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 Thaw

After Stalin's death, Akhmatova's preeminence among Russian poets was grudginly conceded even by party officials. Her later pieces, composed in Neoclassical rhyming and mood, seem to be the voice of many she has outlived. Her dacha in Komarovo was frequented by Joseph Brodsky and other young poets, who continued Akhmatova's traditions of St Petersburg poetry well into the 21th century.

Related Topics:
Neoclassical - Komarovo - Joseph Brodsky

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Akhmatova got a chance to meet some of her pre-revolutionary acquaintances in 1965, when she was allowed to travel with Lidya Chukovskaya to Sicily and England, in order to receive the Taormina prize and the honorary doctoral degree from Oxford University. In 1962, her dacha was visited by Robert Frost.

Related Topics:
1965 - Lidya Chukovskaya - Sicily - England - Taormina - Oxford University - Robert Frost

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Song of the Last Meeting (1911)

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My breast grew helplessly cold,

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But my steps were light.

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I pulled the glove from my left hand

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Mistakenly onto my right.

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It seemed there were so many steps,

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But I knew there were only three!

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Amidst the maples an autumn whisper

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Pleaded: "Die with me!

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I'm led astray by evil

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Fate, so black and so untrue."

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I answered: "I, too, dear one!

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I, too, will die with you..."

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This is a song of the final meeting.

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I glanced at the house's dark frame.

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Only bedroom candles burning

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With an indifferent yellow flame.

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Akhmatova's reputation continued to grow after her death, and it was in the year of her centenary that one of the greatest poetic monuments of the 20th century, Akhmatova's Requiem, was finally published in her homeland.

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There is a museum devoted to Akhmatova at the Fountain House (more properly known as the Sheremetev Palace) on the Fontanka Embankment, where Akhmatova lived from the mid 1920s until 1952.

Related Topics:
Sheremetev Palace - Fontanka - 1920s - 1952

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