Anna Akhmatova is widely regarded as one of the leading Russian poets of this century. She was born Anna Andreyevna Gorenko, the third of five children, on June 23, 1889 at Bolshoi Fontan near Odessa on the Black Sea. Her father, a naval engineer, was Ukrainian, her mother Russian. The family moved to Tsarskoye Selo, near St. Petersburg, a year later. At age 10 she became seriously ill with an undiagnosed ailment and was deaf for a while. It was in then that she wrote her first poems. By 1911 she was publishing poetry under the pseudonym Anna Akhmatova, a name she adopted at the instigation of her father, to avoid the ignominy of 'a decadent poet' in the family. She was a leading light in a group of poets known as Acmeists. Acmeists rejected the Symbolist movement, with its mystical elements, rather emphasizing poetic craft, using words deftly, precisely, to heighten visual richness, clarity and concrete imagery. The poetic guild of Acmeism perhaps can best be summed up in a quote attributed to the poet Mandelstam 'the rose has once more become beautiful in and of itself.' Anna Akhmatova was a tall, lithe, beautiful woman with striking aristocratic features and a magnetic personality. Her pale gray-green eyes were captivating. When she read her poetry she captured her listeners in a hypnotic trance. Among those 'captured' was Nikolai Gumilyov, the leader of the Acmeist poets. He pursued her for seven years, but was rejected, attempted suicide and eventually she succumbed, marrying him in 1910. He then left on another expedition to Africa. In the spring of the following year, alone in Paris, Anna Akhmatova met the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani, with whom she formed a close friendship. On her return to St. Petersburg, still in her early twenties, she quickly became a leading light in artistic circles.

1904

Love

Tightly coiled, like a snake it sits
In my very heart, weaving spells
Or murmurs for days on end
Like a dove on my white windowsill.

In the sparkle of hoarfrost a gleam,
In the carnation's slumber a hint,
And secretly, surely it leads
From all joy and peace of mind.

It can sob so seductively, sigh
In the violin's yearning prayer.
And it happens, a stranger's smile
Fills me with a sudden fear.

November 24, 1911
Tsarskoye Selo

From Evening
Translated by Daniel Weissbort

She wrote about love in all its manifest dimensions at a time of great social upheaval and unrest in Russia. Her poetry is close to the heart of the ordinary people in its soulful, intimate, and earthy treatment of love, loss and betrayal. Her first collection of love poetry, Evening, was published in 1912. It contained 46 poems and ran to 300 copies. The poems deal with love: its beginnings, fulfillment, ecstasy, torment, disillusionment and ending.

The Song of the Last Meeting

Then helplessly my breast grew cold,
But my steps were light.
I pulled the glove for my left hand
Onto my right.

There seemed to be many steps,
But I knew--there were only three!
The whisper of autumn in the maples
Was pleading: 'die with me!

I am betrayed by my doleful,
Fickle, evil fate.'
I answered: 'Darling, darling!
I too. I will die with you . . .'

This is the song of the last meeting.
I glanced at the dark house.
Candles were burning only in the bedroom,
With an indifferent-yellow flame.

September 29, 1911
Tsarskoye Selo
From Evening
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

The memory of the sun is weakening my heart.
Turns yellow the grass.
The wind blows the early snowflakes,
Lightly, lightly.

In the narrow channels there is no flow--
Water freezes.
Nothing will ever happen here,--
Oh, never!

In the empty sky the willow has thrown
A wind transparent.
Maybe it's for the better that I haven't become
Your wife.

The memory of the sun is weakening in the heart.
What is it? Darkness?
Maybe! . . .Within a night may come
Winter.

January 30, 1911
Kiev
From Evening
Translated by Ljubov V. Kuchkina

Her second and third collections, Rosary and White Flock, were published in 1914 and 1917, respectively. 1918 was marked by the breakup of her marriage to Gumilyov and the turmoil following the Bolshevik Revolution. Anna Akhmatova married Vladimir Shileiko, a brilliant but most difficult man, in what turned out to be a most unhappy alliance. The years following were tumultuous with love affairs and in 1921 personal tragedies involving the execution of her first husband Nikolai Gumilyov and the untimely death of the poet and close friend Alexandr Blok. Akhmatova's first post-revolutionary publication was Plantain followed in 1922 by Anno Domini MCMXXI. From 1923 until 1940 none of her poetry appeared in print in the punitive climate of the Stalin ascendancy.

1928	1930

Insomnia

Somewhere cats are mewing pitifully,
I catch the sound of distant steps . . .
Your words are a wonderful lullaby:
Because of them for three months I haven't slept.

Insomnia, you are with me again, again!
I recognize your fixed countenance.
What is it, my outlaw, what is it, my pretty one,
Do I sing so badly to you?

White cloth curtains the windows,
Dim light streams blue . . .
Or are we being consoled by news from afar?
Why do I feel so at ease with you?

Winter 1912
Tsarskoye Selo
From Rosary
Translated by Judith Hemschmeyer

In the Evening

The music rang out in the garden
With such inexpressible grief.
Oysters in ice on the plate
Smelled fresh and sharp, of the sea.

He told me: 'I am your true friend!'
And he touched my dress.
How unlike a caress,
The touch of those hands.

As one might stroke a cat or bird,
Or watch slender equestriennes ride . . .
Under the light gold lashes
There is only laughter in his tranquil eyes.

And the voices of mournful violins
Sing through the drifting smoke:
'Praise heaven above--for the first time
You're alone with the man you love.'

March 1913
From Rosary
Translated by Judith Hemschemeyer

The mysterious spring was still enjoying itself,
About the mountains the revealing wind was wandering,
And the deep blue lake was being blue--
The temple of the Baptist not by hands made.

You were frightened by our first meeting,
But I was praying for a second one,
And again tonight there is a hot evening . . .
And the sunset so low above the mountain.

You are not with me, but it is not farewell:
And every moment is triumphant news for me.
I know that there is such anguish in you,
That you cannot utter a word.

Spring 1917
Petersburg
From White Flock
Translated by Ljubov V. Kuchkina

Her subsequent life was one of great suffering through the Stalinist Era and the Great Patriotic War (World War II) . In this period she wrote Requiem, a collection of fifteen poems about the anguish of mothers and wives whose sons and husbands have been imprisoned. In 1946 Akhmatova came under attack from the Central Committee of the Communist Party. She was subsequently expelled from the Writers Union. Her son Lev was arrested in 1949 and sent to a labor camp. He was released in 1956 after Stalin's death. In her late years she became a symbol of nobility and courage in adversity to her countrymen. Her popularity among young readers was enormous being identified with the Russian intellectuals' struggle for freedom. In 1962 Robert Frost visited her and at lunch she recited a new poem The Last Rose. Roses were her favorite flowers. In the fall of 1965 she suffered a heart attack. She died on March 25, 1966. In her life Akhmatova presented the world with over 800 beautiful poems. More importantly, she changed the world of poetry forever with her innate ability to communicate simply with hauntingly stark realism the human condition in love and anguish.

Introduction (Prologue)

That was a time, when only the dead
Smiled, glad to have peace.
And Leningrad
Swung from its prisons
Like an unused limb.
And when
Gone mad from suffering,
The condemned regiments were started off,
And the whistles of the locomotives
Sang short songs of parting.
Over us were stars of death,
And innocent Russia
Struggled under the bloodied boot,
And the tires of the Black Maria.

March 1940
From the poem Requiem
Translated by Leonore Mayhew
And William McNaughton

The Last Rose

I have to bow with Morozova,
Dance with Herod's stepdaughter,
Fly up with the smoke of Dido's fire,
Only to return on Joan of Arc's pyre.

Lord! You see I am tired
Of living and dying and resurrection.
Take everything, but grant that I may feel
The freshness of this crimson rose again.

August 9, 1962
Komarova


Anna Akhmatova Bibliography

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