The theme of repression in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”

Literature and library science

Akhmatova began writing her poem Requiem in 1935 when her only son Lev Gumilyov was arrested. Like other mothers, Akhmatova’s sister’s wife stood for many hours in the silent line that led to the St. Petersburg Kresta prison. Only in 1940 did Akhmatova complete her work; it was published in 1987, many years after the death of the author. Akhmatova talks about the history of the creation of the poem.

9. The theme of repression in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”

A. Akhmatova began writing her poem “Requiem” in 1935, when her only son Lev Gumilev was arrested. He was soon released, but was arrested, imprisoned and exiled twice more. These were the years of Stalinist repressions. Like other mothers, wives, and sisters, Akhmatova stood for many hours in the silent line that led to the St. Petersburg Kresty prison. The most important thing is that she was “ready” for all this, ready not only to experience it, but also to describe it. Akhmatova’s early poem “Walked Silently Around the House...” has the lines: “Tell me, can’t you forgive?” And I said: “I can.” The last words of the text for the poem written in 1957 (“Instead of a preface”) are a direct quote from this poem. When one of the women standing next to A. Akhmatova in line barely audibly asked: “Can you describe this?” She replied: “I can.” Gradually, poems were born about the terrible time that was experienced together with all the people. It was they who composed the poem “Requiem,” which became a tribute to the mournful memory of the people killed during the years of Stalin’s tyranny. Only in 1940 did Akhmatova complete her work; it was published in 1987, many years after the death of the author. In 1961, after the completion of the poem, an epigraph was written for it. These are compressed, strict four lines, striking in their severity: “No, and not under an alien firmament, And not under the protection of alien wings, I was then with my people, Where my people, unfortunately, were.”

“Requiem” is a work about the death of people, a country, and the foundations of existence. The most common word in the poem is “death.” It is always close, but never accomplished. A person lives and understands that he must move on, live and remember. The poem consists of several poems related to each other by one theme, the theme of memory of those who found themselves in prison dungeons in the thirties, and of those who courageously endured the arrests of their relatives, the death of loved ones and friends, who tried to help them in difficult times . In the preface, A. Akhmatova talks about the history of the creation of the poem. An unfamiliar woman, just like Akhmatova, who was standing in prison lines in Leningrad, asked her to describe all the horrors of the Yezhovshchina. In the “Introduction,” Akhmatova paints a vivid image of Leningrad, which seemed to her like a “dangling pendant” near the prisons, “convict regiments” that walked along the streets of the city, “death stars” standing above it. The bloody boots and tires of the black Marus (the so-called cars that came at night to arrest townspeople) crushed “innocent Rus'.” And she just writhes under them. Before us passes the fate of a mother and son, whose images are correlated with gospel symbolism. Akhmatova expands the temporal and spatial framework of the plot, showing a universal tragedy. We either see a simple woman whose husband is arrested at night, or a biblical Mother whose Son was crucified. Here before us is a simple Russian woman, in whose memory the crying of children, the melting candle at the shrine, the mortal sweat on the brow of a loved one who is being taken away at dawn will forever remain. She will cry for him just as the Streltsy “wives” once cried under the walls of the Kremlin. Then suddenly we see the image of a woman so similar to Akhmatova herself, who does not believe that everything is happening to her - the “mockery”, “the favorite of all friends”, “the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoye Selo”. Could she ever have thought that she would be three hundredth in line at Kresty? And now her whole life is in these queues. I have been screaming for seventeen months, calling you home, throwing myself at the feet of the executioner, you are my son and my horror. It’s impossible to make out who is the “beast” and who is the “man,” because innocent people are being arrested, and all the mother’s thoughts involuntarily turn to death. And then the sentence “stone word” sounds, and you have to kill your memory, petrify your soul and learn to live again. And the mother thinks about death again, only now about her own. It seems to her like salvation, and it doesn’t matter what form it takes: “a poisoned shell”, “a weight”, “a typhoid child” - the main thing is that it will save you from suffering and from spiritual emptiness. These sufferings are comparable only to the suffering of the Mother of Jesus, who also lost her Son. @But the Mother understands that this is only madness, because death will not allow him to take away with him Neither the terrible eyes of his son, Petrified suffering, nor the day when the thunderstorm came, nor the hour of the prison meeting, nor the sweet coolness of hands, nor the excited shadows of linden trees, nor the distant light sound Words of last consolation. So we have to live. To live in order to name those who died in Stalin’s dungeons, to remember, to remember always and everywhere who stood “both in the bitter cold and in the July heat under the blinding red wall.” There is a poem in the poem called "The Crucifixion". It describes the last minutes of Jesus' life, his appeal to his mother and father. There is a misunderstanding of what is happening, and the reader comes to the realization that everything that is happening is senseless and unfair, because there is nothing worse than the death of an innocent person and the grief of a mother who has lost her son. Biblical motives allowed her to show the scale of this tragedy, the impossibility of forgiving those who committed this madness, and the impossibility of forgetting what happened, because we were talking about the fate of the people, about millions of lives. Thus, the poem “Requiem” became a monument to innocent victims and those who suffered with them. In the poem, A. Akhmatova showed her involvement in the fate of the country. The famous prose writer B. Zaitsev, after reading “Requiem,” said: “Could it be imagined... that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - a feminine, maternal cry, not only for herself, but also for all those suffering - wives, mothers, brides , in general, about all those crucified?” And it is impossible for the lyrical heroine to forget the mothers who suddenly turned gray, the howl of an old woman who lost her son, the rumble of the black marus. And the poem “Requiem” sounds like a memorial prayer for all those who died in the terrible time of repression. And as long as people hear her, because the whole “hundred-million-strong nation” is screaming with her, the tragedy that A. Akhmatova talks about will not happen again. A.A. Akhmatova entered literature as a lyrical, chamber poet. Her poems about unrequited love, about the heroine’s experiences, her loneliness among people and a bright, imaginative perception of the world around her attracted the reader and made him feel the author’s mood. But it took time and terrible events that shook Russia, war, revolution, for the poems of A.A. Akhmatova developed a civic, patriotic feeling. The poetess has compassion for her homeland and her people, considering it impossible for herself to leave it during the difficult years of trials. But the years of Stalinist repressions became especially difficult for her. For the authorities, Akhmatova was an alien person, hostile to the Soviet system. The 1946 decree confirmed this officially. She was not forgotten either that her husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot in 1921 for participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy (according to the official version), or the proud silence since the late 20s of that unofficial “internal emigration” that she chose for herself poetess. Akhmatova accepts her fate, but this is not humility and indifference; she is ready to stand and endure everything that befalls her. “We did not deflect a single blow,” Akhmatova wrote. And her “Requiem”, written from 1935 to 1940 not for publication for herself, “for the table” and published much later, is evidence of the courageous civic position of both the lyrical heroine of the poem and its author. It reflects not only the personal tragic circumstances of A.’s life. A. Akhmatova arrest of her son, L.N. Gumilev, and husband, N.N. Punin, but also the grief of all Russian women, those wives, mothers, sisters who stood with her for 17 terrible months in prison lines in Leningrad. The author speaks about this in the preface to the poem about the moral duty to his “sisters in misfortune”, about the duty of memory to the innocent dead. The grief of a mother and wife is common to all women of all eras, all troubled times. Akhmatova shares it with others, speaking about them as about herself: “I will, like the Streltsy wives, howl under the Kremlin towers.” The mother’s suffering, her inescapable grief, loneliness emotionally colors events in black and yellow colors - colors traditional for Russian poetry, symbols of grief and illness. Terrible loneliness sounds in these lines, and it seems especially piercingly sharp in contrast to the happy, carefree past: “I wish I could show you, the mocking one and the favorite of all friends, the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoye Selo, what will happen to your life Like the three hundredth, with the transfer, Under the Crosses You will stand and burn through the New Year's ice with your hot tears. Grief fills the consciousness, the heroine is on the verge of madness: “I have been screaming for seventeen months, Calling you home, Throwing myself at the feet of the executioner, You are my son and my horror. Everything is forever mixed up, And I can’t figure out now who is the beast, who is the man, And how long will it be to wait for the execution.” The most terrible thing in this whole nightmare is the feeling that the victims are innocent and in vain, because it is no coincidence that the white nights, according to the author, speak to the son “about your high cross and about death.” And the sentence of the innocent sounds like a “word of stone” and falls like the sword of unjust justice. How much courage and perseverance is required from the heroine! She is ready for the worst, for death “I don’t care now.” As a person of Christian culture, Akhmatova’s poems often contain those concepts that the Soviet government tried to erase as socially alien: soul, God, prayer. It turned out that the authorities were unable to deprive a person of faith, brought up over centuries, because, like women from the people, the heroine in difficult times turns to images that are holy for Russian people - the Mother of Christ, the personification of all maternal grief and maternal suffering. “Magdalene fought and sobbed, The beloved disciple turned to stone, And where the Mother stood silently, No one dared to look. And this brings the heroine closer to her people, makes her feel her responsibility as a Poet for ensuring that everything that happens is preserved in the people’s memory, came to the court of History.

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Valeeva Farida

The essay shows the tragedy of the individual, family and people in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”.

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“The tragedy of the individual, family, people in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

The tragedy of the individual, family, people in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

The wound inflicted on the homeland, each of

feels us in the depths of his heart.

V. Hugo.

A person’s life is inseparable from the life of the state in which he lives. Each era in the formation and development of the Russian state forged and shaped the Russian national character, which was formed on the basis of love and devotion to the Fatherland, self-sacrifice in the name of the Motherland. At all times, patriotism, a sense of duty to the Fatherland, and the invincibility of the spirit have been valued and celebrated on Russian soil.

During the formation and development of the Soviet state, the sense of national identity, the sense of involvement in the destinies of the country, people, and history were revived and strengthened. A. Akhmatova, the great poetess of the 20th century, who wrote her wonderful poems in an era of great social changes and disasters, became an example of true patriotism and loyalty to the fatherland. The trials that befell the Russian people are embodied in her lyrics. Whatever Anna Akhmatova wrote about: about the First World War, the events of 1917, Stalin’s repressions, the Great Patriotic War, the “Khrushchev Thaw” - her civic and universal position remained unchanged: in all trials she was with her people. Her work was distinguished by a sense of involvement in the destinies of the country, people, and history. The bitter trials that befell Russia did not break Akhmatova’s determination to share the fate of her destroyed, hungry, bleeding wars, but still beloved and native country.

True poetry is beautiful because it expresses the high truth of the poet’s soul and the merciless truth of time. A. Akhmatova understood this, and so do we, the readers who love her poetry. I am sure that many generations of readers will love her poems that penetrate straight to the soul.

To understand the great courage of Akhmatova’s soul, let’s re-read the most tragic work, “Requiem,” dedicated to the events of a terrible era in the history of the Russian state - Stalin’s repressions. The truth is not only the death of innocent people, blood and tears, it is also a cleansing of everything vile, dirty and terrible that happened during the period of Bolshevik terror against its people. Silencing this aspect of the life of our state threatens with new tragedies. Openness cleanses, makes it impossible for this to happen ever again in our history.

The poem "Requiem" was created from 1935 to 1940. In those distant years, the poem could only be read in handwritten copies. What truth did this work of Akhmatova contain that they were afraid to make it public for so long? This was the truth about Stalin's repressions. Akhmatova knew about them firsthand: her only son Lev Gumilyov was arrested, whose father, the famous Russian poet N. Gumilyov, a former tsarist officer, was arrested by the Bolsheviks.

Anna Andreevna spent seventeen long months in prison lines while the fate of her son was being decided. One day they recognized her in this mournful line and asked: “Can you describe this?” Akhmatova firmly answered: “I can.” It was an oath to the people with whom she was always together, sharing all their misfortunes.

Yes, Akhmatova fulfilled her oath. It was her duty to the people - to convey to future generations the pain and tragedy of that terrible time in the history of our state. It was a time, as the poetess figuratively writes, when “the stars of death ran over people and Rus', which had not broken either under the Horde or under the invasion of Napoleon, writhed “under the bloody boots” of its own sons...” Writing such a poem can be considered a heroic feat. After all, the text of the poem could have been a death sentence for Anna Akhmatova herself. She described a time “when only the dead smiled and were glad for the peace,” when people suffered either in prisons or near them. Akhmatova, “the three hundredth with a parcel and with her hot tear,” stands in line next to her “unwitting friends” near the Kresta prison, where her arrested son is, and prays for everyone who stood there “both in the bitter cold and in the July heat".

The arrest of Akhmatov’s son is correlated with death, because the very fact of restriction of freedom in those years became in fact a sentence. She compares herself with the Streltsy wives during the reprisal against the rebel Streltsy in the era of Peter I, who were exiled along with their families or executed by the Russian people. She is no longer able to make out now “who is the beast, who is the man, and how long will it be to wait for execution,” since the arrest of one of the family members in those years threatened everyone else with at least exile. And the slander was not supported by evidence. And yet Akhmatova resigned herself, but the pain in her soul did not subside. She and her son endure these “terrible white nights,” constantly reminding them of imminent death. And when the verdict is passed, one has to kill the memory and force the soul to petrify in order to “learn to live again.” Otherwise, only an “empty house” will remain. On the other hand, Akhmatova is ready to accept death, she is even waiting for it, because she “doesn’t care now.” The heroine is also indifferent to the form in which she accepts her last companion - death. Madness, delirium or humility?

The central position in the work is occupied by the crucifix. This is its emotional and semantic key. I think the climax is when the "Great Star" of death disappeared and "the heavens melted into fire." The crucifixion in the Requiem is the embodiment of the Way of the Cross, when Magdalene “fought and wept”, and the mother had to come to terms with the death of her child. The Mother’s silence is sorrow, a requiem for all those who were in the “convict holes.”

The epilogue is a continuation of muteness and madness and at the same time a prayer “for everyone who stood there with me.” The “red blind wall” represents those people who were behind it, who are in the Kremlin. They “went blind” because they had neither soul, nor compassion, nor any other feelings, nor sight to see what they had done with their own hands...

The second part of the epilogue, both in the melody of intonation and in meaning, can be correlated with the ringing of a bell, announcing a burial, a mourning:

The funeral hour has approached again,

I see, I hear, I feel you.

The autobiographical nature of “Requiem” is beyond doubt; it reflects the tragedy of the entire people, containing the drama of a woman who lost her husband and son:

Husband in the grave, son in prison e,

Pray for me...

The grief of a woman who has gone through all the circles of hell is so great that before her “the mountains bend, the great river does not flow...”. Maternal grief hardens the heart and kills the soul. A mother’s expectation of the most terrible thing—a death sentence for her child—almost deprives a woman of her sanity: “madness has already covered half of her soul.” Akhmatova turns to death, calling it for herself as a way of getting rid of inhuman torment. But the poetess speaks not only about herself, about her grief, she emphasizes that she shared the fate of many mothers. She would like to name all the sufferers who stood with her, “but the list was taken away, and there is no place to find out.” Separation from son. Maybe forever, maybe not. The yellow color that Akhmatova mentions is also symbolic. The color of separation and the color of madness. A woman who has suffered the death of her husband and the arrest of her son is distraught; she identifies herself with a lonely shadow and asks to pray with her. But the voice of Nadezhda, singing in the distance, permeates the entire work. Akhmatova does not believe in this horror:

No, it's not me, it's someone else who's suffering.

I couldn't do that...

She is simply “one woman.” She is also the “cheerful sinner from Tsarskoye Selo”, who previously had no idea about such a bitter fate ahead, and, finally, the Virgin Mary. Akhmatova cannot find herself, cannot understand and accept this pain.

The poem “Requiem” is not only the poetess’s story about a personal tragedy, it is also a story about the tragedy of every mother of those years, about the tragedy of an entire country. The poetess mourns the fate of her homeland, but during the years of difficult trials she remains faithful to it:

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.

Akhmatova hoped that, even if her mouth was clamped, “at which a hundred million people are screaming,” she would also be remembered on the eve of her “funeral day.” Akhmatova ends her poem with a testament: if someday, she writes, they want to erect a monument to her in Russia, then she asks not to erect it either by the sea, where she was born, or in Tsarskoye Selo, where she spent her happy youth,

And here, where I stood for three hundred hours

And where they didn’t open the bolt for me.

Akhmatova’s son, having spent almost twenty years in prisons and camps, surprisingly remained alive. He became a famous historian and ethnographer. In 1962, Akhmatova brought the poem to the New World magazine. Received a refusal. That same year, the poem was sent abroad and published in Munich. During her lifetime, Akhmatova saw only this publication. And only in the 80s we were able to read the poem “Requiem” published in our homeland.

Fortunately, the time of Stalinist repressions, which affected almost every family in the country, remains in the distant past. And we can consider Akhmatova’s “Requiem” a monument to the great grief of the people and the entire country, destitute and tortured. I would like to end the essay with the words of Anna Andreevna: “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.”

The outstanding poetess Anna Akhmatova had the opportunity to experience the oppression of Soviet repression beyond measure. She and her family were constantly out of favor with the authorities.

Her first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot without trial, her son Lev spent many years in the camps, and her second husband, Nikolai Punin, was arrested twice. The apartment in the Fountain House was continuously bugged and monitored. Akhmatova was persecuted and, having been expelled from the Writers' Union, was practically declared an outlaw. In addition, as is already known today, final, physical reprisal was prepared for the poetess. Report “On the need to arrest the poetess Akhmatova” No. 6826/A dated June 14, 1950 was handed over to Stalin by the USSR Minister of State Security Abakumov. “To Comrade STALIN I.V. I report that the USSR MGB has received intelligence and investigative materials regarding the poetess A. A. AKHMATOVA, indicating that she is an active enemy of the Soviet government. AKHMATOVA Anna Andreevna, born in 1892 (in fact, she was born in 1889), Russian, comes from the nobility, non-party, lives in Leningrad. Her first husband, the poet-monarchist GUMILEV, as a participant in the White Guard conspiracy in Leningrad in 1921, was shot by the Cheka. AKHMATOVA is exposed as an enemy by the testimony of her son L.N. GUMILEV, who before his arrest was a senior researcher at the State Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of the USSR, and her ex-husband N.N. PUNINA, a professor at Leningrad State University, who were arrested at the end of 1949. The arrested PUNIN, during interrogation at the USSR Ministry of State Security, showed that AKHMATOVA, being from a landowner family, was hostile to the establishment of Soviet power in the country and until recently carried out hostile work against the Soviet state. As PUNIN showed, even in the first years after the October Revolution, AKHMATOVA spoke with her poems of an anti-Soviet nature, in which she called the Bolsheviks “enemies tormenting the earth” and declared that “she was not on the same path with Soviet power.”
Beginning in 1924, AKHMATOVA, together with PUNIN, who became her husband, grouped hostile literary workers around her and organized anti-Soviet gatherings in her apartment. On this occasion, the arrested PUNIN testified: “Due to anti-Soviet sentiments, AKHMATOVA and I, talking with each other, more than once expressed our hatred of the Soviet system, slandered the leaders of the party and the Soviet government and expressed dissatisfaction with various measures of the Soviet government... Anti-Soviet gatherings were held in our apartment, which were attended by literary workers from among those dissatisfied and offended by the Soviet regime... These persons, together with me and AKHMATOVA, discussed events in the country from enemy positions... AKHMATOVA, in particular, expressed slanderous fabrications about the alleged the cruel attitude of the Soviet authorities towards the peasants, was indignant at the closure of churches and expressed her anti-Soviet views on a number of other issues.”
As the investigation established, in these enemy gatherings in 1932–1935. AKHMATOVA’s son, GUMILEV, at that time a student at Leningrad State University, took an active part. About this, the arrested GUMILEV testified: “In the presence of AKHMATOVA, we at gatherings without hesitation expressed our hostile sentiments... PUNIN made terrorist attacks against the leaders of the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government... In May 1934, PUNIN, in the presence of AKHMATOVA, figuratively showed how he would have committed a terrorist act against the leader of the Soviet people.” Similar testimony was given by the arrested PUNIN, who admitted that he harbored terrorist sentiments against Comrade Stalin, and testified that these sentiments were shared by AKHMATOVA: “In conversations, I made all sorts of false accusations against the Head of the Soviet State and tried to “prove” that the existing situation in the Soviet Union can be changed in the direction desired for us only through the violent elimination of Stalin... In frank conversations with me, AKHMATOVA shared my terrorist sentiments and supported malicious attacks against the Head of the Soviet State. Thus, in December 1934, she sought to justify the villainous murder of S. M. KIROV, regarding this terrorist act as a response to the excessive, in her opinion, repressions of the Soviet government against Trotskyist-Bukharin and other hostile groups.” It should be noted that in October 1935, PUNIN and GUMILEV were arrested by the NKVD Directorate of the Leningrad Region as members of an anti-Soviet group. However, soon, at the request of AKHMATOVA, they were released from custody.
Speaking about his subsequent criminal connection with AKHMATOVA, the arrested PUNIN testified that AKHMATOVA continued to conduct hostile conversations with him, during which she expressed malicious slander against the CPSU (b) and the Soviet government. PUNIN also showed that AKHMATOVA was hostile to the Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”, which rightfully criticized her ideologically harmful work. This is also confirmed by the available intelligence materials. Thus, a source from the UMGB of the Leningrad Region reported that AKHMATOVA, in connection with the Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad”, stated: “Poor people, they don’t know anything or have forgotten. After all, all this has already happened, all these words have been spoken and retold and repeated from year to year... Nothing new has been said now, all this is already known to everyone. For Zoshchenko this is a blow, but for me it’s just a repetition of moral teachings and curses I once heard.” The USSR MGB considers it necessary to arrest AKHMATOV. I ask for your permission. ABakumov"
In 1935, Akhmatova managed to rescue her arrested son and husband after a personal meeting with Stalin. But before this happened, both were interrogated “with partiality” and were forced to sign false testimony against Akhmatova - about her “complicity” in their “crimes” and about her “enemy activities.” The security officers manipulated the facts masterfully. Numerous intelligence denunciations and eavesdropping materials were also constantly collected against Akhmatova. The “operational development case” was opened against Akhmatova in 1939. The special equipment in her apartment had been working since 1945. That is, the case has long been concocted, all that remains is to bring it to its logical conclusion - arrest. All that is required is the go-ahead from the Kremlin Master. In 1949, Nikolai Punin and Lev Gumilyov were once again arrested. And the head of the MGB, Abakumov, was already rubbing his hands, but for some reason Stalin did not give permission for Akhmatova’s arrest. Abakumov’s report contains his own resolution: “Continue to develop”... Why didn't the well-oiled mechanism work? The point here is the behavior of Akhmatova herself. No, she knew nothing about Abakumov’s report and was least worried about herself. But she desperately wanted to save her son. Therefore, she wrote and published a cycle of loyal poems, “Glory to the World,” including an anniversary ode to Stalin (No. 14 of Ogonyok magazine, 1950). And at the same time she sent a letter to Joseph Vissarionovich with a prayer for a son (“Motherland”, 1993, No. 2, p. 51). In fact, for the sake of saving her son, Akhmatova threw the last victim at the feet of the supreme executioner - her poetic name. The executioner accepted the victim. And that settled everything. Lev Gumilyov, however, was still not released, but Akhmatova was not arrested either. 16 painful years of loneliness awaited her ahead.

From the memoirs of contemporaries about A. A. Akhmatova (end)

Questions and tasks

1. What is characteristic of the early lyrics of A. A. Akhmatova?

2. How did A. A. Akhmatova perceive the people’s grief during political repression and during the war? How did she perceive her own destiny?

3. What seemed close to you in the poetry of the great Akhmatova?

4. Based on the story about A. A. Akhmatova and the books and articles you have read yourself, prepare a story or essay about the poet.

5. The poetess considered one of the best critical analyzes of her poems to be an article by N.V. Nedobrovo, which ended like this: “After the release of “The Rosary”, Anna Akhmatova, “in view of the undoubted talent of the poetess,” will be called for expanding the “narrow circle of her personal topics.” I do not join this call - the door, in my opinion, should always be smaller than the temple into which it leads: only in this sense can Akhmatova’s circle be called narrow. And in general, its calling is not in squandering breadth, but in cutting layers, for its tools are not the tools of a surveyor measuring the land and making an inventory of its rich lands, but the tools of a miner cutting into the depths of the earth to veins of precious ores.<...>Such a strong poet as Anna Akhmatova, of course, will follow Pushkin’s behest.”

Nedobrovo carefully analyzes the poem “You can’t confuse real tenderness...”. Analyze this poem too, think about the critic’s statement. Do you agree with his assessment? Give reasons for your answer.

6. Yu. F. Karyakin wrote: “If I were a teacher now, I would let the kids out with one, at least one wonderful impression. I would release them with a deep, beautiful and tragic impression of Requiem*. So that they love “Requiem” forever, as the fate of Russia and the fate of a woman who turned out to be more courageous than millions of men. And it would be a charge of both compassion and courage.” Do you agree with the critic and publicist?

7. Think about the features of A. Akhmatova’s poetry. For example, literary scholars believe that the author’s emotion in her poems is conveyed through an external image (“How unbearably white ...”), through a detail (“She put it on her right hand ...”), that the author often moves from low to high vocabulary, and from high to low, that poetic speech is often a continuation of the poet’s inner speech (“Clenched her hands under a dark veil...”), that the plot often refers to the past, and the poet turns to the present and even to the future, which for her a characteristic feature is the atmosphere of mystery, and finally, that towards the end of her life, her voice in poetry and especially in the “Requiem” cycle becomes more restrained, stern, and her feelings become ascetic (“And if they shut my exhausted mouth, / To which a hundred million people scream... ", "I was then with my people..."). How do you understand these conclusions of critics and literary scholars? Do you agree with them? What examples can you give to confirm or refute?

Improve your speech

1. How do you understand the lines?

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

From others I receive praise - what ashes,
From you and blasphemy - praise.

2. Prepare a story about Anna Akhmatova and the features of her work, accompanying it with reading her poems.

3. Prepare an expressive reading of one of Akhmatova’s poems by heart.

N. Gumilev
Mermaid

I love her, the maiden undine,
Illuminated by the secret of the night,
I love her glow look
And burning rubies...

Marina Tsvetaeva
Anna Akhmatova

In the morning sleepy hour, -
It seems like a quarter to five, -
I fell in love with you
Anna Akhmatova.

Boris Pasternak

The eye is sharp in different ways.
The image is accurate in different ways.
But the solution of the most terrible strength is
Night distance under the gaze of the white night.
This is how I see your appearance and gaze...

Arseny Tarkovsky

“Akhmatova’s muse is characterized by the gift of harmony, rare even in Russian poetry, most characteristic of Baratynsky and Pushkin. Her poems are completed, it is always the final version. Her speech does not turn into a scream or a song, the word lives in the mutual illumination of the whole... Akhmatova’s world teaches mental fortitude, honesty of thinking, the ability to harmonize oneself and the world, teaches the ability to be the person you strive to become.”

German writer Hans Werner Richter wrote an essay for radio. It describes Akhmatova’s reception in Italy: “...Here Russia itself sat in the middle of the Sicilian-Dominican monastery, on a white lacquered garden chair, against the backdrop of the powerful columns of the monastery gallery... The Grand Duchess of Poetry was giving an audience in her palace. Before her stood poets from all European countries - from the West and from the East - small, small and great, young and old, conservatives, liberals, communists, socialists; they stood, lined up in a long line that stretched along the gallery, and came up to kiss Anna Akhmatova’s hand... Each approached, bowed, was met with a gracious nod, and many - I saw - walked away, brightly flushed. Each performed this ceremony in the manner of their country, the Italians - charmingly, the Spaniards - majestically, the Bulgarians - piously, the British - calmly, and only the Russians knew the style that is worthy of Anna Akhmatova. They stood before their monarch, they knelt and kissed the ground. No, they didn't do that, but that's what it looked like, or that's how it could have been. Kissing Anna Akhmatova's hand, it was as if they were kissing the land of Russia, the tradition of their history and the greatness of their literature...

After this, the poets present were asked to read poems dedicated to Anna Akhmatova..."

Questions and tasks

1. What is characteristic of the early lyrics of A. A. Akhmatova?
2. How did A. A. Akhmatova perceive the people's grief during political repression and during the war? How did she perceive her own destiny?
3. What seemed close to you in the poetry of the great Akhmatova?
4. Based on the story about A. A. Akhmatova and the books and articles you have read yourself, prepare a story or essay about the poet.
5. The poetess considered one of the best critical analyzes of her poems to be an article by N.V. Nedobrovo, which ended like this: “After the release of “The Rosary,” Anna Akhmatova, “in view of the undoubted talent of the poetess,” will be called upon to expand the “narrow circle of her personal topics.” I do not join this call - the door, in my opinion, should always be smaller than the temple into which it leads: only in this sense can Akhmatova’s circle be called narrow. And in general, its calling is not in spreading in breadth, but in cutting layers, for its tools are not the tools of a surveyor measuring the land and making an inventory of its rich lands, but the tools of a miner cutting into the depths of the earth to veins of precious ores.<...>Such a strong poet as Anna Akhmatova, of course, will follow Pushkin’s behest.”

   Nedobrovo carefully analyzes the poem “You can’t confuse real tenderness...”. Analyze this poem too, think about the critic’s statement. Do you agree with his assessment? Give reasons for your answer.

6. Yu. F. Karyakin wrote: “If I were a teacher now, I would leave the children with one, at least one wonderful impression. I would release them with a deep, beautiful and tragic impression of Requiem. So that they love “Requiem” forever, as the fate of Russia and the fate of a woman who turned out to be more courageous than millions of men. And it would be a charge of both compassion and courage.” Do you agree with the critic and publicist?
7. Think about the features of A. Akhmatova’s poetry. For example, literary scholars believe that the author’s emotion in her poems is conveyed “through an external image (“How unbearably white...”), through a detail (“She put it on her right hand...”), that the author often moves from low to high vocabulary. , and from high to low, that poetic speech is often a continuation of the poet’s inner speech (“I clenched my hands under a dark veil...”), that the plot often refers to the past, and the poet turns to the present and even to the future, which for Her characteristic feature is an atmosphere of mystery, and finally, that towards the end of her life, her voice in poetry and especially in the “Requiem” cycle becomes more restrained, stern, and her feelings become ascetic (“And if they shut my exhausted mouth, / To which a hundred million people scream... .”, “I was with my people then...”). How do you understand these conclusions of critics and literary scholars? Do you agree with them? What examples can you give to confirm or refute them?

Improve your speech

1. How do you understand the lines?

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

   From others I receive praise - what ashes,
   From you and blasphemy - praise.

2. Prepare a story about Anna Akhmatova and the features of her work, accompanying it with reading her poems.
3. Prepare an expressive reading of one of Akhmatova’s poems by heart.