Reading Notes W13: Akhmatova, Part B

Anna Akhmatova, “Requiem” (565-574)

Anna Akhmatova:

·         1889-1966

·         One of the great Russian poets of the twentieth century

·         “Expresses herself in an intensely personal, poetic voice, whether as lover, wife, and mother or as a national poet commemorating the mute agony of millions” (565).

·         Universal themes: individual experience, historical events (filter of tears), love, hope, and pain.

·         “what most distinguishes her work is the way these basic emotions arise from the historical traumas of Akhmatova’s native land” (565).

·         She was born in the suburb of the Black Sea port of Odessa as Anna Andreevnaa Gorenko.

·         She took her pen name from her maternal great-grandmother (Tatar descent).

·         She was subject to official attacks after the war: “because she was considered too independent and cosmopolitan to be tolerated by the authorities, Akhmatova’s books were suppressed: they did not fit the government-approved model of literature: they were too “individualistic” and were not “socially useful” (566).

The story:

·         The author takes two personal losses and puts them together to create a mother grieving for a condemned son.

·         See the author’s personal emotions in the poem.

·         The mother’s grief only grows in the poem.

·         Individual grief that is linked to the country’s disaster.

·         A community of suffering isolated to one person’s story.

Quotes:

·         “The verdict…And her tears gush forth, already she is cut off from the rest, as if they painfully wrenched the life from her heart” (569). This is a good quote for the theme of pain and suffering. This woman feels torn and sad over the now condemned person.

·         “And I pray not for myself alone, but for all those who stood there with me in cruel cold, and in July’s heat, at that blond, red wall” (574). This could be a reference to the fact that she is not the only one who suffered but others did too. Many had losses too.

·         “And if they gag my exhausted mouth through which a hundred million scream, then may the people remember me on the eve of my remembrance day” (574). Maybe she is saying she won’t sit still and will be the voice for those wronged?