THE TRAGIC SOUND OF “REQUIEM” BY A. AKHMATOVA

Goals: introduce the features of the genre and composition of the poem “Requiem”; expand the understanding of the poem as a genre of literature; determine the role of artistic means in the poem; develop skills in analyzing poetic text.

Lesson progress

I see everything

I remember everything.

A. Akhmatova

I. Checking homework.

1. Readingby heart and analysis of Akhmatova’s poems from the proposed list (see previous homework).

2. GeneralizationByquestions:

– With the help of what poetic means is the inner world of the heroine of Akhmatova’s poems recreated? (INsurvey 2, p. 184.)

– How are the traditions of Russian poetic classics manifested in Akhmatova’s poems? (Question 6, p. 184.)

– What attracted you and what did Akhmatova’s poetry reveal to you?

II. Poems by A. Akhmatova.

1. Repetition of the theoryliterature.

– What are the features of the poem as a genre of literature?

– What is the lyrical hero of the poem?

– How does the emotional mood of the poem differ from works of other poetic genres?

2. Personal messagestudents.

“A Poem without a Hero” by Akhmatova (based on the text read and the textbook material edited by Zhuravlev, pp. 182–184).

III. The era and man in Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”.

1. Teacher's word.

Akhmatova was not sparedwaves of Stalinist repressions sweeping across the country: in 1935, her only son Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov was arrested. Soon released, he was arrested twice more, imprisoned and exiled.

Akhmatova shared the tragedy she experienced with all the people. And this is not a metaphor: she spent many hours in a terrible queue that stretched along the gloomy walls of the old St. Petersburg prison “Crosses”. And when one of those who stood there next to her asked, barely audibly: “Can you describe this?”, Akhmatova replied: “I can.” This is how the poems were born, which together made up “Requiem” - a poem that became a tribute to the mournful memory of all those innocently killed during the years of Stalin’s tyranny.

Completed in pre-war 1940, the poem was published many years after the death of its author, in 1987, and it is read as the final indictment in the case of the terrible atrocities of the bloody era. But it is not the poet who makes these accusations, but time, and Akhmatova does not seek retribution - she appeals to history, in which the memory of mankind is fixed.

Two decades after the completion of the poem, in 1961, it was preceded by an epigraph in which Akhmatova’s position in life and in poetry received a final characterization – striking in its stern rigor and expressive laconicism:

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.

– In the epigraph the words “alien” and “my people” are repeated. INthan the meaning of this strengthenedrepetition of opposition?

– In the poem, the features of a generalized human portrait become features of the appearance of the era. Confirm this by referring to the epilogue.

2. Working with text. Reading and analysis of the work.

Sample questions for analysis

1. Requiem - a funeral Catholic mass, mourning for the dead. Why did Akhmatova give her work such a title? What is its meaning?

2. What historical moments formed the basis of the work? How does a family misfortune in the poem (in the 30s, Akhmatova’s husband, professor of the All-Russian Academy of Arts N. Punin, and her son L. Gumilyov were arrested and convicted) develop into a folk drama?

3. What parts is “Requiem” divided into, and how does its composition reflect the semantic multidimensionality and depth of the text?

4. What is the meaning of the epigraph (1961) and preface (1957) to the poem written in 1935–1940?

5. How does the poetess explain the choice of topic?

6. Why does “hope still sing in the distance” amid the “frenzied years”?

7. What pictures appear when you read the lines:

Death stars stood above us

And innocent Rus' writhed

Under bloody boots

And under the black tires Marus.

8. How do the desire for death and the will to live fight in the poem? What contrasting images depict this fight?

9. How does Akhmatova draw the line between her former life and the madness that has gripped the country?

10. Why does the poem end with the image of the crucifixion?

11. What is the meaning of the epilogue?

12. Why does Akhmatova ask to erect a monument to her “...here, where I stood for three hundred hours // And where the bolt was not opened for me”?

13. What do you think of the lyrical heroine of “Requiem”?

14. By what methods does Akhmatova achieve the universal sound of his theme?

3. Independent work.

a) Divide the class into groups according to the number of parts in the poem.

b) Research. What means of artistic expression help reveal the idea of ​​“Requiem”?

c) Listening and discussing the resulting work.

IV. Lesson summary and summary.

– What impressions remained after reading Akhmatova’s poem?

– What is the role of means of artistic expression in this work?

Teacher. “Requiem” became a monument to the terrible era, dedicated to the most “damned dates” of massacres, when the whole country turned into a single queue for prison, when every personal tragedy merged with the national one.

Akhmatova is not a victim, but a suffering participant and a strict judge of history.

I am the reflection of your face.

Vain wings, vain fluttering, -

After all, I’m with you to the end anyway.

(“To many.”)

The cry of a stork... Essay based on Anna Akhmatova's poem "I learned to live simply, wisely..."

I learned to live simply and wisely,
Look at the sky and pray to God,
And wander for a long time before evening,
To tire out unnecessary anxiety.

When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
And the bunch of yellow-red rowan will fade,
I write funny poems
About life that is perishable, perishable and beautiful.

I'm coming back. Licks my palm
Fluffy cat, purrs sweetly,
And the fire burns bright
On the turret of the lake sawmill.

Only occasionally does the silence cut through
The cry of a stork flying onto the roof.

May, 1912, Florence

There is an opinion that there is no need to explain poetry: read, enjoy the rhythm, memorize, perceive as it is perceived, and that’s enough. Why look and think about every word? I once had the same approach to poetry, especially since in my youth it was difficult to access explanatory dictionaries and other literature that spoke about the way of life of our predecessors. But first of all, I want to reveal to myself more deeply everything that is hidden behind every word in the poems, especially those that I love. You involuntarily return to them for this again and again.
This is what happened with Anna Akhmatova’s poem “I learned to live simply, wisely...”

The first thing you notice is the abundance of nouns. Concrete nouns, naming objects, things, phenomena, and abstract: sky, God, evening, anxiety; ravine, burdocks, bunch, rowan, poems, life; palm, cat, fire, turret, sawmill; silence, cry, stork, roof, door - 20 noun words for 4 stanzas, 16 lines... This technique exactly corresponds to the position of the Acmeists: distinctness, definiteness of images, depiction of the objective world, earthly beauty.

An essay allows you to think about a poem at will; I will try to go along all the stanzas in the order in which they are arranged by the author.
The lyrical heroine wanders for a long time before the evenings, “to tire out unnecessary anxiety.” Where does she wander? Although under Akhmatova’s verse there is an indication of May 1912, Florence, of course, is a description of nature, individual details indicate walks in Tsarskoe Selo, where the young couple Nikolai Gumilyov and Anna Akhmatova lived in a wooden two-story house, together with Gumilyov’s mother, who owned this house. The young couple went to Italy in the spring of 1912, and in October, upon returning to Tsarskoye Selo, Anna gave birth to a son, Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov.

Burdocks, a bunch of yellow-red rowan - this is the background against which the life of the future poetess took place in Tsarskoe Selo. Anna herself wrote that nettles and burdocks were her favorite plants since childhood. But the most striking indication of the scene is the description of the fire at the lake sawmill, a small factory with a large wheel. The lake, and therefore the forests around it, were a necessary condition for saw production in St. Petersburg, starting with the decrees of Peter the Great. Most likely, we are talking about a private sawmill, a water-powered saw mill, powered by water and producing saw (not axe) quite expensive boards for sale for the construction of residential buildings.

Thus, pre-revolutionary poetry with the image of a sawmill (a very unusual, perhaps the only image in Russian poetry) also includes the theme of the work of the Russian people, providing the noble class with everything necessary for life.
Now it is difficult to imagine what kind of bright fire we are talking about that lights up in the evening on the mill tower. Hardly about electricity. So, a lantern?.. Apparently, the work is still ongoing, and those who are on their way to the sawmill also need this lighthouse.

But the fire on the turret, in addition to its everyday purpose, is like a spiritual landmark for the writer, warming, calming and giving hope for salvation from “unnecessary worries” to both her heroine and herself.

By the way, when I tried to reproduce from memory the last line of the first stanza “To tire out unnecessary anxiety,” I mistakenly replaced the verb “tire” with “quench”, “extinguish”, “extinguish”, “calm down”, And it was this mistake of mine that helped me to see how precise the author’s verb is: it is apparently impossible to “quench”, “extinguish”, “extinguish”, “calm” anxiety, only it must be “tired” through physical movement and through the work of thought.

What are the worries about? It seems that it’s also about health, one’s own and that of one’s loved ones (the poems were written in May, and in October 1912 Anna’s son was born, and it’s not without reason that the poem ends with the image of a stork flying onto the roof). Thoughts of death from illness could not help but haunt: in 1896, the four-year-old younger sister Irina died (tuberculosis), in 1906, the older sister Inna (tuberculosis), having lived only 21 years. Anna herself was already being treated for tuberculosis. And her premonitions about her loved ones were not in vain: from 1912 to 1922, Anna would lose her father (illness), husband (execution), older brother Andrei (voluntarily died), and younger sister Inna (tuberculosis). And these are family people, and how many of them were heartbroken by their premature departure in the poetic and artistic environment (the death of Alexander Blok, which coincided with the execution of her husband and the death of her older brother, the death of Amedeo Modigliani - all in 1920).
Therefore, the twice-used epithet in the verse about “perishable life” is not at all accidental, but despite his insights, even the poet still cannot imagine such a chain of deaths. While “cheerful poems about perishable, perishable and beautiful life” are still being composed. And Akhmatova’s Orthodoxy plays a significant role here, her calm attitude towards inevitable death - everything is in the power of God - about the temporary nature of our stay on this beautiful earth. In dictionaries there is a synonym for the word “cheerful” - “not gloomy”, not necessarily “joyful”.

And burdocks in the ravines (Anna, like no one else, knew that they were precisely “rustling” through the ravines with their ripened seeds in little boxes, burdock inflorescences), and rowan trees, lowering their ripened yellow-red clusters to the ground, and the still thick formation the forest around the northern lakes, and the fluffy cat, a kind of home psychotherapist, touchingly purring and licking the palm, and the flying white stork, red-legged and red-nosed, and thoughts about near and far people - all this is included in the concept of “beautiful”.

The cry of a stork flying onto the roof is the apotheosis (denouement, climax, glorification) of the poem. It is believed that the stork chooses a place for hatching its chicks in the nest it takes a long time and carefully building, only with good people, and its arrival to them means good news, including the happy resolution of women in labor. And, of course, this is the hope of the author of the poem.

However, the life-affirming picture of apotheosis suddenly includes the theme of hidden love, hidden from the reader for the time being. This is how you can also write about love, saying practically nothing about it (except for the last two lines), but hiding thoughts and longing for an unfaithful lover in the entire fabric of the verse.
Undoubtedly, this technique of unsaid fullness, as noted by Anna Andreevna’s contemporaries, for example, K.I. Chukovsky, belongs to the artistic discovery of the poetess:

And if you knock on my door,
I don't think I'll even hear it.

Of course, if you do not correlate the content of the verse with Akhmatova’s biography, other interpretations of the image of the heroine and her love story are possible, but, definitely, she made a choice, although the theme of anxiety indicated at the beginning of the verse takes on an additional meaning: the anxiety of waiting for a knock on the door of the one as it happened, not without whose “help” the heroine learned as a result “to live simply, wisely.”

And indeed, what kind of wisdom should be drawn from the experience: to pray to God for everyone, which will also make the call of the tempter undetectable, to live in quiet love for one’s land and people, distant and closest, and to sacredly fulfill one’s creative and maternal purpose.

Composition

Poetry awakens the most sonorous strings in a person’s soul, makes him break away from reality and soar with his thoughts to unprecedented heights. Poems can become salvation for a person in difficult and even tragic circumstances. Rhymed lines make you think about the sublime, noble, eternal.
The poetry of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova cannot be read with indifference. Literally every work of hers turns all the usual ideas about the world upside down and makes you look at life around you differently.
Akhmatova’s poems are amazing, they are simple and artless, at first glance. But if you think about it, their true meaning is revealed and the reader understands that he finds himself faced with an abyss of feelings, emotions, and thoughts. Anna Akhmatova was able to express in poetry all the deepest aspirations of the human soul, all shades of feelings and emotions. And everyone who begins to read her immortal works is surprised at how close and understandable everything the poetess talked about is to him.
Already in the early poems of Anna Akhmatova you can see everything that the poetess lived by. Her inner world was surprisingly rich. There was a place for everything: love, admiration for the beauty of the world around us and the amazing wisdom characteristic of the poetess. She can easily, in the simplest words, convey her mood in poetry:

I pray to the window ray -
He is pale, thin, straight.
Today I have been silent since the morning,
And the heart is in half.

There are no trifles in poetry, everything has its own, very important meaning. Akhmatova’s love lyrics fascinate, make you feel all the feelings that can only be present in the heart of a woman in love:

My chest was so helplessly cold,
But my steps were light.
I put it on my right hand
Glove from the left hand.
It seemed like there were a lot of steps,
And I knew - there are only three of them!
Autumn whispers between the maples
He asked: “Die with me!”

Akhmatova's poetry is surprisingly chaste. The experiences of a woman in love are so sublime that it seems as if the author of these lines was an unearthly being. In the poems of Anna Akhmatova, the amazing beauty of love is revealed to the reader, capable of justifying everything that people can do for the sake of this wonderful feeling. The poems testify to the deepest suffering that love can bring. But this suffering simultaneously elevates a person. And therefore love appears as a test sent from above.
Among everyday worries and problems, Akhmatova’s poems can turn out to be an oasis that refreshes the soul, thoughts and feelings. After all, love is not just a game of imagination, but the only reality that can raise a person to the pinnacle of happiness. Thoughts about love make us think about our own soul, which we sometimes forget about in the bustle of everyday life. Love makes you spread your wings and fly above the gray and dull reality. But at the same time, love can turn out to be a heavy stone that does not allow you to rise and soar.

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.

In Akhmatova’s poems, the lyrical heroine is surprisingly romantic. She pays attention to all the signs of the surrounding world, and she reacts sensitively to absolutely everything. Every action, aspiration or word can be decisive or fatal.

It was stuffy from the burning light.
And his glances are like rays.
I just shuddered: this
Might tame me.
He leaned over - he would say something...
The blood drained from his face.
Let it lie like a tombstone
On my life love.

The poetess does not just sing of the beauty of love. She says that love can simultaneously become the greatest of tragedies, dooming a person to unhappiness. But without love, the very meaning of life is lost. And therefore the soul languishes without love, and a person reaches out to it with all his being. Akhmatova's poems contain exquisite comparisons. The poetess talks with the insomniac, tells her about her experiences:

You are again, again with me, insomnia!
I recognize your motionless face.
What, beauty, what, lawless,
Is it bad for me to sing to you?

Akhmatova’s lyrical heroine constantly reflects on the meaning of life. And her thoughts lead to amazingly beautiful and exquisite turns of phrase in verses glorifying the splendor of life:

I learned to live simply and wisely,
Look at the sky and pray to God,
And wander for a long time before evening,
To quench unnecessary anxiety.

Akhmatova manages to notice everything around her and glorify it in her work. And burdocks in the ravine, and clusters of yellow-red rowan berries, and a purring fluffy cat - all this is reflected in the poem. At first glance, these are insignificant details. But all this is part of life, as it really is.
When I read Akhmatova’s poems, it seems to me as if an amazing world is opening up before me, the whole Universe of her soul. Anna Andreevna lived in a difficult time for the country. Habitual human values ​​were forgotten. And that is why Akhmatova’s work was treated with caution... And the poetess herself was called “an enraged lady, rushing between the boudoir and the chapel.” How monstrously unfair such statements seem today, when the unconditional genius of Akhmatova’s creativity is appreciated by readers!

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (Gorenko) entered Russian poetry in those years when the most severe political reaction that occurred after the defeat of the first Russian revolution was replaced by a new upsurge of the revolutionary labor movement. Renegadeism was widespread among the revolution's temporary companions. All types of religious, philosophical and literary obscurantism blossomed in full bloom. The most influential school of Russian bourgeois poetry - symbolism - then experienced a severe crisis and disintegrated.
Anna Akhmatova’s first collections “Evening” and “Rosary” (1912 and 1914) brought her quick and loud all-Russian fame. She acted as a representative of the Acmeist movement in poetry, which declared its continuity from symbolism, but contrasted the symbolic desire for the unknowable with “a sounding, colorful world that has shapes, weight and time.”
On this common platform, poets with different character and temperament talents united. What they had in common was indifference to the pressing social issues of the time, a fetishization of the dead world of things, and a limitation of lyrics to the cramped world of intimate experiences.
The poems of Akhmatova’s first two collections are marked by the features of all this:
My chest was so helplessly cold.
But my steps were light.
I put it on my right hand
Glove from the left hand.

It seemed like there were a lot of steps,
And I knew - there are only three of them!
Autumn whispers between the maples
He asked: “Die with me!”

I'm deceived by my sadness,
Changeable, evil fate."
I replied: “Darling, darling!
Me too. I will die with you..."

This is the song of the last meeting.
I looked at the dark house.
Only candles were burning in the bedroom
Indifferent yellow fire.
Akhmatova's poems presented in these collections are devoid of any verbal embellishment characteristic of some Acmeists. They are aphoristically brief, clear, and expressive. In them, Anna Akhmatova appears as a poet with great poetic individuality and strong lyrical talent.
At the same time, the reader is struck by the disproportionate isolation of the poet’s spiritual world in terms of the strength of his talent and temperament - “female” intimate and lyrical experiences, separated from the outside world:
You can't confuse real tenderness
With nothing, and she is quiet.
You are in vain carefully wrapping
My shoulders and chest are covered in fur.
And in vain are the words submissive
You're talking about first love.
How do I know these stubborn ones,
Insatiable glances, yours!
Akhmatova’s strong and original talent saved the poems of these collections from boredom caused by endless variations of the same themes of love, disappointment, breakup and separation.
Love is a feeling that determines the meaning of life for the heroine. It is the natural state of man, the fatal merging of souls, pain and torment, to describe which the poet resorts to almost naturalistic details:
From your mysterious love,
As if in pain, I scream.
Became yellow and fitful,
I can barely drag my feet.
Her works are filled with inner energy that can only suggest the true strength and depth of passion. The theme of female pride and independence is inextricably linked with the theme of love. Despite the all-consuming power of feelings, the heroine defends her right to inner freedom and individuality:
There is a cherished quality to being close to people.
She cannot be overcome by love and passion...
The hero of Akhmatov's lyrics (not the heroine) is complex and multifaceted. This is a lover, brother, friend, presented in an endless variety of situations: insidious and generous, killing and resurrecting, first and last.
...And more necessary than our daily bread
I have one word about him.
You, who sprinkle the grass with dew,
Revive my soul with the news, -
Not for passion, not for fun,
For great earthly love.
“Great earthly love” is the driving principle of all Akhmatova’s lyrics. Akhmatova called love “the fifth season of the year.” From this unusual, fifth time, she saw the other four, ordinary ones. In a state of love, the world is seen anew. All senses are heightened and tense. And the unusualness of the ordinary is revealed. A person begins to perceive the world with tenfold force, truly reaching the heights of his sense of life. The world opens in additional reality: “After all, the stars were larger, because the herbs smelled different.” That is why Akhmatova’s verse is so objective: it returns things to their original meaning, it draws attention to what we are normally able to pass by indifferently, not appreciate, not feel.
Beginning with “The White Flock,” but especially in “Plantain,” “Anno Domini,” and in later cycles, Akhmatova’s feeling of love acquires a broader and more spiritual character. This did not make it any less powerful. On the contrary, the poems of the 20-30s, dedicated to love, go to the very heights of the human spirit. They do not subjugate all of life, all of existence, as it was before, but all of existence, all of life brings into love experiences all the diversity of their inherent shades. Filled with this enormous content, love became not only incomparably richer and more colorful, but also truly tragic. The biblical solemn elation of Akhmatova's love poems of this period is explained by the genuine height, solemnity and pathosity of the feeling contained in them.
In the lyrical heroine of Akhmatova’s poems, in the soul of the poetess herself, there constantly lived a burning, demanding dream of truly high love, undistorted in any way. Akhmatova’s love is a formidable, commanding, morally pure, all-consuming feeling that makes one remember the biblical line: “Love is strong as death - and its arrows are fiery arrows.” And this is why Akhmatova will always be close to the reader even after many, many years.
Akhmatova contains poems that are literally “made” from everyday life, from simple everyday life - right down to the green washstand on which a pale evening ray plays. One involuntarily recalls the words spoken by Akhmatova in her old age, that poems “grow from rubbish”, that even a spot of mold on a damp wall, and burdocks, and nettles, and a damp fence, and a dandelion can become the subject of poetic inspiration and depiction:
If only you knew what kind of rubbish
Poems grow without shame,
Like a yellow dandelion by the fence,
Like burdocks and quinoa.
The most important thing in her craft - vitality and realism, the ability to see poetry in ordinary life - was already inherent in her talent by nature itself.
The poems of the first three collections were written in 1911-1917. But, reading them, it is impossible to imagine that it was at this time that Russia was experiencing a fiery wave of a new revolutionary upsurge, that the tragic epic of the First World War was underway, ending in 1917 with gigantic revolutionary explosions that overturned all the previous foundations of the life of Russian society. All these great events are almost not reflected in Akhmatova’s lyrics. She did not understand and did not accept the October Revolution, bitterly and hopelessly yearning for the destroyed past, dear to her heart. According to the logic of these sentiments and experiences, Akhmatova could have ended up in the first years through October where Ivan Bunin, Konstantin Balmont, Vladislav Khodasevich and some acmeist poets of the second generation ended up. But this did not happen. The author of the following lines, dated 1917 (collection “Plantain”), could not have ended up in exile:
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.
These lines, so unexpectedly written for Akhmatova in a confessional-Nekrasov tone, speak volumes.
It took some time before Anna Akhmatova’s lyrical muse got used to the new reality. The first two post-October collections of poetry expressively show how difficult it was for an original and deeply organic poet to break ties with the past, overcome the inertia of habitual intonations, and break out of the narrow world of intimate experiences into the wide expanse of a new historical reality.
Civil motives are organically included in the poet’s work; their presence follows from Akhmatova’s idea of ​​the high purpose of poetry. Poetry is not only a sweet gift of song, but also a command from heaven, a heavy cross that must be carried with dignity. And therefore the poet is always doomed to be in the thick of life, in the center of events, no matter how tragic they may seem
"Requiem" - one of Akhmatova's largest works - was written in 1935-1940. Akhmatova's husband was accused of participating in an anti-government conspiracy and was executed by execution near Petrograd in 1921. “Requiem” reflects the feelings that Akhmatova experienced after losing her loved one. And although the events described in “Requiem” date back to the 1930s, they echo the pain and grief experienced by the poetess herself.
Based on the composition, “Requiem” is most likely a poem. Individual poems are united by one idea - a protest against violence. “Requiem” reflected not only the feelings and experiences of Akhmatova herself, not only the grief of those who were torn away from their loved ones and imprisoned in prison cells, but also the pain of those women, those wives and mothers whom Akhmatova saw in the terrible prison lines. It is to these women sufferers that the dedication is addressed. It contains the melancholy of a sudden separation, when a grief-stricken woman feels torn off, cut off from the whole world with its joys and worries.
The introduction of the poem gives a vivid, merciless description of time. The first chapters reflect the boundless, deep abyss of human grief. It seems that these lines echo the cry of Yaroslavna, grieving both for her beloved and for all Russian soldiers.
A. Akhmatova embeds her experiences in the context of the era. No wonder the poem begins like this:
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.
This was the final choice of the poetess.
The Great Patriotic War found Akhmatova in Leningrad. Being among the heroic citizens of the siege of Leningrad, locked in an iron ring, Akhmatova looked at the life around her with new eyes.
How sharply contrasts the content of Akhmatova’s previous lyrics with the concentrated power of the short poem “The Oath,” dated July 1941:
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 September 1941, she was evacuated from besieged Leningrad, first to Moscow, then to Tashkent. And so in February 1942, on the pages of Pravda, next to military reports and front-line correspondence, the poem “Courage” signed by Anna Akhmatova appeared:
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!
Love for Russia saved Akhmatova from emigration; love for the native land, trampled under the heel of foreigners, introduced the Russian poetess Anna Akhmatova into the circle of Soviet poets. The closed individualism of the intimate lyrical theme was overshadowed during the war years by hot patriotic emotion and gave way to the noble humanism of a man gripped by anxiety for the fate of the Motherland, the fate of all humanity.
There is a lot of deep, burning sorrow in the poems written by Akhmatova during the difficult days of the war. However, there is no hopelessness or despair in these verses. They express anger and confidence in inevitable retribution and faith in the future, personified in children saved from death:
Victory is at our door...
How will we greet the welcome guest?
Let women raise their children higher,
Saved from a thousand thousand deaths, -
This is our long-awaited answer.
In the post-war years, the poetess’s heart continues to be receptive to a great social topic that worries millions of people on earth:
Swinging on the waves of ether,
Passing mountains and seas,
Fly, fly, dove of peace,
Oh my ringing song!
...
Fly into the crimson-scarlet sunset,
Into the suffocating factory smoke,
And to the black neighborhoods,
And to the blue waters of the Ganges.
With the poems written in recent years, Anna Akhmatova has taken her own special place in modern poetry, not purchased at the cost of any moral or creative compromises. The path to these verses was difficult and complicated. And the decisive role on this path was played by what the poetess wrote about in the lines of her autobiography, which opens one of the last collections of her poems: “... 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.”

Akhmatova’s poetry is a lyrical diary of a contemporary who felt a lot and thought a lot about a complex and majestic era.

A. Tvardovsky

Anna Akhmatova occupies a worthy place among the brilliant names of Russian literature of the twentieth century. Her poetry has become dear and close to millions of people.

At that time I was a guest on earth.
I was given a name at baptism - Anna,
The sweetest thing for human lips and ears...

This is how Akhmatova wrote about her childhood and youth - proudly, solemnly. Her father did not allow her to sign poems with her real surname - Gorenko, and she took the surname of her great-grandmother. Now the whole world knows this unusually harmonious name - Anna Akhmatova. And the world is grateful to this name.

I, like many, are attracted to the theme of love in Akhmatova’s lyrics. It is not for nothing that the poetess immediately and unanimously, as soon as “Evening” and “The Rosary” came out, began to be called “Sappho of the new time.” And indeed, reading Akhmatova, you often recall the classic Sappho:

Cavalry for some, infantry for others,
A string of slender ships - the third.
And for me, on the black earth everyone is more beautiful
Only beloved...

Both Safo and Akhmatova are on the same page. What does it matter if they are separated by centuries! They are sisters for whose songs neither time nor space exists. They served the same sun of life and love.

Akhmatova’s poems about love are small stories that have neither beginning nor end, but still have a plot, such as “In the Evening”, “Clenched her hands under a dark veil...” and others. Amazing skill allows the poetess, with the help of one seemingly insignificant detail, to create a certain mood and convey the feelings of the lyrical heroine:

My chest was so helplessly cold,
But my steps were light.
I put it on my right hand
Glove from the left hand.

Here it is - an insignificant detail - a glove put on incorrectly - and before us is painted the image of a woman, depressed and confused. We understand that her loved one has probably abandoned her, and life is about to collapse for her.

The detail in one of my favorite poems, “You don’t love, you don’t want to look…” carries an even greater burden:

My eyes are filled with fog,
Things change, faces change,
And only a red tulip,
The tulip is in your buttonhole.

Here the tulip is not just a precisely found detail. This image holds the whole idea. Isn’t it true, as soon as this tulip is taken out of a poem, as if from a buttonhole, it immediately fades away. Why? Probably because jealousy, despair, grief, resentment - everything that at this moment makes up the meaning of the heroine’s life, everything is focused on the tulip, which is associated with the red flower of evil from Garshin’s story. In Akhmatova's poem, the tulip is dazzling and arrogant. It is easy to imagine how this bright, red flower triumphs in a deserted world colorless from tears. The situation of the poem is such that not only to the heroine, but also to us, the readers, it seems that the tulip is not a detail or a well-found touch, but a living creature, a full-fledged hero of the work.

I also like Akhmatova’s poems because they are simple and accessible. I understand that this is apparent simplicity, and yet the poetess is clearly guided by the intonation of colloquial speech. Some of her poems are reminiscent of a conversation overheard:

Do you want to know how it all happened? –
It struck three in the dining room,
And saying goodbye, holding the railing,
She seemed to have difficulty speaking:
“That's all... Oh, no, I forgot,
I love you, I loved you..."

I read Akhmatova’s poems as a revelation of the human soul. I know that no matter how hard things were for her in life, she never bowed under the yoke of insults and injustice. Royal appearance, famous straight bangs, vitality and amazing poetry - this is what comes to mind at the mere mention of this name - Anna Akhmatova.

Blok and Pasternak dedicated poems to Akhmatova. Her portraits were painted by the best artists of her time: both realists and ultra-fashionable ones, such as Modigliani. Fame did not leave her door, and she did not attach much importance to it. Two years before her death, Akhmatova visited Italy, where she was awarded the Etna-Taormina Prize, and a year before her death, she visited England (where she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford University). Akhmatova is still known and loved to this day. Her poems remain modern to this day, and each of us finds something of our own in them.