Arseny Tarkovsky (1907-1989) is one of the great Russian poets of the 20th century. He survived the entire Soviet era—suffering a leg amputation during the Second World War—by his work as a translator of poetry. His renown grew with the publication of his first book in the 1950s and when his son (the filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky) used readings of his father's poems in his films The Mirror and Stalker.