Examining the details lets Wanner suggest which of Kul΄man's poems—sometimes existing in three or more languages—were originals versus translations. This chapter may encourage readers to explore the poet's work.

Russia and Russian Studies tend to address Kandinsky more as a painter and art theorist, less as a poet. The German world has taken his poetry seriously, and Wanner takes advantage of the German scholarship on the poetry, its relationship to Kandinsky's other projects, and parallels to the painting. The chapter also looks at Kandinsky's late writing in French, suggesting that a foreign language (beyond the artist's bilingual German and Russian) may increase freedom for verbal experimentation. Tsvetaeva is a better-known self-translator, though here too the work (her translation of her long poem Molodets into French as Le Gars) is less studied than her other writing. Wanner offers nuanced and informative discussion of the changes in the French version and their significance. In particular, Russifying details are added: the heroine Marusia has Russian braids; the nobleman she marries celebrates with vodka, and so on. Wanner takes excellent advantage of the available scholarship, much more abundant than for Kul΄man or (poetry by) Kandinsky.

Nabokov and Brodsky are both more widely known as self-translators. Wanner looks at Nabokov's poetic self-translations (published in Poems and Problems, 1969), asking whether they adhere to the theories expressed in his famous essay on translating Aleksandr Pushkin's Evgeny Onegin, which is widely cited in translation studies precisely for its extremity in asserting that form cannot be adequately reproduced in translation. Wanner shows that with his own poetry (as in his earlier translations of other Russian poets) Nabokov was less pessimistic about conveying formal features than with Pushkin. Critical response to his self-translations into English was mostly negative, though his poems written in English are highly regarded; Wanner raises interesting questions about why this might be so. Brodsky's self-translations, despite his Nobel Prize, have not been particularly admired either (nor have his impositions on translations that others did for him). Wanner notes that some translators eventually credited Brodsky for what he did in self-translations or interventions. The chapter is more concerned with analysis than evaluation of the self-translations, though Wanner cites Brodsky's comment that he had chosen English through love, unlike Nabokov who was actually trilingual from childhood. Again, side-by-side comparison of originals and self-translations is illuminating, and Wanner delves into psychological aspects of self-translation.

The penultimate chapter examines self-translations by two more recent Russian émigrés, Andrey Gritsman and Katia Kapovich, both significant and recognized poets who work largely in the US. Wanner notes differences in how they identify a poem in English as a translation, finding Gritsman more open in those cases, whereas Kapovich has expressed skepticism about poetic translation. Comparing originals and translations once again leads to interesting observations. Wanner's brief but effective conclusion mentions Brodsky's prediction that the future might well see more people producing poetry in multiple languages. If so, The Bilingual Muse is here to help process and understand what they are doing.