The main motives of A. A. Akhmatova’s lyrics: a review of creativity. The main themes and ideas of Anna Akhmatova’s lyrics Table of themes in Akhmatova’s work

The work of Anna Akhmatova.

The beginning of Akhmatova’s creativity
Features of Akhmatova's poetry
Theme of St. Petersburg in Akhmatova’s lyrics
The theme of love in Akhmatova’s work
Akhmatova and the revolution
Analysis of the poem "Requiem"
Akhmatova and the Second World War, the siege of Leningrad, evacuation
Death of Akhmatova

The name of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is on a par with the names of outstanding luminaries of Russian poetry. Her quiet, sincere voice, depth and beauty of feelings are unlikely to leave at least one reader indifferent. It is no coincidence that her best poems have been translated into many languages of the world.

The beginning of Akhmatova’s creativity.

In her autobiography entitled “Briefly about myself” (1965), A. Akhmatova wrote: “I was born on June 11 (23), 1889 near Odessa (Big Fountain). My father was at that time a retired naval mechanical engineer. As a one-year-old child, I was transported to the north - to Tsarskoye Selo. I lived there until I was sixteen... I studied at the Tsarskoye Selo girls’ gymnasium... My last year was in Kyiv, at the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium, from which I graduated in 1907.”

Akhmatova began writing while studying at the gymnasium. Her father, Andrei Antonovich Gorenko, did not approve of her hobbies. This explains why the poetess took as a pseudonym the surname of her grandmother, who descended from the Tatar Khan Akhmat, who came to Rus' during the Horde invasion. “That’s why it occurred to me to take a pseudonym for myself,” the poetess later explained, “because dad, having learned about my poems, said: “Don’t disgrace my name.”

Akhmatova had virtually no literary apprenticeship. Her first collection of poetry, “Evening,” which included poems from her high school years, immediately attracted the attention of critics. Two years later, in March 1917, the second book of her poems, “The Rosary,” was published. They started talking about Akhmatova as a completely mature, original master of words, sharply distinguishing her from other Acmeist poets. Contemporaries were struck by the undeniable talent and high degree of creative originality of the young poetess. characterizes the hidden mental state of an abandoned woman. “Glory to you, hopeless pain,” for example, these are the words that begin the poem “The Gray-Eyed King” (1911). Or here are the lines from the poem “He left me on the new moon” (1911):

The orchestra plays cheerfully

And the lips smile.

But the heart knows, the heart knows

That box five is empty!

Being a master of intimate lyricism (her poetry is often called an “intimate diary”, “a woman’s confession”, “a confession of a woman’s soul”), Akhmatova recreates emotional experiences with the help of everyday words. And this gives her poetry a special sound: everyday life only enhances the hidden psychological meaning. Akhmatova’s poems often capture the most important, and even turning points, in life, the culmination of mental tension associated with the feeling of love. This allows researchers to talk about the narrative element in her work, about the impact of Russian prose on her poetry. So V. M. Zhirmunsky wrote about the novelistic nature of her poems, bearing in mind the fact that in many of Akhmatova’s poems, life situations are depicted, as in the short story, at the most acute moment of their development. The “novelism” of Akhmatova’s lyrics is enhanced by the introduction of lively colloquial speech spoken aloud (as in the poem “Clenched her hands under a dark veil.” This speech, usually interrupted by exclamations or questions, is fragmentary. Syntactically divided into short segments, it is full of logically unexpected, emotionally justified conjunctions “a” or “and” at the beginning of the line:

Don't like it, don't want to watch?

Oh, how beautiful you are, damn you!

And I can't fly

And since childhood I was winged.

Akhmatova's poetry, with its conversational intonation, is characterized by the transfer of an unfinished phrase from one line to another. No less characteristic of it is the frequent semantic gap between the two parts of the stanza, a kind of psychological parallelism. But behind this gap lies a distant associative connection:

How many requests does your beloved always have!

A woman who has fallen out of love has no requests.

I'm so glad there's water today

It freezes under the colorless ice.

Akhmatova also has poems where the narration is told not only from the perspective of the lyrical heroine or hero (which, by the way, is also very remarkable), but from the third person, or rather, the narration from the first and third person is combined. That is, it would seem that she uses a purely narrative genre, which implies both narration and even descriptiveness. But even in such poems she still prefers lyrical fragmentation and reticence:

Came up. I didn’t show my excitement.

Looking indifferently out the window.

She sat down. Like a porcelain idol

In the pose she had chosen long ago...

The psychological depth of Akhmatova’s lyrics is created by a variety of techniques: subtext, external gesture, detail that conveys the depth, confusion and contradictory nature of feelings. Here, for example, are lines from the poem “Song of the Last Meeting” (1911). where the heroine’s excitement is conveyed through an external gesture:

My chest was so helplessly cold,

But my steps were light.

I put it on my right hand

Glove from the left hand.

Akhmatova's metaphors are bright and original. Her poems are literally replete with their diversity: “tragic autumn”, “shaggy smoke”, “silent snow”.

Very often, Akhmatova’s metaphors are poetic formulas of love feelings:

All for you: and daily prayer,

And the melting heat of insomnia,

And my poems are a white flock,

And my eyes are blue fire.

2. Features of Akhmatova’s poetry.

Most often, the poetess’s metaphors are taken from the natural world and personify it: “Early autumn hung //Yellow flags on the elms”; “Autumn is red in the hem//Brought red leaves.”

One of the notable features of Akhmatova’s poetics should also include the unexpectedness of her comparisons (“High in the sky, a cloud turned grey, // Like a squirrel’s skin spread out” or “Stuffy heat, like tin, // Pours from the heavens to the parched earth”).

She often uses this type of trope as an oxymoron, that is, a combination of contradictory definitions. This is also a means of psychologization. A classic example of Akhmatova’s oxymoron is the lines from her poem “The Tsarskoye Selo Statue* (1916): Look, it’s fun for her to be sad. So elegantly naked.

A very large role in Akhmatova’s verse belongs to detail. Here, for example, is a poem about Pushkin “In Tsarskoe Selo” (1911). Akhmatova wrote more than once about Pushkin, as well as about Blok - both were her idols. But this poem is one of the best in Akhmatova’s Pushkinianism:

The dark-skinned youth wandered through the alleys,

The lake shores were sad,

And we cherish the century

A barely audible rustle of footsteps.

Pine needles are thick and prickly

Low lights cover...

Here was his cocked hat

And the disheveled volume Guys.

Just a few characteristic details: a cocked hat, a volume beloved by Pushkin - a lyceum student, Guys - and we almost clearly feel the presence of the great poet in the alleys of the Tsarskoye Selo park, we recognize his interests, peculiarities of gait, etc. In this regard - the active use of details - Akhmatova also goes in line with the creative quest of prose writers of the early 20th century, who gave details greater semantic and functional meaning than in the previous century.

There are many epithets in Akhmatova’s poems, which the famous Russian philologist A. N. Veselovsky once called syncretic, for they are born from a holistic, inseparable perception of the world, when feelings are materialized, objectified, and objects are spiritualized. She calls passion “white-hot,” her sky is “scarred by yellow fire,” that is, the sun, she sees “chandeliers of lifeless heat,” etc. But Akhmatova’s poems are not isolated psychological sketches: the sharpness and surprise of her view of the world is combined with poignancy and depth of thought. The poem "Song" (1911) begins as an unassuming story:

I'm at sunrise

I sing about love.

On my knees in the garden

Swan field.

And it ends with a biblically deep thought about the indifference of a loved one:

There will be stone instead of bread

My reward is Evil.

Above me there is only the sky,

The desire for artistic laconicism and at the same time for the semantic capacity of the verse was also expressed in Akhmatova’s widespread use of aphorisms in depicting phenomena and feelings:

There is one less hope -

There will be one more song.

From others I receive praise that is evil.

From you and blasphemy - praise.

Akhmatova assigns a significant role to color painting. Her favorite color is white, emphasizing the plastic nature of the object, giving the work a major tone.

Often in her poems the opposite color is black, enhancing the feeling of sadness and melancholy. There is also a contrasting combination of these colors, emphasizing the complexity and inconsistency of feelings and moods: “Only ominous darkness shone for us.”

Already in the early poems of the poetess, not only vision, but also hearing and even smell were heightened.

Music rang in the garden

Such unspeakable grief.

Fresh and sharp smell of the sea

Oysters on ice on a platter.

Due to the skillful use of assonance and alliteration, details and phenomena of the surrounding world appear as if renewed, pristine. The poetess allows the reader to feel the “barely audible smell of tobacco”, feel how “a sweet smell flows from the rose”, etc.

In terms of its syntactic structure, Akhmatova’s verse gravitates towards a concise, complete phrase, in which not only the secondary, but also the main members of the sentence are often omitted: (“Twenty-first. Night… Monday”), and especially to colloquial intonation. This imparts a deceptive simplicity to her lyrics, behind which lies a wealth of emotional experiences and high skill.

3. The theme of St. Petersburg in Akhmatova’s lyrics.

Along with the main theme - the theme of love, another one emerged in the poetess's early lyrics - the theme of St. Petersburg, the people inhabiting it. The majestic beauty of her beloved city is included in her poetry as an integral part of the spiritual movements of the lyrical heroine, in love with the squares, embankments, columns, and statues of St. Petersburg. Very often these two themes are combined in her lyrics:

The last time we met was then

On the embankment, where we always met.

There was high water in the Neva

And they were afraid of floods in the city.

4. The theme of love in Akhmatova’s work.

The depiction of love, mostly unrequited love and full of drama, is the main content of all the early poetry of A. A. Akhmatova. But these lyrics are not narrowly intimate, but large-scale in their meaning and significance. It reflects the richness and complexity of human feelings, an inextricable connection with the world, for the lyrical heroine does not limit herself only to her suffering and pain, but sees the world in all its manifestations, and it is infinitely dear and dear to her:

And the boy who plays the bagpipes

And the girl who weaves her own wreath.

And two crossed paths in the forest,

And in the far field there is a distant light, -

I see everything. I remember everything

Lovingly and briefly in my heart...

("And the Boy Who Plays the Bagpipes")

Her collections contain many lovingly drawn landscapes, everyday sketches, paintings of rural Russia, signs of the “scarce land of Tver”, where she often visited the estate of N. S. Gumilyov Slepnevo:

Crane at an old well

Above him, like boiling clouds,

There are creaky gates in the fields,

And the smell of bread, and melancholy.

And those dim spaces

And judgmental glances

Calm tanned women.

(“You know, I’m languishing in captivity...”)

Drawing discreet landscapes of Russia, A. Akhmatova sees in nature a manifestation of the almighty Creator:

In every tree is the crucified Lord,

In each ear is the body of Christ,

And prayers are the most pure word

Heals sore flesh.

Akhmatova’s arsenal of artistic thinking included ancient myths, folklore, and sacred history. All this is often passed through the prism of deep religious feeling. Her poetry is literally permeated with biblical images and motifs, reminiscences and allegories of sacred books. It has been correctly noted that “the ideas of Christianity in Akhmatova’s work are manifested not so much in the epistemological and ontological aspects, but in the moral and ethical foundations of her personality”3.

From an early age, the poetess was characterized by high moral self-esteem, a sense of her sinfulness and a desire for repentance, characteristic of the Orthodox consciousness. The appearance of the lyrical “I” in Akhmatova’s poetry is inseparable from the “ringing of bells”, from the light of “God’s house”; the heroine of many of her poems appears before the reader with a prayer on her lips, awaiting the “last judgment”. At the same time, Akhmatova firmly believed that all fallen and sinful, but suffering and repentant people would find the understanding and forgiveness of Christ, for “only the blue//Heavenly and mercy of God is inexhaustible.” Her lyrical heroine “yearns for immortality” and “believes in it, knowing that “souls are immortal.” The religious vocabulary abundantly used by Akhmatova - lamp, prayer, monastery, liturgy, mass, icon, vestments, bell tower, cell, temple, images, etc. - creates a special flavor, a context of spirituality. Focused on spiritual and religious national traditions and many elements of the genre system of Akhmatova’s poetry. Such genres of her lyrics as confession, sermon, prediction, etc. are filled with pronounced biblical content. Such are the poems “Prediction”, “Lamentation”, the cycle of her “Bible Verses” inspired by the Old Testament, etc.

She especially often turned to the genre of prayer. All this gives her work a truly national, spiritual, confessional, soil-based character.

The First World War caused serious changes in Akhmatova’s poetic development. From that time on, her poetry even more widely included motives of citizenship, the theme of Russia, her native land. Perceiving the war as a terrible national disaster, she condemned it from a moral and ethical position. In the poem “July 1914” she wrote:

Juniper smell sweet

Flies from burning forests.

The soldiers are moaning over the guys,

A widow's cry rings through the village.

In the poem “Prayer” (1915), striking with the power of self-denial feeling, she prays to the Lord for the opportunity to sacrifice everything she has to her Motherland - both her life and the lives of her loved ones:

Give me the bitter years of illness,

Choking, insomnia, fever,

Take away both the child and the friend,

And the mysterious gift of song

So I pray at Your liturgy

After so many tedious days,

So that a cloud over dark Russia

Became a cloud in the glory of the rays.

5. Akhmatova and the revolution.

When, during the years of the October Revolution, every artist of words was faced with the question: whether to stay in their homeland or leave it, Akhmatova chose the first. In her 1917 poem “I had a voice...” she wrote:

He said "Come here"

Leave your land, dear and sinful,

Leave Russia forever.

I will wash the blood from your hands,

I will take the black shame out of my heart,

I'll cover it with a new name

The pain of defeat and resentment."

But indifferent and calm

I covered my ears with my hands,

So that with this speech unworthy

The mournful spirit was not defiled.

This was the position of a patriotic poet, in love with Russia, who could not imagine his life without her.

This does not mean, however, that Akhmatova unconditionally accepted the revolution. A poem from 1921 testifies to the complexity and contradictory nature of her perception of events. “Everything is stolen, betrayed, sold,” where despair and pain over the tragedy of Russia are combined with hidden hope for its revival.

The years of revolution and civil war were very difficult for Akhmatova: a semi-beggarly life, life from hand to mouth, the execution of N. Gumilyov - she experienced all this very hard.

Akhmatova did not write very much in the 20s and 30s. At times it seemed to her that the Muse had completely abandoned her. The situation was further aggravated by the fact that the critics of those years treated her as a representative of the salon culture of the nobility, alien to the new system.

The 30s turned out to be the most difficult trials and experiences for Akhmatova in her life. The repressions that fell on almost all of Akhmatova’s friends and like-minded people also affected her: in 1937, her and Gumilyov’s son Lev, a student at Leningrad University, was arrested. Akhmatova herself lived all these years in anticipation of permanent arrest. In the eyes of the authorities, she was an extremely unreliable person: the wife of the executed “counter-revolutionary” N. Gumilyov and the mother of the arrested “conspirator” Lev Gumilyov. Like Bulgakov, Mandelstam, and Zamyatin, Akhmatova felt like a hunted wolf. She more than once compared herself to an animal that had been torn to pieces and hung on a bloody hook.

You pick me up like a slain animal on the bloody one.

Akhmatova perfectly understood her exclusion in the “dungeon state”:

Not the lyre of a lover

I'm going to captivate the people -

Leper's Ratchet

Sings in my hand.

You'll have time to fuck off,

And howling and cursing,

I'll teach you to shy away

You, brave ones, from me.

("The Leper's Ratchet")

In 1935, she wrote an invective poem in which the theme of the poet’s fate, tragic and lofty, is combined with a passionate philippic addressed to the authorities:

Why did you poison the water?

And they mixed my bread with my dirt?

Why the last freedom

Are you turning it into a nativity scene?

Because I didn't mock

Over the bitter death of friends?

Because I remained faithful

My sad homeland?

So be it. Without executioner and scaffold

There will be no poet on earth.

We have shirts of repentance.

We should go and howl with a candle.

(“Why did you poison the water...”)

6. Analysis of the poem “Requiem”.

All these poems prepared the poem by A. Akhmatova “Requiem”, which she created in the 1935-1940s. She kept the contents of the poem in her head, confiding only in her closest friends, and wrote down the text only in 1961. The poem was first published 22 years later. the death of its author, in 1988. “Requiem” was the main creative achievement of the poetess of the 30s. The poem ‘consists of ten poems, a prose prologue, called “Instead of a Preface” by the author, a dedication, an introduction and a two-part epilogue. Talking about the history of the creation of the poem, A. Akhmatova writes in the prologue: “During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad. One day someone “identified” me. Then a woman with blue eyes standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard my name in her life, woke up from the stupor that is characteristic of us all and asked me in my ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper):

Can you describe this? And I said:

Then something like a smile crossed what had once been her face.”

Akhmatova fulfilled this request, creating a work about the terrible time of repression of the 30s (“It was when only the dead smiled, I was glad for the peace”) and about the immeasurable grief of relatives (“Mountains bend before this grief”), who came to the prisons every day, to the state security department, in the vain hope of finding out something about the fate of their loved ones, giving them food and linen. In the introduction, an image of the City appears, but it now differs sharply from Akhmatova’s former Petersburg, because it is deprived of the traditional “Pushkin” splendor. This is an appendage city to a gigantic prison, spreading its gloomy buildings over a dead and motionless river (“The great river does not flow…”):

It was when I smiled

Only dead, glad for the peace.

And dangled like an unnecessary pendant

Leningrad is near its prisons.

And when, maddened by torment,

The already condemned regiments were marching,

And a short song of parting

The locomotive whistles sang,

Death stars stood above us

And innocent Rus' writhed

Under bloody boots

And under the black tires there is marusa.

The poem contains the specific theme of the requiem - lamentation for a son. Here the tragic image of a woman whose most dear person is taken away is vividly recreated:

They took you away at dawn

I followed you like I was being carried away,

Children were crying in the dark room,

The goddess's candle floated.

There are cold icons on your lips

Death sweat on the brow... Don't forget!

I will be like the Streltsy wives,

Howl under the Kremlin towers.

But the work depicts not only the poetess’s personal grief. Akhmatova conveys the tragedy of all mothers and wives, both in the present and in the past (the image of the “streltsy wives”). From a specific real fact, the poetess moves on to large-scale generalizations, turning to the past.

The poem sounds not only maternal grief, but also the voice of a Russian poet, brought up in the Pushkin-Dostoevsky traditions of worldwide responsiveness. Personal misfortune helped me feel more acutely the misfortunes of other mothers, the tragedies of many people around the world in different historical eras. Tragedy of the 30s is associated in the poem with gospel events:

Magdalene fought and cried,

The beloved student turned to stone,

And where Mother stood silently,

So no one dared to look.

For Akhmatova, experiencing a personal tragedy became an understanding of the tragedy of the entire people:

And I’m not praying for myself alone,

And about everyone who stood there with me

And in the bitter cold and in the July heat

Under the red, blind wall, -

she writes in the epilogue of the work.

The poem passionately calls for justice, for the names of all those innocently convicted and killed to become widely known to the people:

I would like to call everyone by name, but the list was taken away and there is no place to find out. Akhmatova’s work is truly a people’s requiem: a lament for the people, the focus of all their pain, the embodiment of their hope. These are the words of justice and grief with which “a hundred million people shout.”

The poem “Requiem” is a clear evidence of the civic spirit of A. Akhmatova’s poetry, which was often reproached for being apolitical. Responding to such insinuations, the poetess wrote in 1961:

No, and not under an alien sky,

And not under the protection of alien wings, -

I was then with my people,

Where my people, unfortunately, were.

The poetess later put these lines as the epigraph to the poem “Requiem”.

A. Akhmatova lived with all the sorrows and joys of her people and always considered herself an integral part of it. Back in 1923, in the poem “To Many,” she wrote:

I am the reflection of your face.

Vain wings, vain fluttering, -

But I’m still with you to the end...

7. Akhmatova and the Second World War, siege of Leningrad, evacuation.

Her lyrics, dedicated to the theme of the Great Patriotic War, are permeated with the pathos of a high civil sound. She viewed the beginning of the Second World War as a stage of a global catastrophe into which many peoples of the earth would be drawn. This is precisely the main meaning of her poems of the 30s: “When the era is being raked up”, “Londoners”, “In the forties” and others.

Enemy Banner

It will melt like smoke

The truth is behind us

And we will win.

O. Berggolts, recalling the beginning of the Leningrad blockade, writes about Akhmatova of those days: “With a face closed in severity and anger, with a gas mask over her chest, she was on duty as an ordinary fire fighter.”

A. Akhmatova perceived the war as a heroic act of world drama, when people, exsanguinated by internal tragedy (repression), were forced to enter into mortal combat with external world evil. In the face of mortal danger, Akhmatova makes a call to transform pain and suffering into the power of spiritual courage. This is exactly what the poem “Oath”, written in July 1941, is about:

And the one who today says goodbye to her beloved, -

Let her transform her pain into strength.

We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,

That no one will force us to submit!

In this small but capacious poem, lyricism develops into epic, personal becomes general, female, maternal pain is melted into a force opposing evil and death. Akhmatova addresses women here: both to those with whom she stood at the prison wall even before the war, and to those who now, at the beginning of the war, are saying goodbye to their husbands and loved ones; it is not for nothing that this poem begins with the repeating conjunction “and” - it means continuation of the story about the tragedies of the century (“And the one who today says goodbye to her beloved”). On behalf of all women, Akhmatova swears to her children and loved ones to be steadfast. The graves represent the sacred sacrifices of the past and present, and the children symbolize the future.

Akhmatova often talks about children in her poems during the war years. For her, children are young soldiers going to their deaths, and dead Baltic sailors who rushed to the aid of besieged Leningrad, and a neighbor’s boy who died during the siege, and even the statue “Night” from the Summer Garden:

Night!

In a blanket of stars,

In mourning poppies, with a sleepless owl...

Daughter!

How we hid you

Fresh garden soil.

Here maternal feelings extend to works of art that preserve the aesthetic, spiritual and moral values of the past. These values, which must be preserved, are also contained in the “great Russian word,” primarily in Russian literature.

Akhmatova writes about this in her poem “Courage” (1942), as if picking up the main idea of Bunin’s poem “The Word”:

We know what's on the scales now

And what is happening now.

The hour of courage has struck on our watch,

And courage will not leave us.

It's not scary to lie dead under bullets,

It's not bitter to be left homeless, -

And we will save you, Russian speech,

Great Russian word.

We will carry you free and clean,

We will give it to our grandchildren and save us from captivity

Forever!

During the war, Akhmatova was evacuated in Tashkent. She wrote a lot, and all her thoughts were about the cruel tragedy of the war, about the hope of victory: “I meet the third spring far away//From Leningrad. The third?//And it seems to me that it//Will be the last...”, she writes in the poem “I meet the third spring in the distance...”.

In Akhmatova’s poems of the Tashkent period, alternating and varying, Russian and Central Asian landscapes appear, imbued with a feeling of national life going back into the depths of time, its steadfastness, strength, eternity. The theme of memory - about the past of Russia, about ancestors, about people close to her - is one of the most important in Akhmatova’s work during the war years. These are her poems “Near Kolomna”, “Smolensk Cemetery”, “Three Poems”, “Our Sacred Craft” and others. Akhmatova knows how to poetically convey the very presence of the living spirit of the times, history in people's lives today.

In the very first post-war year, A. Akhmatova suffered a severe blow from the authorities. In 1946, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks issued a decree “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”, in which the work of Akhmatova, Zoshchenko and some other Leningrad writers was subjected to devastating criticism. In his speech to Leningrad cultural figures, the Secretary of the Central Committee A. Zhdanov attacked the poetess with a hail of rude and insulting attacks, declaring that “the range of her poetry is pathetically limited - an enraged lady, rushing between the boudoir and the chapel. Her main theme is love and erotic motifs, intertwined with motifs of sadness, melancholy, death, mysticism, and doom.” Everything was taken away from Akhmatova - the opportunity to continue working, to publish, to be a member of the Writers' Union. But she did not give up, believing that the truth would prevail:

Will they forget? - that's what surprised us!

I've been forgotten a hundred times

A hundred times I lay in my grave,

Where maybe I am now.

And the Muse became deaf and blind,

The grain rotted in the ground,

So that after, like a Phoenix from the ashes,

Rise blue on the air.

(“They’ll forget - that’s what surprised us!”)

During these years, Akhmatova did a lot of translation work. She translated Armenian, Georgian contemporary poets, poets of the Far North, French and ancient Koreans. She creates a number of critical works about her beloved Pushkin, writes memoirs about Blok, Mandelstam and other contemporary and past writers, and completes work on her greatest work, “Poem Without a Hero,” which she worked on intermittently from 1940 to 1961 years. The poem consists of three parts: “The Petersburg Tale” (1913)”, “Tails” and “Epilogue”. It also includes several dedications from different years.

“A Poem without a Hero” is a work “about time and about oneself.” Everyday pictures of life are intricately intertwined here with grotesque visions, snatches of dreams, and memories displaced in time. Akhmatova recreates St. Petersburg in 1913 with its diverse life, where bohemian life is mixed with concerns about the fate of Russia, with grave forebodings of social cataclysms that began since the First World War and revolution. The author pays a lot of attention to the topic of the Great Patriotic War, as well as the topic of Stalinist repressions. The narrative in “Poem Without a Hero” ends with an image of 1942 - the most difficult, turning point year of the war. But there is no hopelessness in the poem, but, on the contrary, there is faith in the people, in the future of the country. This confidence helps the lyrical heroine overcome the tragedy of her perception of life. She feels her involvement in the events of the time, in the affairs and achievements of the people:

And towards myself

Unyielding, in the menacing darkness,

Like from a waking mirror,

Hurricane - from the Urals, from Altai

Faithful to duty, young

Russia was coming to save Moscow.

The theme of the Motherland, Russia appears more than once in her other poems of the 50s and 60s. The idea of a person’s blood affiliation with his native land is broad and philosophical

sounds in the poem “Native Land” (1961) - one of Akhmatova’s best works of recent years:

Yes, for us it’s dirt on our galoshes,

Yes, for us it's a crunch in the teeth.

And we grind, and knead, and crumble

Those unmixed ashes.

But we lie down in it and become it,

That's why we call it so freely - ours.

Until the end of her days, A. Akhmatova did not give up her creative work. She writes about her beloved St. Petersburg and its environs (“Ode to Tsarskoye Selo”, “To the City of Pushkin”, “Summer Garden”), and reflects on life and death. She continues to create works about the mystery of creativity and the role of art (“I have no need for odic hosts...”, “Music”, “Muse”, “Poet”, “Listening to Singing”).

In every poem by A. Akhmatova we can feel the heat of inspiration, the outpouring of feelings, a touch of mystery, without which there can be no emotional tension, no movement of thought. In the poem “I have no need for odic hosts...”, dedicated to the problem of creativity, the smell of tar, the touching dandelion by the fence, and the “mysterious mold on the wall” are captured in one harmonizing glance. And their unexpected proximity under the artist’s pen turns out to be a community, developing into a single musical phrase, into a verse that is “perky, gentle” and sounds “to the joy” of everyone.

This thought about the joy of being is characteristic of Akhmatova and constitutes one of the main through-cutting motives of her poetry. In her lyrics there are many tragic and sad pages. But even when circumstances demanded that “the soul petrify,” another feeling inevitably arose: “We must learn to live again.” To live even when it seems that all strength has been exhausted:

God! You see I'm tired

Resurrect and die and live.

Take everything, but this scarlet rose

Let me feel fresh again.

These lines were written by a seventy-two-year-old poetess!

And, of course, Akhmatova never stopped writing about love, about the need for the spiritual unity of two hearts. In this sense, one of the best poems by the poetess of the post-war years is “In a Dream” (1946):

Black and lasting separation

I carry with you equally.

Why are you crying? Better give me your hand

Promise to come again in a dream.

I am with you like grief is with a mountain...

There is no way for me to meet you in the world.

If only you would be at midnight

He sent me greetings through the stars.

8. Death of Akhmatova.

A. A. Akhmatova died on May 5, 1966. Dostoevsky once said to the young D. Merezhkovsky: “Young man, in order to write, you must suffer.” Akhmatova’s lyrics poured out of suffering, from the heart. The main motivating force of her creativity was conscience. In her 1936 poem “Some look into tender eyes...” Akhmatova wrote:

Some look into gentle eyes,

Others drink until the sun's rays,

And I'm negotiating all night

With your indomitable conscience.

This indomitable conscience forced her to create sincere, sincere poems and gave her strength and courage in the darkest days. In her brief autobiography, written in 1965, Akhmatova admitted: “I never stopped writing poetry. For me, they represent my connection with time, with the new life of my people. When I wrote them, I lived by the rhythms that sounded in the heroic history of my country. I am happy that I lived during these years and saw events that had no equal.” This is true. The talent of this outstanding poetess was manifested not only in the love poems that brought A. Akhmatova well-deserved fame. Her poetic dialogue with the World, with nature, with people was diverse, passionate and truthful.

5 / 5. 1

What associations come to mind when you mention the name of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova? Love, passionate and tragic, a saving star that passed along with a barefoot girl from the Black Sea coast of Kherson, then a lovely high school student at Tsarskoye Selo through the chaos of icy timelessness that greeted our country at the dawn of the 20th century; selfless devotion to the Motherland, silently contemplating its own inevitable death; maternal grief, which then indiscriminately knocked on many houses with its mercilessly rough fist of the proletarian dictatorship. And above all this, in the rays of the unquenchable light of timid hope, the world of rhymes and images of the great poetess shone like a delightful painted dome. No, a great poet. Akhmatova hated the word “poetess,” calling herself exclusively a “poet.” She courageously shared the bitterness of the irretrievable losses of the Russian intelligentsia. She was not broken by the trials, under the severity of which many men renounced their ideas and beliefs. She stayed when she could have left; she was there when it was simply unthinkable to be; She will be to this day, and will continue to remain in the hearts of the Russian people, a great woman poet.
Without a doubt, the central theme of Anna Akhmatova’s work is Love. Her first poems, presented to the general public, were presented in the magazine "Apollo" in 1911, a year before the release of the collection "Evening", and immediately received a wide response from readers and the approval of famous poets of that time. She immediately declared herself as a serious director of sensual drama. Akhmatova’s love lyrics are not the babble of a romantic child, but a reflection of her experience, filling a glass of passions and desires, disappointments and hopes that has been drank to the bottom:

In the fluffy muff, my hands were cold.
I felt scared, I felt somehow vague.
Oh how to get you back, quick weeks
His love, airy and momentary...

Akhmatova seems to know all the secrets of human relationships.
It’s as if she lifts the curtain of momentary happiness that blinds people:

There is a cherished quality in the closeness of people,
She cannot be overcome by love and passion, -
Let the lips merge in eerie silence
And my heart is torn to pieces by love...
Those who strive for her are mad, and her
Those who have achieved it are struck with melancholy...
Now you understand why my
The heart does not beat under your hand.

Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine does not personify some impeccably defined human image with character traits corresponding to it. She is both loved and rejected, lifts some to the altar, and leaves others without regret. She is cold and unapproachable, but if you look closely, it is easy to notice the secret languor in the eyes of bottomless depth, inviting you to choke on the salty waves of unbridled passion.
Love for the Motherland occupies a special place in the work of A. A. Akhmatova. The lyrical heroine, who has already matured together with the poet, aware of what is happening around her, all the horror and inevitability of the Apocalypse, makes a completely conscious choice:

I had a voice.
He called comfortingly,
He said: "Come here,
Leave your land, deaf and sinful,
Leave Russia forever.
I will wash the blood from your hands,
I will take the black shame out of my heart,
I'll cover it with a new name
The pain of defeat and resentment."
But indifferent and calm
I covered my ears with my hands,
So that with this speech unworthy
The mournful spirit was not defiled.

Akhmatova remains with her people. She knows that only here her poetry will be understood and felt. She wants the country's destiny to become her destiny. Akhmatova, at the same time, condemns emigrants and does not recognize their right to retreat. For Akhmatova, such an act is tantamount to desertion, vile and cowardly betrayal:

I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
To be torn to pieces by enemies.

And the Motherland, which Akhmatova addresses in his poems, is not only a collective image of all of Russia. The homeland is Tsarskoe Selo, Pavlovsk, St. Petersburg, and places in the Tver province Slepnevo and Bezhetsk:

Everything seems to me
Pavlovsk is hilly,
Round meadow, lifeless water,
The most languid and the most shady,
After all, he will never be forgotten...
There are white churches and ringing, luminous ice,
There, my dear son's cornflower blue eyes bloom.
Diamond Russian nights above the ancient city
And the sickle of heaven is yellower than linden honey...

She completely connects her tender feelings for her favorite places in the country with its history. In the poem “Voice of Memory,” Akhmatova seems to be talking to herself:

What do you see, looking dimly at the wall,
At the hour when there is a late dawn in the sky?
Is there a seagull on the blue tablecloth of water?
Or Florentine gardens?
Or the huge park of Tsarskoye Selo,
1Where did anxiety cross your path?..
No, I only see the wall - and on it
Reflections of heavenly dying lights.

During the years of merciless Stalinist repression, when fate dealt Akhmatova two hardest blows - the execution of her husband Nikolai Gumilyov and the arrest of her only son - she created her masterpiece - “Requiem”. Dedication to all victims of bloody terror, accusation and denunciation of the authorities, narration of the suffering of innocent people - everything is reflected in this work. Naturally, no manuscripts, much less a printed version of the Requiem, existed at that time:

Death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the tires of the black Marus...

Such lines were actually a death sentence to myself. But Akhmatova had to live. She already felt then that she belonged to her country, her people more than to herself.
And it was she, Akhmatova, who was supposed to support the patriotic spirit of the people in difficult times.
And then it happened. War... She found Akhmatova in Leningrad, where in July 1941 a poem was born that spread throughout the country like a saving breath of fresh air:

And the one who says goodbye to her beloved today -
Let her transform her pain into strength.
We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,
That no one will force us to submit.

Victory for Akhmatova, as for all patriotic heroes, became the meaning of life. She experienced the national tragedy as her own. For her, defending her land, her homeland meant preserving the culture and native speech, native language. The language in which she thought, spoke, wrote. A language that was understood and felt in all corners of Russia. A language for the sake of which Akhmatova exchanged the luxury and comfort of London and Paris salons for a miserable, beggarly and hungry existence in the absurd and meaningless Soviet state.
But fate did not have mercy on Akhmatova even after the victory over fascism. She was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers and was even deprived of her food cards. The authorities tried with all their might to destroy the talent of the brilliant poet. Akhmatova’s name was erased from literature for a long time. However, in the hearts of people who did not become opportunists in the new system, marginalized people who renounced even their parents for the sake of career and well-being, in the hearts of primordially Russian people who carried faith in true human values through all the circles of Soviet hell, creativity the great poet Anna Andreevna Akhmatova always found a lively response. She was remembered and loved. She is remembered and loved. She will be remembered and loved.

Composition

In the fluffy muff, my hands were cold.
I felt scared, I felt somehow vague.
Oh how to get you back, quick weeks
His love, airy and momentary...

Akhmatova seems to know all the secrets of human relationships.
It’s as if she lifts the curtain of momentary happiness that blinds people:

I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
To be torn to pieces by enemies.

She completely connects her tender feelings for her favorite places in the country with its history. In the poem “Voice of Memory,” Akhmatova seems to be talking to herself:

Death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the tires of the black Marus...

And the one who says goodbye to her beloved today -
Let her transform her pain into strength.
We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,
That no one will force us to submit.

Victory for Akhmatova, as for all patriotic heroes, became the meaning of life. She experienced the national tragedy as her own. For her, defending her land, her homeland meant preserving the culture and native speech, native language. The language in which she thought, spoke, wrote. A language that was understood and felt in all corners of Russia. A language for the sake of which Akhmatova exchanged the luxury and comfort of London and Paris salons for a miserable, beggarly and hungry existence in the absurd and senseless Soviet state.
But fate did not have mercy on Akhmatova even after the victory over fascism. She was expelled from the Union of Soviet Writers and was even deprived of her food cards. The authorities tried with all their might to destroy the talent of the brilliant poet. Akhmatova’s name was erased from literature for a long time. However, in the hearts of people who did not become opportunists in the new system, marginalized people who renounced even their parents for the sake of career and well-being, in the hearts of primordially Russian people who carried faith in true human values through all the circles of Soviet hell, creativity the great poet Anna Andreevna Akhmatova always found a lively response. She was remembered and loved. She is remembered and loved. She will be remembered and loved.

What were the first collections of poems by A. Akhmatova dedicated to? It was, first of all, love lyrics, but completely different in its tonality and imagery than those of her contemporaries, the famous symbolist poets. “Before Akhmatova,” as D. Samoilov correctly notes, “love lyrics were hysterical or vague, mystical and ecstatic. From here, the style of love with halftones, omissions, aestheticized and often unnatural spread in life.” Akhmatova, perhaps for the first time after Pushkin, spoke in Russian poetry about love not only as a lofty, but also as a natural feeling, integral to human existence:

I know: guessing, and I should cut off

Delicate daisy flower.

Must experience on this earth

Every love torture.

The lyrical heroine of her poems is not a shepherdess, not a princess, not a Beautiful Lady, but an ordinary woman “in a gray, “everyday dress with worn-out heels,” who knows how to love passionately and tenderly, to suffer sadly and deeply, while proudly maintaining her human dignity. Akhmatova’s first books can truly be called love life dramas in verse, especially since behind them stood the real story of her complex love relationships. She speaks accurately and restrainedly about all stages of the further development of love relationships: frank confession (“I wrote words that I didn’t dare say for a long time ") and the first date ("Bless the heavens - You are alone with your loved one for the first time"), a kiss and an oath ("Who did you kiss at dawn, swore that you would die in separation?"), long-awaited letters ("Today I have no letters brought: he forgot to write or left") and random quarrels ("Oh, I was sure that you would come back)"), "cute evidence" of love ("three nails", "smooth ring", "whip and glove", “New Year's wet roses”) and love insomnia (“You are again, again with me, insomnia)”), partings (“Heart to heart is not chained, if you want, leave”) and meetings (“The last time we met was on the embankment, where we always met"), finally, about the tragic breakup and long memory.

And when they cursed each other

In white-hot passion,

Both of us still did not understand

How small the earth is for two people.

As we see, everything is real, concrete, everything is like in life, but this makes it no less poetic and sublime. In Akhmatova’s poems there is literally a confession of a loving and suffering human heart, in which tenderness is intertwined with passion, doubt with hope, regret with joy , bitterness - with delight, sadness - with despair, ecstasy - with melancholy.

A distinctive property of her poetry is that love passion and torment often express themselves very sparingly, always in two or three words, because the suffering of her loving soul is sometimes incredible - to the point of tragic silence.

But the surrounding natural and beautiful world always actively participates in the expression of this feeling, restrained in external manifestations:

Akhmatova poetess poems

And just recently, recently

They froze around the poplar,

And she rang and sang poisonously

Your unspeakable joy.

Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine, captured by passion, sees herself more accurately and perceives more sharply the objective, material world around her, which seems to be drawn into the orbit of her feeling, her “aura.”

Thus, it can be noted that already at the beginning of her creative career, A. Akhmatova returned Russian poetry to “lyrical realism”, to the accuracy of the word, to the real essence of experiences, to its “life subtext”, thereby reviving the classical, Pushkin traditions. Later, in the poem “Creativity”, reflecting on the “secrets of the poet’s craft”, Akhmatova, for whom poetry has always been primarily a form of expression, a way of thinking, and not just “versification”, herself will emphasize this realistic, life-reliable, and not fictitious basis of his works:

If only you knew what kind of rubbish

Poems grow without shame,

Like a yellow dandelion by the fence,

Like burdocks and quinoa.

The year 1914 came, which revealed another remarkable feature of Akhmatova’s personality and creativity - her high citizenship. She perceived the war as a personal tragedy (her husband, Nikolai Gumilev, went to the front, and soon disappeared), and as a national one.

In this “terrible year,” when a “cloud over dark Russia” was approaching and it was necessary to “grieve brightly over the deceased,” Akhmatova, like many of her contemporaries-poets, spoke in a prophetic voice about the great national disasters coming along with the war.

Terrible deadlines are approaching. Soon

It will become crowded with fresh graves.

Expect famine, cowardice, and pestilence,

And eclipses of heavenly bodies.

The theme of love in her book “The White Flock,” published in September 1917, also sounds tragic for the most part:

You won't hear from him anymore.

You won't hear about him.

In fire-ridden, mournful Poland

You will not find his grave.

Anna Akhmatova continued to write throughout the 20s and 30s, but her poems only occasionally appeared on the pages of magazines or were not published at all for censorship reasons, and most of them could not be published at all and were burned or destroyed. by the author after reading it to a few close friends. In her “Notes about Anna Akhmatova,” her friend, writer L. Chukovskaya says: “It was a ritual: hands, matches, an ashtray - a beautiful and sorrowful ritual.”

A high sense of moral responsibility to her contemporaries as a poet and citizen helped her and gave her the strength to rise above her personal grief and express the tragic catastrophism of her era. And although sometimes she wrote that she “didn’t want to sing to the sound of prison keys”, in “this horror” of torture, exile and executions, it was at that time that she began to write her “Requiem”, which became a monument to all victims of repression and its civilians. feat.

The Great Patriotic War found Anna Akhmatova in Leningrad. The poet Olga Berggolts, remembering her in the initial months of the Leningrad blockade, writes: “With a face locked in severity and anger, with a gas mask over her shoulder, she was on duty like an ordinary fire fighter. She sewed sandbags with which they lined shelter trenches in the garden of the same Fountain House, under the maple tree she sang in “Poem Without a Hero...” During the war, Akhmatova wrote poems with a high patriotic sound, which made up the cycle “Wind of War” ". She read some of them on the Leningrad radio at the very beginning of the war: “It is important to say goodbye to the girls,” “The first long-range fighter in Leningrad,” “The birds of death are at the zenith,” etc. In July 1941. It was on the radio that Akhmatova’s voice pronounced her famous “Oath”:

And the one who says goodbye to her beloved today -

Let her transform her pain into strength.

We swear to the children, we swear to the graves,

That no one will force us to submit!

In the autumn of 1941 The seriously ill Anna Akhmatova was taken by plane from besieged Leningrad to Moscow. Then, together with L. Chukovskaya, she ended up briefly in Chistopol (where she arrived 2 months after the death of Marina Tsvetaeva), and then was evacuated by train to Tashkent. In Tashkent, having suffered a serious and long illness, she continued the theme of war in her work. In her poems (“Knock with your fist, I will open”, And you, my friends of the last call”, “Statue”, “Night in the Summer Garden”), she mentally rushed to her native besieged city, to its defenders and victims of the blockade, trying to inspire they contain in their lofty words steadfastness and the power of resistance to the enemy. “Courage” is not by chance the name of one of her best works of the war years, in its spirit and strict, chased form akin to her poems of the period of revolution and civil war. Like “Oath,” it is written on behalf of “we”, on behalf of the collective hero: “We know what now lies on the scales.” This hero is all Russian people who “are not afraid to lie under dead bullets,” because, as the author believes, “the courage of us will not leave." After all, only common resistance and perseverance is the key to the freedom of a great country and a great people, the bearer of the “great Russian word,” free and pure.

We know what's on the scales now

And what is happening now.

The hour of courage has struck on our watch.

And courage will not leave us.

It's not scary to lie dead under bullets,

It's not bitter to be homeless, -

But we will save you, Russian speech,

Great Russian word.

We will carry you free and clean,

We will give it to our grandchildren and save us from captivity

It was during the war years that Akhmatova revealed herself as a civilian poet. She spoke fully on behalf of the people and received their recognition. Her poetry combines the feminine, maternal principle, courage, honesty, compassion, and suffering.

And in 1946 followed by the notorious Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” and the speech of Zhdanov, in which all the work of the Leningrad writers Akhmatova and Zoshchenko was crossed out. Anna Akhmatova was then called the bearer of “salon bourgeois culture”, “one of the poets an unprincipled reactionary literary swamp,” she was branded in all printed publications, at all meetings, as was customary then.

But she did not give up, believing that "a lyric poet must be a man." With anger and pride, Akhmatova wrote poetry in those years, addressing her persecutors, “those lovers of torture, experts in the production of orphans.”

For eight years, until Stalin’s death in 1953, Akhmatova lived literally under the sword of Damocles of “death in earnest.” But even in these terrible years of “suffocation” (in her own words), Akhmatova continued her hard work as a poet, completing the work of many years of her life - “A Poem without a Hero.”

The poems that made up her “Seventh Book” were created, which included the cycle The Secrets of Craft with the traditional theme of the poet and Poetry for Russian poetry, the images of the muse and the reader in their unique Akhmatovian interpretation and comprehension, lyrics of the Tashkent and post-war periods, the cycle “Wreath of the Dead”, dedicated to in memory of her literary friends, “Northern Elegies” and lyrical miniatures about Tsarskoe Selo and St. Petersburg. A poem from 1961 occupies a special place in the Seventh Book. "Motherland".

Motherland

And there are no more tearless people in the world,

More arrogant and simpler than us.

We don’t carry them on our chests in our treasured amulet,

We don’t write poems about her sobbingly,

She doesn't wake up our bitter dreams,

Doesn't seem like the promised paradise.

We don’t do it in our souls

Subject of purchase and sale,

Sick, in poverty, speechless on her,

We don't even remember her.

Yes, for us it’s dirt on our galoshes,

Yes, for us it's dirt on our teeth.

And we grind, and knead, and crumble

Those unmixed ashes.

But we lie down in it and become it,

That's why we call it so freely - ours.

In this understanding of the feeling of unity with the homeland, Akhmatova again follows the Russian poetic tradition of Pushkin, Lermontov, Blok, Nekrasov. Reading Akhmatova’s “Native Land”, it is no coincidence that you recall lines from the poem “Russia” by her contemporary and friend A. Blok:

Russia, poor Russia!

I want your gray huts,

Your songs are like wind to me, -

Like the first tears of love!

Anna Akhmatova spoke about her poems: “For me, they contain my connection with time, with the new life of my people. When I wrote them, I lived by the rhythms that sounded in the heroic history of my country. I am happy that I lived during these years and saw events that had no equal.”

Anna Akhmatova, whose life and work we will present to you, is the literary pseudonym with which she signed her poems. This poetess was born in 1889, June 11 (23), near Odessa. Her family soon moved to Tsarskoe Selo, where Akhmatova lived until she was 16 years old. The work (briefly) of this poetess will be presented after her biography. Let's first get acquainted with the life of Anna Gorenko.

Early years

Young years were not cloudless for Anna Andreevna. Her parents separated in 1905. The mother took her daughters, sick with tuberculosis, to Evpatoria. Here, for the first time, the “wild girl” encountered the life of rough strangers and dirty cities. She also experienced a love drama and attempted to commit suicide.

Education at Kyiv and Tsarskoye Selo gymnasiums

The early youth of this poetess was marked by her studies at the Kyiv and Tsarskoye Selo gymnasiums. She took her last class in Kyiv. After this, the future poetess studied jurisprudence in Kyiv, as well as philology in St. Petersburg, at the Higher Women's Courses. In Kyiv, she learned Latin, which later allowed her to become fluent in Italian and read Dante in the original. However, Akhmatova soon lost interest in legal disciplines, so she went to St. Petersburg, continuing her studies in historical and literary courses.

First poems and publications

The first poems, in which Derzhavin’s influence is still noticeable, were written by the young schoolgirl Gorenko, when she was only 11 years old. The first publications appeared in 1907.

In the 1910s, from the very beginning, Akhmatova regularly began to publish in Moscow and St. Petersburg publications. After the “Workshop of Poets” (in 1911), a literary association, was created, she served as its secretary.

Marriage, trip to Europe

Anna Andreevna was married to N.S. from 1910 to 1918. Gumilev, also a famous Russian poet. She met him while studying at the Tsarskoye Selo gymnasium. After which Akhmatova committed in 1910-1912, where she became friends with the Italian artist who created her portrait. Also at the same time she visited Italy.

Appearance of Akhmatova

Nikolai Gumilyov introduced his wife to the literary and artistic environment, where her name acquired early significance. Not only Anna Andreevna’s poetic style became popular, but also her appearance. Akhmatova amazed her contemporaries with her majesty and royalty. She was shown attention like a queen. The appearance of this poetess inspired not only A. Modigliani, but also such artists as K. Petrov-Vodkin, A. Altman, Z. Serebryakova, A. Tyshler, N. Tyrsa, A. Danko (the work of Petrov-Vodkin is presented below) .

The first collection of poems and the birth of a son

In 1912, a significant year for the poetess, two important events occurred in her life. The first collection of Anna Andreevna’s poems, entitled “Evening,” was published, which marked her work. Akhmatova also gave birth to a son, the future historian, Nikolaevich - an important event in her personal life.

The poems included in the first collection are flexible in the images used in them and clear in composition. They forced Russian criticism to say that a new talent had arisen in poetry. Although Akhmatova’s “teachers” are such symbolist masters as A. A. Blok and I. F. Annensky, her poetry was perceived from the very beginning as Acmeistic. In fact, together with O. E. Mandelstam and N. S. Gumilev, the poetess at the beginning of 1910 formed the core of this new movement in poetry that had emerged at that time.

The next two collections, the decision to stay in Russia

The first collection was followed by a second book entitled “The Rosary” (in 1914), and three years later, in September 1917, the collection “The White Flock” was published, the third in her work. The October Revolution did not force the poetess to emigrate, although mass emigration began at that time. People close to Akhmatova left Russia one after another: A. Lurie, B. Antrep, as well as O. Glebova-Studeikina, her friend from her youth. However, the poetess decided to stay in “sinful” and “deaf” Russia. A sense of responsibility to her country, connection with the Russian land and language prompted Anna Andreevna to enter into dialogue with those who decided to leave her. For many years, those who left Russia continued to justify their emigration to Akhmatova. In particular, R. Gul argues with her, V. Frank and G. Adamovich turn to Anna Andreevna.

Difficult time for Anna Andreevna Akhmatova

At this time, her life changed dramatically, which reflected her work. Akhmatova worked in the library at the Agronomic Institute, and in the early 1920s she managed to publish two more collections of poetry. These were "Plantain", released in 1921, as well as "Anno Domini" (translated - "In the Year of the Lord", released in 1922). For 18 years after this, her works did not appear in print. There were various reasons for this: on the one hand, this was the execution of N.S. Gumilev, her ex-husband, who was accused of participating in a conspiracy against the revolution; on the other hand, the rejection of the poetess’s work by Soviet criticism. During the years of this forced silence, Anna Andreevna spent a lot of time studying the work of Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin.

Visit to Optina Pustyn

Akhmatova associated the change in her “voice” and “handwriting” with the mid-1920s, with a visit to Optina Pustyn in May 1922 and a conversation with Elder Nektariy. Probably this conversation greatly influenced the poetess. Akhmatova was related on her mother’s side to A. Motovilov, who was a lay novice of Seraphim of Sarov. She accepted through generations the idea of redemption and sacrifice.

Second marriage

The turning point in Akhmatova’s fate was also associated with the personality of V. Shileiko, who became her second husband. He was an orientalist who studied the culture of such ancient countries as Babylon, Assyria, and Egypt. Her personal life with this helpless and despotic man did not work out, but the poetess attributed to his influence the increase in philosophical, restrained notes in her work.

Life and work in the 1940s

A collection entitled "From Six Books" appeared in 1940. He returned for a short time such a poetess as Anna Akhmatova to the modern literature of that time. Her life and work at this time were quite dramatic. Akhmatova was caught in Leningrad by the Great Patriotic War. She was evacuated from there to Tashkent. However, in 1944 the poetess returned to Leningrad. In 1946, subjected to unfair and cruel criticism, she was expelled from the Writers' Union.

Return to Russian literature

After this event, the next decade in the poetess’s work was marked only by the fact that at that time Anna Akhmatova was engaged in literary translation. The Soviet authorities were not interested in her creativity. L.N. Gumilyov, her son, was serving his sentence in forced labor camps at that time as a political criminal. The return of Akhmatova’s poems to Russian literature took place only in the second half of the 1950s. Since 1958, collections of this poetess's poetry begin to be published again. “Poem Without a Hero” was completed in 1962, having been created over the course of 22 years. Anna Akhmatova died in 1966, on March 5th. The poetess was buried near St. Petersburg, in Komarov. Her grave is shown below.

Acmeism in the works of Akhmatova

Akhmatova, whose work today is one of the pinnacles of Russian poetry, later treated her first book of poetry rather coolly, highlighting only a single line in it: “... drunk with the sound of a voice similar to yours.” Mikhail Kuzmin, however, ended his preface to this collection with the words that a young, new poet is coming to us, having all the data to become real. In many ways, the poetics of "Evening" predetermined the theoretical program of Acmeism - a new movement in literature, to which such a poet as Anna Akhmatova is often attributed. Her work reflects many of the characteristic features of this direction.

The photo below was taken in 1925.

Acmeism arose as a reaction to the extremes of the Symbolist style. For example, an article by V. M. Zhirmunsky, a famous literary scholar and critic, about the work of representatives of this movement was called as follows: “Overcoming Symbolism.” They contrasted the mystical distances and “purple worlds” with life in this world, “here and now.” Moral relativism and various forms of new Christianity were replaced by "values as an immutable rock."

The theme of love in the poetess’s work

Akhmatova came to the literature of the 20th century, its first quarter, with the most traditional theme for world poetry - the theme of love. However, its solution in the work of this poetess is fundamentally new. Akhmatova’s poems are far from the sentimental female lyrics represented in the 19th century by such names as Karolina Pavlova, Yulia Zhadovskaya, Mirra Lokhvitskaya. They are also far from the “ideal”, abstract lyricism characteristic of the love poetry of the Symbolists. In this sense, she relied mainly not on Russian lyrics, but on the prose of the 19th century by Akhmatov. Her work was innovative. O. E. Mandelstam, for example, wrote that Akhmatova brought the complexity of the 19th century Russian novel to the lyrics. An essay on her work could begin with this thesis.

In “Evening,” love feelings appeared in different guises, but the heroine invariably appeared rejected, deceived, and suffering. K. Chukovsky wrote about her that the first to discover that being unloved is poetic was Akhmatova (an essay on her work, “Akhmatova and Mayakovsky,” created by the same author, largely contributed to her persecution when the poems of this poetess not published). Unhappy love was seen as a source of creativity, not a curse. The three parts of the collection are named respectively “Love”, “Deception” and “Muse”. Fragile femininity and grace were combined in Akhmatova’s lyrics with a courageous acceptance of her suffering. Of the 46 poems included in this collection, almost half were dedicated to separation and death. This is no coincidence. In the period from 1910 to 1912, the poetess was possessed by a feeling of short life, she had a presentiment of death. By 1912, two of her sisters had died of tuberculosis, so Anna Gorenko (Akhmatova, whose life and work we are considering) believed that the same fate would befall her. However, unlike the Symbolists, she did not connect separation and death with feelings of hopelessness and melancholy. These moods gave rise to the experience of the beauty of the world.

The distinctive features of this poetess’s style emerged in the collection “Evening” and were finally formed, first in “The Rosary” and then in “The White Flock.”

Motives of conscience and memory

Anna Andreevna’s intimate lyrics are deeply historical. Already in “The Rosary” and “Evening”, along with the theme of love, two other main motives arise - conscience and memory.

The “fateful minutes” that marked our country’s history (the First World War, which began in 1914) coincided with a difficult period in the life of the poetess. She developed tuberculosis in 1915, a hereditary disease in her family.

"Pushkinism" by Akhmatova

The motives of conscience and memory in “The White Flock” become even stronger, after which they become dominant in her work. The poetess's poetic style evolved in 1915-1917. Akhmatova’s peculiar “Pushkinism” is increasingly mentioned in criticism. Its essence is artistic completeness, precision of expression. The presence of a “quotation layer” with numerous echoes and allusions to both contemporaries and predecessors: O. E. Mandelstam, B. L. Pasternak, A. A. Blok is also noted. All the spiritual wealth of the culture of our country stood behind Akhmatova, and she rightly felt like its heir.

The theme of the homeland in Akhmatova’s work, attitude to the revolution

The dramatic events of the poetess’s life could not help but be reflected in her work. Akhmatova, whose life and work took place during a difficult period for our country, perceived the years as a disaster. The old country, in her opinion, no longer exists. The theme of the homeland in Akhmatova’s work is presented, for example, in the collection “Anno Domini”. The section that opens this collection, published in 1922, is called “After Everything.” The epigraph to the entire book was the line “in those fabulous years...” by F. I. Tyutchev. There is no longer a homeland for the poetess...

However, for Akhmatova, the revolution is also retribution for the sinful life of the past, retribution. Even though the lyrical heroine did not do evil herself, she feels that she is involved in a common guilt, so Anna Andreevna is ready to share the difficult share of her people. The homeland in Akhmatova’s work is obliged to atone for its guilt.

Even the title of the book, translated as “In the Year of the Lord,” suggests that the poetess perceives her era as God’s will. The use of historical parallels and biblical motifs is becoming one of the ways to comprehend artistically what is happening in Russia. Akhmatova increasingly resorts to them (for example, the poems “Cleopatra”, “Dante”, “Bible Verses”).

In the lyrics of this great poetess, “I” at this time turns into “we”. Anna Andreevna speaks on behalf of “many”. Every hour not only of this poetess, but also of her contemporaries, will be justified precisely by the word of the poet.

These are the main themes of Akhmatova’s work, both eternal and characteristic of the era of this poetess’ life. She is often compared to another - Marina Tsvetaeva. Both of them are today the canons of women's lyrics. However, the work of Akhmatova and Tsvetaeva not only has much in common, but also differs in many ways. Schoolchildren are often asked to write essays on this topic. In fact, it is interesting to speculate about why it is almost impossible to confuse a poem written by Akhmatova with a work created by Tsvetaeva. However, this is another topic...