Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova ({{lang-ru|????? ?????????}}, real name ????? ?????????? ????????) (June 23, 1889 (June 11, Old Style and also St. John's Eve) - March 5, 1966) was the pen name of Anna Andreevna Gorenko, head and soul of St Petersburg tradition of Russian poetry in the course of half a century.

The accursed years

Nikolay Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for activities considered anti-Soviet; Akhmatova presently remarried a prominent Assyriologist and then another scholar, who died in the Stalinist camps. After that, she spurned several proposals from the married poet Boris Pasternak.

Related Topics:
Nikolay Gumilyov - 1921 - Anti-Soviet - Stalin - Boris Pasternak

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My Way (1940)

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One goes in straightforward ways,

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One in a circle roams:

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Waits for a girl of his gone days,

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Or for returning home.

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But I do go -- and woe is there --

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By a way nor straight, nor broad,

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But into never and nowhere,

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Like trains -- off the railroad.

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During the whole period from 1925 and 1952, Akhmatova was effectively silenced, unable to publish poetry. She earned her living by translating Leopardi and publishing some brillant essays on Pushkin in scholarly periodicals. All of her friends either emigrated of were repressed.

Related Topics:
1925 - 1952 - Leopardi - Pushkin

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Only a few people in the West suspected of her still being alive, when she was allowed to publish a collection of new poems in 1940. During the Great Patriotic War, when she witnessed the nightmare of the 900-Day Siege, her patriotic poems found their way to the front pages of the Pravda. After Akhmatova returned to Leningrad after the Central Asian evacuation in 1944, she was disconcerted with "a terrible ghost that pretended to be my city".

Related Topics:
1940 - Great Patriotic War - 900-Day Siege - Pravda - 1944

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Upon learning about Isaiah Berlin's visit to Akhmatova in 1946, Stalin's associate Andrei Zhdanov publicly labelled her "half harlot, half nun", and had her poems banned from publication. Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however.

Related Topics:
Isaiah Berlin - 1946 - Stalin - Andrei Zhdanov - Publicly labelled - Gulag

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