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阿赫玛托娃阿赫玛托娃（1889 - 1960）
阿赫玛托娃·安娜·安德烈耶夫娜，苏联俄罗斯女诗人。生于敖德萨一个海军工程师的家庭。曾在彼得堡女子大学学习法律，但她酷爱文学，尤其是诗歌。1910年与诗人古米廖夫结婚，游历许多国家。曾加入阿克梅派。1912年出版诗集《黄昏》。1914年发表诗集《念珠》，曾引起轰动。二十年代初期出版诗集《车前草》（1921１９２１）和《Anno Domini MCMX XI》（拉丁文，意为耶稣纪元，1922）。她的诗多以短小精致的形式，袒露复杂的内心矛盾。二十年代中期开始研究普希金的创作技巧。卫国战争时期创作过爱国主义诗篇，如《起誓》（1941）、《胜利》（1942-1945）等。战后继续写作抒情诗，1946年受到批判。五十年代后期恢复名誉。晚期的诗歌有《没有主角的长诗》（1940-1962）和《光阴的飞逝》。
阿赫玛托娃·安娜·安德烈耶夫娜，苏联俄罗斯女诗人。生于敖德萨一个海军工程师的家庭。曾在彼得堡女子大学学习法律，但她酷爱文学，尤其是诗歌。1910年与诗人古米廖夫结婚，游历许多国家。曾加入阿克梅派。1912年出版诗集《黄昏》。1914年发表诗集《念珠》，曾引起轰动。二十年代初期出版诗集《车前草》（1921１９２１）和《Anno Domini MCMX XI》（拉丁文，意为耶稣纪元，1922）。她的诗多以短小精致的形式，袒露复杂的内心矛盾。二十年代中期开始研究普希金的创作技巧。卫国战争时期创作过爱国主义诗篇，如《起誓》（1941）、《胜利》（1942-1945）等。战后继续写作抒情诗，1946年受到批判。五十年代后期恢复名誉。晚期的诗歌有《没有主角的长诗》（1940-1962）和《光阴的飞逝》。她和前夫古米廖夫同是阿克梅派的杰出代表。出版的作品有长诗《没有主人公的长诗》、组诗《安魂曲》等。1964年获意大利国际诗歌奖，1965年获英国牛津大学名誉博士学位。诗人喜爱中国古典诗歌，曾译过《离骚》和李商隐的无题诗。
1966年３月这位饱经风霜的女诗人因心肌梗塞病逝，结束了她77年的坎坷历程。
自述
【阿赫玛托娃的自述】
我于1889年６月11日（新历23日）出生在奥德萨附近（大喷泉）。我的父亲当时是一名退役的海军机械工程师。当我还是一岁的小孩子时，便被送到了北方——进了皇村。在那我一直生活到16岁。
有关皇村，我最初的记忆是这样的：葱茏的绿意，众多公园的潮润与灿烂，保姆曾带我去过的牧场，我们曾骑了形形色色小马的跑马场，古老的火车站和一些别样的事物，它们嗣后都被录入了“皇村颂”中。
每年的夏季，我都是在塞瓦斯托波尔附近——人马座海湾的岸边度过的，就是在那里，我与大海结为了好友。这些年给我留下最为鲜明印象的是古老的赫尔松市，我们曾在那儿居住。
我是一个字母一个字母地学习阅读列夫托尔斯泰作品的。五岁时，听着女教师给稍大些的孩子们上课，我学会了说法语。
当我写下第一首诗时，我11岁。对我而言，诗歌的启蒙并非来自于普希金和莱蒙托夫，而是杰尔查文（“在皇室少年生日那天”）与涅克拉索夫（“严寒，红色的鼻子”）。这些作品我的妈妈都能够背诵下来。
我曾就读于皇村女子中学。起初我的成绩非常糟糕，后来变得十分优秀，然而内心却总是不太情愿学习。
1905年我的父母离异，妈妈带着孩子们搬到了南方。我们全年都生活在叶甫帕托里亚①。我在家中学习了中学毕业前一年级的课程，我还常常怀念皇村，并写下了大量庸俗无聊的诗歌。１９０５年革命的回声隐约传到了几乎与世隔绝的叶甫帕托里亚。最后一年级的课程我是于基辅完成的，在封杜克列耶夫中学，１９０７年我从那儿毕业。
我考入了基辅的高级女子学校法律系。暂时不得不学习法学史，比较特别的是还得学拉丁文，我曾经比较满意，因为当时只纯粹地讲授法律课程，后来我对这些课程也变得冷淡了。
1910年（旧历４月25日）我嫁给了尼古拉·古米廖夫，我们去巴黎度过了蜜月。
在巴黎鲜活的肉体上（左拉如此描写道）新的街心公园铺设工作还没有完全结束（Raspail街心公园)。艾迪逊的朋友维尔涅尔，在“Taverne de Panteon”指着两张桌子对我说：“这是你们的社会民主人士，那边是布尔什维克，而那边是孟什维克”。喜欢不断变换花样的女人们有的打算穿上那种裤子（jupes-cullottes）,有的打算穿上几乎覆盖了双腿的（jupes-entravees）。诗歌几乎无人问津，人们之所以购买诗集，仅仅是由于上面的小花饰出自有名或名气不大的画家之手。我当下便已经明白，巴黎的绘画吞噬了巴黎的诗歌。
回到彼得堡后，我在拉耶夫高级文史学校学习。此间我已经创作了不少诗歌，它们后来被收入我的第一本诗集。
当人们给我看伊纳肯基·安年斯基的诗集《柏木首饰匣》校样后，我曾激动异常，读着它，忘记了世间的一切。
1910年，象征主义的危机明显地暴露出来，刚起步的诗人们已经不再追随这一流派。其中有些人加入了未来主义，而另外一些人加入了阿克梅主义。我与诗人第一车间的同道——曼德里施塔姆、泽恩凯维奇、纳尔布特——一起成为了阿克梅人。
1911年我是在巴黎度过的，在那里，我成为俄罗斯芭蕾舞成功首演的见证者。1912年，我游历了意大利北部（热纳亚、比萨、佛罗伦萨、博洛尼亚、帕多瓦、威尼斯）。意大利的自然风光与建筑艺术给我留下了深刻的印象：它如梦如幻，会使你终生难忘。
1912年我的第一本诗集《黄昏》问世。它只印刷了300册。评论家们对它比较赏识。
1912年10月１日我惟一的儿子列夫降临人世。
1914年３月我的第二本诗集《念珠》出版。它的出售大概也就持续了六周。在5月初彼得堡开始沉寂，人们渐渐地逃离这座城市。这次与彼得堡的离别没料想竟成永远。我们再回来时。它已不再是彼得堡，而成了彼得格勒。从19世纪我们一下跌入了20世纪，自城市的风貌开始，一切面目全非。我以为，作为一个初写者爱情诗歌的小册子，理所当然会在世界大事中湮没无闻的。而时间对它的安排却并非如此。
每年的夏季我都是在以前的特维尔省度过，它距别热斯克市有十五俄里。这里并非风光宜人：丘陵上的田地被翻耕成整齐的方块儿，磨坊，泥塘，干涸的沼泽，“小门小院”，庄稼，庄稼……《念珠》和《白色雕像》中的许多首诗我就是在那里完成的。《白色雕像》于1917年9月出版。
对这本书读者们与评论界是不公平的。为何我这样认为，因为它较之于《念珠》的反响要小些。并且这本诗集的面世，正处于重大的社会变革阶段。交通瘫痪——书甚至连莫斯科都不能运到，它在彼得格勒即被抢购一空。杂志社关门，报社也是如此。因此相对于《念珠》，《白色雕像》一书少了热闹的媒体参与。日渐增多的是饥饿与纷争。多么可怕，而当时却把这些状况都置之度外了。
十月革命以后我在农艺学院的图书馆工作。1921年出版了我的诗集《车前草》，在1922年出版了《Anno Domini》。
大抵在20年代中期，我怀着浓厚的兴趣，开始了古老的彼得堡建筑艺术和普希金生平与文学创作的研究工作。普希金研究的主要成果有三个：有关他的作品《金鸡》、本杰明·松斯坦的《阿道夫》以及《石头客人》。这些文章在当时全部发表了。
与《亚历山大诗体》、《普希金与涅瓦海滨》、《普希金在1828》相关的工作，我几乎做了近２０年，很显然，我想把它们收入专著《普希金之死》中。
自20年代中期我的新诗几乎停止了刊发，而旧作依然可以重版。
1941年卫国战争期间，我被迫困留列宁格勒。在九月底，封锁已经开始了，我才乘飞机到了莫斯科。
1944年５月之前我生活在塔什干，我急切地搜罗着所有与列宁格勒、前线相关的消息。如同其他的诗人，我也常常到军队医院去慰问演出，为受伤的战士们朗读诗歌。在塔什干我第一次知道了，什么是酷热、树荫和水声。而且我还懂得了，什么是人类的善良：在塔什干我曾多次患病，而且都病得不轻。
1944年５月，我乘飞机抵达了春天的莫斯科，它已经完全沉浸于临近胜利的愉快希望与期盼之中。
那个可怕的幽灵，它封锁了我的城市，它令我惊惧异常，我把与它的相见写入了我的散文中。那段时间促使我写出了《三棵丁香》和《做客死神家》等随笔，后者与我在杰里基前线朗诵诗歌一事有关。散文对我来说永远是神秘与充满诱惑的。我从一开始便洞悉了诗歌的全部，而对散文却永远是一无所知。我的最初的试验得到了大家的赞扬，而我本人，当然，对此却并不相信。我把左先科②叫来。他命令我将某些段落删除，并且说，他同意保留其它的部分。我非常高兴。后来，儿子被逮捕，我把它们与其他手稿全部烧毁了。
我很早便对文学翻译问题感兴趣。近些年来我翻译了许多作品。至今仍在译着。
1962年我完成了《没有主人公的叙事诗》，这部长诗我写了22年。
去年春天，即“但丁年”的前夕，我重新聆听到了意大利语——我参访了罗马和西西里。1965年春天，我去了莎士比亚的故乡，看见了大不列颠的天空和大西洋，与老朋友们重聚，并结识了些新朋友，又一次参观了巴黎。
我没有停止诗歌的写作。诗歌的写作对于我来说，就是我与时间，与我的人民的新生活的联系。当我写下它们，我就活在了那韵律中，这旋律就喧响在我的国家的英勇的历史之中。我是幸福的，因为我生活在这个时代，并且目睹了那些发生着的史无前例的事件。
一九六五年。
【注】：
①叶甫帕托里亚：乌克兰克里米亚半岛城市，临黑海。有海滨浴场。西面的迈纳克湖有医疗用泥塘，为滨海儿童泥疗胜地。
②左先科（1894 - 1958）：苏联著名幽默作家。。
逝世40周年纪念
纪念阿赫玛托娃逝世40周年
都知道普希金是俄罗斯诗歌的太阳，那么月亮呢？月亮是美丽的阿赫玛托娃。
2006年的3月5日，是阿赫玛托娃逝世40周年纪念日。1966年3月5日那个清晨不属于月亮，阿赫玛托娃因心肌梗塞突然告别了人世。
她77岁，活到这个岁数不容易了。生于1889年的阿赫玛托娃，在她百年冥诞的1989年迎来了一个巨大的荣誉：联合国教科文组织把这一年定为“阿赫玛托娃年”，以纪念这位“把人带进一个美好世界”的“诗歌语言的光辉大师”。
国内有不少版本的阿赫玛托娃传记作品，出版较早的是俄罗斯学者阿·帕甫洛夫斯基所著的《安·阿赫玛托娃传》；新近出版的是中国学者汪剑钊所著的《阿赫玛托娃传》，图文并茂，在阿赫玛托娃逝世40周年的时候与读者见面。
年轻时的阿赫玛托娃那么美丽，是典型的俄罗斯美少女。14岁时，在那个圣诞节前夕，她结识了比她大3岁的诗人古米廖夫，古米廖夫疯狂地爱上了她，并因求婚被她拒绝而试图自杀过4次。最后，阿赫玛托娃答应嫁给了他。1910年，阿赫玛托娃与古米廖夫结婚，不久就迎来了“十月革命”。十月革命胜利后不久的1921年8月，古米廖夫被处决，罪名是不难想象的——“反革命阴谋罪”。阿赫玛托娃自然受到了牵连。到了1930年代，她的儿子列夫两次被捕，第1次在1935年，第2次在1938年，原因皆为莫须有，比如第2次被捕仅仅是因为他不承认自己父亲有所谓的“历史问题”。
白银的月亮凝立如冰，白银的月亮更是惨淡如水。就在那个令俄罗斯人不堪回首的大清洗时代，儿子的被捕，成就了诗人的最重要的代表作《安魂曲》。汪剑钊在《阿赫玛托娃传》自序里提到的一个细节，瞬间就刻录在我的大脑里无法删除：“当时，为了保存这部作品，诗人不得已像生活在荷马时代一样，写完某些片段，便给自己最可靠的朋友朗诵，然后由后者背诵，在脑子里‘存盘’，再毁弃手稿。”这就是没有电脑的时代，被人脑所存盘的《安魂曲》！
那是一个怎样的时代，那是一个怎样的环境！那时，是不可能把诗歌当诗歌的，诗歌倒是能成为罪行的证据。《安魂曲》写于1935年至1941年期间，在很长一段时间里，《安魂曲》是一部只在民间地下流传的作品（直到1987年，才得以全文发表在《十月》杂志上）。1956年5月，儿子列夫才被释放回家；1957年4月1日，在列宁格勒，阿赫玛托娃给《安魂曲》写下非常精短的《代序》：
……我在列宁格勒的探监队列中度过了十七个月。有一次，有人“认出”了我。当时，一个站在我身后的女人，嘴唇发青，当然她从未听说过我的名字，她从我们都已习惯了的那种麻木状态中苏醒过来，凑近我的耳朵（那里所有人都是低声说话的）问道：“您能描写这儿的情形吗？”我就说道：“能。”于是，一丝曾经有过的淡淡笑意，从她的脸上掠过。
这个触发阿赫玛托娃构思创作《安魂曲》的细节，让我们看到了俄罗斯人民的坚韧与伟大。一位普通的探监妇女，她并不了解阿赫玛托娃，但她希冀着有人把那一切给写下来！“这组诗歌不仅是一部关于自己的命运、自己儿子的命运的作品，而且也是一部关于整个民族背负十字架的苦难的作品。在这组诗中，阿赫玛托娃不仅是列夫·古米廖夫的母亲，而且是整个俄罗斯母亲的代表”。俄罗斯作家为什么有着博大深厚的人道主义传统？因为有着像黑土层那样博大深厚的俄罗斯人民的孕育。
记得在“流亡者译丛”总序中讲述了一个小故事：苏联作家格拉宁在参加为著名讽刺作家左琴科恢复名誉的活动后，到档案馆查找左琴科在几十年前一次批判会上发言的速记记录。记录在册但被人清掉了。谁干的？不得而知。格拉宁说：“有一回，我自己也不知为什么向一位认识的女速记员讲了我多年来四处寻找那一份速记记录，却徒劳无益……过了大约两个月，她打电话请我去。当我赶到时，她没作任何解释，递给我一叠打字机打好的纸。这正是左琴科那个讲话的速记记录。”这就是从当时与会的一位女速记员那里得到的！速记记录上贴着一张字条：“对不起，有些地方记了个大概，我当时特别激动，眼泪影响了记录。”没有署名。
这是一个让我每次读“流亡者译丛”都感动得热泪盈眶的细节。一个普通妇女，她可能知道左琴科，也可能不知道左琴科。那个被批判的作家左琴科，那时是“敌人的走狗”、“流氓”、“资产阶级下流作家”！然而，激动的眼泪里写满了一位普通俄罗斯女性的诚实善良，那是博大深厚的人道主义精神所长年孕育的天性，因此，她把左琴科的讲话“存盘”于自己的脑海，从而保存了一份宝贵的历史见证。
1946年8月14日，当时的苏共中央，作出了一项关于《星》与《列宁格勒》杂志的著名决议，决议严厉批判的作家就是左琴科和阿赫玛托娃：“阿赫玛托娃是与我国人民背道而驰的、内容空洞、缺乏思想性的典型代表。她的诗歌充满悲观情绪和颓废心理，表现出过时的沙龙诗歌的风格，停留在资产阶级-贵族阶级唯美主义和颓废主义以及‘为艺术而艺术’这一理论的立场上，不愿与本国人民步调一致，对我国的青年教育事业造成危害，因而不能为苏联文学界所容忍”。
文学界红人、向来讲话“义正词严，高屋建瓴，势如破竹”的日丹诺夫，在报告中发表了赫赫有名的评价，称阿赫玛托娃“不知是修女还是荡妇，更确切地说，是集淫荡与祷告于一身的荡妇兼修女”！这是与判决她儿子一样的冷漠严酷的判决词，不给他人的尊严留一丁点空间，阿赫玛托娃命中注定要下地狱。随后的事情就可想而知了：《列宁格勒》杂志被责令停办，《星》杂志编委会被改组；左琴科与阿赫玛托娃被开除出苏联作协，作品不予刊登。早在1920年代中后期，阿赫玛托娃曾被一度剥夺了发表作品的权利，她只好开始研究普希金，用来维持生计，如今又被禁发作品，为了生活，她只好开始翻译诗歌。
在人民心中，阿赫玛托娃是俄罗斯诗歌的月亮；在文艺官眼里，她却是“荡妇兼修女”。然而历史是很讽刺的，作为“白银时代”的代表性诗人，阿赫玛托娃在逝世后迎来了世界的声誉。美国著名记者索尔兹伯里这样评价阿赫玛托娃们：“诗人清楚他们的使命。那就是讲真话。让俄国人听到真实情况，不管多么可怕……一百年后，他们的声音，他们的勇气，他们的诚实将使俄国多么为之骄傲！”
1966年3月5日，阿赫玛托娃辞别了人世。在俄罗斯广袤的大地上，静静的涅瓦河静静地流淌，静静的顿河静静地流淌……
Akhmatova's work ranges from short lyric poems to intricately structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935–40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her style, characterised by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries. The strong and clear leading female voice struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Her writing can be said to fall into two periods – the early work (1912–25) and her later work (from around 1936 until her death), divided by a decade of reduced literary output. Her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities and she is notable for choosing not to emigrate, and remaining in Russia, acting as witness to the atrocities around her. Her perennial themes include meditations on time and memory, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism.
Primary sources of information about Akhmatova's life are relatively scant, as war, revolution and the totalitarian regime caused much of the written record to be destroyed. For long periods she was in official disfavour and many of those who were close to her died in the aftermath of the revolution.
Early life and family
Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan, near the Black Sea port of Odessa. Her father, Andrey Antonovich Gorenko, a naval engineer, and her mother, Inna Erazmovna Stogova, were both descended from the Russian nobility. Akhmatova wrote,
"No one in my large family wrote poetry. But the first Russian woman poet, Anna Bunina, was the aunt of my grandfather Erasm Ivanovich Stogov. The Stogovs were modest landowners in the Mozhaisk region of the Moscow Province. They were moved here after the insurrection during the time of Posadnitsa Marfa. In Novgorod they had been a wealthier and more distinguished family. Khan Akhmat, my ancestor, was killed one night in his tent by a Russian killer-for-hire. Karamzin tells us that this marked the end of the Mongol yoke on Russia. [...] It was well known that this Akhmat was a descendant of Genghiz Khan. In the eighteenth century, one of the Akhmatov Princesses – Praskovia Yegorvna – married the rich and famous Simbirsk landowner Motovilov. Yegor Motovilov was my great-grandfather; his daughter, Anna Yegorovna, was my grandmother. She died when my mother was nine years old, and I was named in her honour. Several diamond rings and one emerald were made from her brooch. Though my fingers are thin, still her thimble didn't fit me."
Her family moved north to Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg when she was eleven months old. The family lived in a house on the corner of Shirokaya Street and Bezymyanny Lane; (the building is no longer there today), spending summers from age 7 to 13 in a dacha near Sevastopol. She studied at the Mariinskaya High School, moving to Kiev (1906–10) and finished her schooling there, after her parents separated in 1905. She went on to study law at Kiev University, leaving a year later to study literature in St Petersburg.
Akhmatova started writing poetry at the age of 11, and published in her late teens, inspired by the poets Nikolay Nekrasov, Racine, Pushkin, Baratynsky and the Symbolists; however, none of her juvenilia survives. Her sister Inna also wrote poetry though she did not pursue the practice and married shortly after high school. Akhmatova's father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, so she chose to adopt her grandmother's distinctly Tatar surname 'Akhmatova' as a pen name.
Anna Akhmatova with her husband Nikolay Gumilev and son, Lev Gumilev, 1913
She met the young poet, Nikolay Gumilev on Christmas Eve 1903, who encouraged her to write and pursued her intensely, making numerous marriage proposals from 1905. At 17 years old, in his journal Sirius, she published her first poem which could be translated as On his hand are many shiny rings, (1907) signing it ‘Anna G.’ She soon became known in St Petersburg's artistic circles, regularly giving public readings. That year, she wrote unenthusiastically to a friend, “He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my fate to be his wife. Whether or not I love him, I do not know, but it seems to me that I do.” She married Gumilev in Kiev in April 1910; however, none of Akhmatova’s family attended the wedding. The couple honeymooned in Paris, and there she met and befriended the Italian artist Modigliani.
In late 1910, she came together with poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Sergey Gorodetsky to form the Guild of Poets. It promoted the idea of craft as the key to poetry rather than inspiration or mystery, taking themes of the concrete rather than the more ephemeral world of the Symbolists. Over time, they developed the influential Acmeist anti-symbolist school, concurrent with the growth of Imagism in Europe and America. From the first year of their marriage, Gumilyov began to chafe against its constraints. She wrote that he had "lost his passion" for her and by the end of that year he left on a six month trip to Africa. Akhmatova had "her first taste of fame", becoming renowned, not so much for her beauty, as her intense magnetism and allure, attracting the fascinated attention of a great many men, including the great and the good. She returned to visit Modigliani in Paris, where he created at least 20 paintings of her, including several nudes. She later began an affair with the celebrated Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam, whose wife, Nadezhda, declared later, in her autobiography that she came to forgive Akhmatova for it in time. Akhmatova's son, Lev, was born in 1912, and would go on to become a renowned Neo-Eurasianist historian.
Silver Age
Anna Akhmatova in 1914
In 1912, the Guild of Poets published her book of verse Evening (Vecher) – the first of five in nine years. [Notes 1] The small edition of 500 copies quickly sold out and she received around a dozen positive notices in the literary press. She exercised a strong selectivity for the pieces – including only 35 of the 200 poems she had written by the end of 1911. (She noted that Song of the Last Meeting, dated 29 September 1911, was her 200th poem). The book secured her reputation as a new and striking young writer, the poems Grey-eyed king, In the Forest, Over the Water and I don’t need my legs anymore making her famous. She later wrote "These naïve poems by a frivolous girl for some reason were reprinted thirteen times [...] And they came out in several translations. The girl herself (as far as I recall) did not foresee such a fate for them and used to hide the issues of the journals in which they were first published under the sofa cushions".
Her second collection, The Rosary (or Beads – Chetki) appeared in March 1914 and firmly established her as one of the most popular and sought after poets of the day.[Notes 2] Thousands of women composed poems "in honour of Akhmatova", mimicking her style and prompting Akhmatova to exclaim: "I taught our women how to speak, but don't know how to make them silent". Her aristocratic manners and artistic integrity won her the titles "Queen of the Neva" and "Soul of the Silver Age," as the period came to be known in the history of Russian poetry. In Poem Without a Hero, the longest and one of the best known of her works, written many decades later, she would recall this as a blessed time of her life. [Notes 3] She became close friends with Boris Pasternak (who, though married, proposed to her many times) and rumours began to circulate that she was having an affair with influential lyrical poet Alexander Blok. In July 1914, Akhmatova wrote “Frightening times are approaching/ Soon fresh graves will cover the land"; on August 1, Germany declared war on Russia, marking the start of "the dark storm" of world war, civil war, revolution and totalitarian repression for Russia. The Silver Age came to a close.
Portrait of Anna Akhmatova by Olga Della-Vos-Kardovskaya, 1914
Akhmatova had a relationship with the mosaic artist and poet Boris Anrep; many of her poems in the period are about him and he in turn created mosaics in which she is featured.[Notes 4][Notes 5] She selected poems for her third collection Belaya Staya (White Flock) in 1917, [Notes 6] a volume which poet and critic Joseph Brodsky later described as writing of personal lyricism tinged with the “note of controlled terror”. She later came to be memorialised by his description of her as "the keening muse". Essayist John Bayley describes her writing at this time as "grim, spare and laconic". In February 1917, the revolution started in Petersburg (then named Petrograd); soldiers fired on marching protestors, and others mutinied. They looked to a past in which the future was "rotting". In a city without electricity or sewage service, with little water or food, they faced starvation and sickness. Her friends died around her and others left in droves for safer havens in Europe and America, including Anrep, who escaped to England. She had the option to leave, and considered it for a time, but chose to stay and was proud of her decision to remain. That summer she wrote:
You are a traitor, and for a green island,
Have betrayed, yes, betrayed your native
Land,
Abandoned all our songs and sacred
Icons,
And the pine tree over a quiet lake. (From Green Island. Trans. Jane Kenyon)
She wrote of her own temptation to leave:
A voice came to me. It called out comfortingly.
It said, "Come here,
Leave your deaf and sinful land,
Leave Russia forever,
I will wash the blood from your hands,
Root out the black shame from your heart,
[...] calmly and indifferently,
I covered my ears with my hands,
So that my sorrowing spint
Would not be stained by those shameful words. (From When in suicidal anguish (Trans. Jane Kenyon)
At the height of Akhmatova's fame, in 1918, she divorced her husband and that same year, though many of her friends considered it a mistake, Akhmatova married prominent Assyriologist and poet Vladimir Shilejko. She later said “I felt so filthy. I thought it would be like a cleansing, like going to a convent, knowing you are going to lose your freedom.” She began affairs with theatre director Mikhail Zimmerman and composer Arthur Lourié, who set many of her poems to music.
The accursed year
In 1921, Akhmatova's former husband Nikolay Gumilyov was prosecuted for his alleged role in a monarchist anti-Bolshevik conspiracy and on 25 August was shot along with 61 others. According to the historian Rayfield, the murder of Gumilev was part of the state response to the Kronstadt Rebellion. The Cheka (secret police) blamed the rebellion on Petrograd's intellectuals, prompting the senior Cheka officer Agranov to forcibly extract the names of 'conspirators', from an imprisoned professor, guaranteeing them amnesty from execution. Agranov's guarantee proved to be meaningless. He sentenced dozens of the named persons to death, including Gumilev. Gorky and others appealed for leniency, but by the time Lenin agreed to several pardons, the condemned had been shot. Within a few days of his death, Akhmatova wrote:
Terror fingers all things in the dark,
Leads moonlight to the axe.
There's an ominous knock behind the
wall:
A ghost, a thief or a rat...
Anna Akhmatova in 1950
The murders had a powerful effect on the Russian intelligentsia, destroying the Acmeist poetry group, and placing a stigma on Akhmatova and her son Lev (by Gumilev). Lev's later arrest in the purges and terrors of the 1930s was based on being his father's son. From a new Marxist perspective, Akhmatova's poetry was deemed to represent an introspective "bourgeois aesthetic", reflecting only trivial "female" preoccupations, not in keeping with these new revolutionary politics of the time. She was roundly attacked by the state, by former supporters and friends, and seen to be an anachronism. During what she termed "The Vegetarian Years", Akhmatova's work was unofficially banned by a party resolution of 1925 and she found it hard to publish, though she didn't stop writing poetry. She made acclaimed translations of works by Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore, Giacomo Leopardi and pursued academic work on Pushkin and Dostoyevsky. She worked as a critic and essayist, though many critics and readers both within and outside USSR concluded she had died. She had little food and almost no money; her son was denied access to study at academic institutions by dint of his parents' alleged anti-state activities. The impact of the nation-wide repression and purges had a decimating effect on her St Petersburg circle of friends, artists and intellectuals. Her close friend and fellow poet Mandelstam was deported and then sentenced to a Gulag labour camp, where he would die. Akhmatova narrowly escaped arrest, though her son Lev was imprisoned on numerous occasions by the Stalinist regime, accused of counter-revolutionary activity. She would often queue for hours to deliver him food packages and plead on his behalf. She describes standing outside a stone prison:
"One day somebody in the crowd identified me. Standing behind me was a woman, with lips blue from cold, who had, of course, never heard me called by name before. Now she started out of the torpor common to us all and asked me in a whisper (everyone whispered there):
" 'Can you describe this?'
"And I said: 'I can.'
"Then something like a smile passed fleetingly over what had once been her face."
Akhmatova wrote that by 1935 every time she went to see someone off at the train station as they went into exile, she'd find herself greeting friends at every step as so many of St Petersburg's intellectual and cultural figures would be leaving on the same train. In her poetry circles Mayakovsky and Esenin committed suicide and Akhmatova's sister poet Marina Tsvetaeva would follow them in 1941, after returning from exile.
Akhmatova married an art scholar and lifelong friend, Nikolai Punin, whom she stayed with until 1935. He too was repeatedly taken into custody and died in the Gulag in 1953.[Notes 7] Her tragic cycle Requiem documents her personal experience of this time; as she writes, "one hundred million voices shout" through her "tortured mouth".
Seventeen months I've pleaded
for you to come home.
Flung myself at the hangman’s feet.
My terror, oh my son.
And I can’t understand.
Now all’s eternal confusion.
Who’s beast, and who’s man?
How long till execution?
(from Requiem. Trans. A.S. Kline, 2005).
From 1939: The thaw
Anna Akhmatova
In 1939, Stalin approved the publication of one volume of poetry, From Six Books, however the collection was withdrawn and pulped after only a few months. In 1993, it was revealed that the authorities had bugged her flat and kept her under constant surveillance, keeping detailed files on her from this time, accruing some 900 pages of "denunciations, reports of phone taps, quotations from writings, confessions of those close to her". Although officially stifled, Akhmatova's work continued to circulate in secret (samizdat), her work hidden, passed and read in the gulags. Akhmatova's close friend and chronicler Lydia Chukovskaya described how writers working to keep poetic messages alive used various strategies. A small trusted circle would, for example, memorise each others' works and circulate them only by oral means. She tells how Akhmatova would write out her poem for a visitor on a scrap of paper to be read in a moment, then burnt in her stove. The poems were carefully disseminated in this way, however it is likely that many complied in this manner were lost. "It was like a ritual," Chukovskaya wrote. "Hands, matches, an ashtray. A ritual beautiful and bitter."
During World War II, Akhmatova witnessed the 900 day Siege of Leningrad (now St Petersburg). In 1940, Akhmatova started her Poem without a Hero, finishing a first draft in Tashkent, but working on "The Poem" for twenty years and considering it to be the major work of her life, dedicating it to "the memory of its first audience – my friends and fellow citizens who perished in Leningrad during the siege". She was evacuated to Chistopol in spring of 1942 and then to greener, safer Tashkent in Uzbekistan, along with other artists, such as Shostakovitch. During her time away she became seriously ill with typhus (she had suffered from severe bronchitis and tuberculosis as a young woman). On returning to Leningrad in May 1944, she writes of how disturbed she was to find "a terrible ghost that pretended to be my city".
If a gag should blind my tortured mouth,
through which a hundred million people shout,
then let them pray for me, as I do pray
for them
“
”
From Requiem (1940).
Trans. Kunitz and Hayward
She regularly read to soldiers in the military hospitals and on the front line; indeed, her later pieces seem to be the voice of those who had struggled and the many she has outlived. She moved away from romantic themes towards a more diverse, complex and philosophical body of work and some of her more patriotic poems found their way to the front pages of Pravda. She was condemned for a visit by the liberal, western, Jewish philosopher Isaiah Berlin in 1946, and Official Andrei Zhdanov publicly labelled her "half harlot, half nun", her work "the poetry of an overwrought, upper-class lady", her work the product of "eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference". He banned her poems from publication in the journals Zvezda and Leningrad, accusing her of poisoning the minds of Soviet youth. Her surveillance was increased and she was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers. Berlin described his visit to her flat: It was very barely furnished—virtually everything in it had, I gathered, been taken away—looted or sold—during the siege.... A stately, grey-haired lady, a white shawl draped about her shoulders, slowly rose to greet us. Anna Akhmatova was immensely dignified, with unhurried gestures, a noble head, beautiful, somewhat severe features, and an expression of immense sadness.
Akhmatova's son Lev was arrested again at the end of 1949 and sentenced to 10 years in a Siberian prison camp. She spent much of the next years trying to ensure his release, to this end, and for the first time, she published overtly propagandist poetry, “In Praise of Peace,” in the magazine Ogoniok, openly supporting Stalin and his regime. Lev remained in the camps until 1956, well after Stalin's death, his final release potentially aided by his mother's concerted efforts. Bayley suggests that her period of pro-Stalinist work may also have saved her own life; notably however, Akhmatova never acknowledged these pieces in her official corpus. Akhmatova's stature among Soviet poets was slowly conceded by party officials, her name no longer cited in only scathing contexts and she was readmitted to Union of Writers in 1951, being fully recognised again following Stalin's death in 1953. With the press still heavily controlled and censored under Nikita Khrushchev, a translation by Akhmatova was praised in a public review in 1955, and her own poems began to re-appear in 1956. In this year Lev was released from the camps, embittered, believing that his mother cared more about her poetry than her son and that she had not worked hard for his release. Akhmatova's status was confirmed by 1958, with the publication of Stikhotvoreniya (Poems) and then Stikhotvoreniya 1909–1960 (Poems: 1909–1960) in 1961. Beg vremeni (The flight of time), collected works 1909–1965, published in 1965, was the most complete volume of her works in her lifetime, though the long damning poem Requiem, condemning the Stalinist purges, was conspicuously absent. Isaiah Berlin predicted at the time that it could never be published in the Soviet Union.
Last year
A land not mine, still
forever memorable,
the waters of its ocean
chill and fresh.
Sand on the bottom whiter than chalk,
and the air drunk, like wine,
late sun lays bare
the rosy limbs of the pinetrees.
Sunset in the ethereal waves:
I cannot tell if the day
is ending, or the world, or if
the secret of secrets is inside me again.
“
”
A land not mine 1964 (Trans. Jane Kenyon)
During the last years of her life she continued to live with the Punin family in Leningrad, still translating, researching Pushkin and writing her own poetry. Though still censored, she was concerned to re-construct work that had been destroyed or suppressed during the purges or which had posed a threat to the life of her son in the camps, such as the lost, semi-autobiographical play Enûma Elish. [Notes 8] She worked on her official memoirs, planned novels and worked on her epic Poem without a hero, 20 years in the writing.
Akhmatova was widely honoured in USSR and the West. In 1962 she was visited by Robert Frost; Isaiah Berlin tried to visit her again, but she refused him, worried that her son might be re-arrested due to family association with the ideologically suspect western philosopher. She inspired and advised a large circle of key young Soviet writers. Her dacha in Komarovo was frequented by such poets as Yevgeny Rein and Joseph Brodsky, whom she mentored. Brodsky, arrested in 1963 and interned for social parasitism, would go on to win the Nobel Prize in Literature (1987) and become Poet Laureate (1991) as an exile in the US. As one of the last remaining major poets of the Silver Age, she was newly acclaimed by the Soviet authorities as a fine and loyal representative of their country and permitted to travel. At the same time, by virtue of works such as Requiem, Akhmatova was being hailed at home and abroad as an unofficial leader of the dissident movement, and reinforcing this image herself. She was becoming representative of both Russias, more popular in the 1960s than she had ever been before the revolution, this reputation only continuing to grow after her death. For her 75th birthday in 1964, new collections of her verse were published.
Anna Ahmatova's grave, St Petersburg
Akhmatova was able to meet some of her pre-revolutionary acquaintances in 1965, when she was allowed to travel to Sicily and England, in order to receive the Taormina prize and an honorary doctoral degree from Oxford University, accompanied by her life-long friend and secretary Lydia Chukovskaya. Akhmatova's Requiem in Russian finally appeared in book form in Munich in 1963, the whole work not published within USSR until 1987. Her long poem The Way of All the Earth or Woman of Kitezh (Kitezhanka) was published in complete form in 1965.
In November 1965, soon after her Oxford visit, Akhmatova suffered a heart attack and was hospitalised. She was moved to a sanatorium in Moscow in the spring of 1966 and died of heart failure on March 5, at the age of 76. Thousands attended the two memorial ceremonies which were held in Moscow and in Leningrad. After being displayed in an open coffin, she was interred at Komarovo Cemetery in St Petersburg.
Isaiah Berlin described the impact of her life, as he saw it:
The widespread worship of her memory in Soviet Union today, both as an artist and as an unsurrendering human being, has, so far as I know, no parallel. The legend of her life and unyielding passive resistance to what she regarded as unworthy of her country and herself, transformed her into a figure [...] not merely in Russian literature, but in Russian history in [the Twentieth] century.
In 1988, to celebrate what would have been Akhmatova's 100th birthday, the University of Harvard held an international conference on her life and work. Today her work may be explored at the Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum in St Petersburg.
Work and theme
Akhmatova joined the Acmeist group of poets in 1910 with poets such as Osip Mandelstam and Sergey Gorodetsky, working in response to the Symbolist school, concurrent with the growth of Imagism in Europe and America. It promoted the use craft and rigorous poetic form over mysticism or spiritual in-roads to composition, favouring the concrete over the ephemeral. Akhmatova modelled its principles of writing with clarity, simplicity, and disciplined form. Her first collections Evening ( 1912 ) and Rosary ( 1914 ) received wide critical acclaim and made her famous from the start of her career. They contained brief, psychologically taut pieces, acclaimed for their classical diction, telling details, and the skilful use of colour. Evening and her next four books were mostly lyric miniatures on the theme of love, shot through with sadness. Her early poems usually picture a man and a woman involved in the most poignant, ambiguous moment of their relationship, much imitated and later parodied by Nabokov and others. Critic Roberta Reeder notes that the early poems always attracted large numbers of admirers: "For Akhmatova was able to capture and convey the vast range of evolving emotions experienced in a love affair, from the first thrill of meeting, to a deepening love contending with hatred, and eventually to violent destructive passion or total indifference. But [...] her poetry marks a radical break with the erudite, ornate style and the mystical representation of love so typical of poets like Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Her lyrics are composed of short fragments of simple speech that do not form a logical coherent pattern. Instead, they reflect the way we actually think, the links between the images are emotional, and simple everyday objects are charged with psychological associations. Like Alexander Pushkin, who was her model in many ways, Akhmatova was intent on conveying worlds of meaning through precise details."
But the point i
That we are all condemned to know
What it means not to sleep for three years,
What it means to find out in the morning
About those who have perished in the night.
“
”
She often complained that the critics "walled her in" to their perception of her work in the early years of romantic passion, despite major changes of theme in the later years of The Terror. This was mainly due to the secret nature of her work after the public and critical effusion over her first volumes. The risks during the purges were very great. Many of her close friends and family were exiled, imprisoned or shot; her son was under constant threat of arrest, she was often under close surveillance. Following artistic repression and public condemnation by the state in the 1920s, many within literary and public circles, at home and abroad, thought she had died. Her readership generally didn't know her later opus, the railing passion of Requiem or Poem without a Hero and her other scathing works, which were shared only with a very trusted few or circulated in secret by word of mouth (samizdat).
Between 1935 and 1940 Akhmatova composed, worked and reworked the long poem Requiem in secret, a lyrical cycle of lamentation and witness, depicting the suffering of the common people under Soviet terror. She carried it with her as she worked and lived in towns and cities across the Soviet Union. It was conspicuously absent from her collected works, given its explicit condemnation of the purges. The work in Russian finally appeared in book form in Munich in 1963, the whole work not published within USSR until 1987. It consists of ten numbered poems that examine a series of emotional states, exploring suffering, despair, devotion, rather than a clear narrative. Biblical themes such as Christ's crucifixion and the devastation of Mary, Mother of Jesus and Mary Magdelene, reflect the ravaging of Russia, particularly witnessing the harrowing of women in the 1930s. It represented, to some degree, a rejection of her own earlier romantic work as she took on the public role as chronicler of the Terror. This is a role she holds to this day.
Her essays on Pushkin and Poem Without a Hero, her longest work, were only published after her death. This long poem, composed between 1940 and 1965, is often critically regarded as her best work and also one of the finest poems of the twentieth century. It offers a complex analysis of the times she lived though and her relationship with them, including her significant meeting with Isaiah Berlin (1909–97) in 1945. Her talent in composition and translation is evidenced in her fine translations of the works of poets writing in French, English, Italian, Armenian, and Korean.
Honour
1964 Etna-Taormina prize
1965 honorary doctorate from Oxford University in 1965.
Selected poetry collection
Published by Akhmatova
1912 Vecher/Вечер (Evening).[Notes 1]
1914 Chetki (Rosary or literally Beads)[Notes 2]
1917 Belaya Staya (White flock)[Notes 9]
1921 Podorozhnik (Wayside grass / Plantain). 60 pages, 1000 copies published. [Notes 10]
1921 Anno Domini MCMXXI[Notes 6]
Reed – 2 Volume Selected Poems (1924–1926) was compiled but never published.
Uneven – compiled but never published.
1940 From Six Books (Publication suspended shortly after release, copies pulped).[Notes 11]
1943 Izbrannoe Stikhi (Selections of poetry) Tashkent, government edited.[Notes 12]
Iva not separately published[Notes 13]
Sed’maya kniga (Seventh book) – not separately published;[Notes 13]
1958 Stikhotvoreniya (Poems) (25,000 copies)
1961 Stikhotvoreniya 1909–1960 (Poems: 1909–1960)
1965 Beg vremeni (The flight of time Collected works 1909–1965)[Notes 13]
Later edition
1967 Poems of Akhmatova. Ed. and Trans. Stanley Kunitz, Boston
1976 Anna Akhmatova Selected Poems. D.M. Thomas Penguin Book
1985 Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova – Trans. Jane Kenyon; Eighties Press and Ally Press ISBN 0-915408-30-9
1988 Selected Poems Trans. Richard McKane; Bloodaxe Books Ltd; ISBN 1-85224-063-6
2000 The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova Trans. Judith Hemschemeyer.Ed. Roberta Reeder; Zephyr Press; ISBN 0-939010-27-5
2004 The Word That Causes Death's Defeat: Poems of Memory (Annals of Communism). Trans. Nancy Anderson. Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10377-8
2006 Selected Poems Trans D. M. Thomas; Penguin Classics; ISBN 0-14-042464-4
2009 Selected Poems Trans. Walter Arndt; Overlook TP; ISBN 0-88233-180-9