Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is considered one of the most important Russian poets of the 20th century.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan and this is Encyclopedia Womannica.
Happy New Year! As we ring in what will hopefully be a much better year, I’m so excited to dive into a brand new theme. This month we’re talking about Storytellers.
Our very first storyteller is considered one of the most important Russian poets of the 20th century. She is widely lauded for her unique voice and barrier-breaking work. Let’s talk about Anna Akhmatova.
Anna Gorenko was born on June 23, 1889 in Odessa, Ukraine. Her father was a Ukrainian engineer and her mother came from Russian nobility. When Anna was 11 months old, the family moved to a wealthy suburb of St. Petersburg.
From a young age Anna loved poetry. She began writing at the age of 11, but was warned against pursuing poetry as a career by her father who disapproved of her becoming what he called a “decadent poetess.” Nevertheless, Anna continued writing and by her late teens, was published. In an effort to avoid her father’s displeasure, Anna chose a nom de plume, adapting the last name of her maternal great-grandmother, Akhmatova.
In 1910, at the age of 21, Anna married fellow poet and critic Nikolai Gumilev. Their union was not a simple one. Nikolai had been her editor and her peer for years, and Anna repeatedly rebuffed his romantic advances until finally agreeing to marry him.
On their honeymoon in Paris, Anna met Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani with whom she is rumored to have had a lasting affair.
In 1912, Anna published her first book of poetry, entitled Evening. With Evening, and her second book of poems, Rosary, Anna’s work began to receive significant critical acclaim. She was also immensely popular with the Russian public, especially among Russian women, who wrote thousands of poems in Anna’s honor, mimicking her style.
By the time Anna published her first acclaimed poetry, Nikolai had become the leader of the emerging Acmeist movement in Russian poetry. Acmeism strove to move away from the Symbolist movement, which valued the abstract in poetry, toward greater clarity and precision of language.
Anna’s use and mastery of language and form were evident in her poetry. As the leading female voice of the movement, she also brought a different perspective than her mostly male peers. She wrote often of tragic love in a decidedly unique and feminine style. Her poem, The Guest, reads:
Nothing is changed: against the dining-room windows
hard grains of whirling snow still beat.
I am what I was,
but a man came to me.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“To be with you in hell,” he said.
I laughed. “It’s plain you mean
to have us both destroyed.”
He lifted his thin hand
and lightly stroked the flowers:
“Tell me how men kiss you,
tell me how you kiss.”
-- The Guest 1914
In 1912, Anna gave birth to a son named Lev. Anna’s relationship to motherhood was complex, to say the least. She later wrote, “motherhood is a bright torture. I was not worthy of it.”
As conflict struck Europe, generally, and Russia, specifically, with the start of World War I in 1914 and the Russian Revolution of 1917, Anna’s poetry evolved to include notes of patriotism and religion.
In 1917, she published another collection of poetry entitled White Flock, which was described positively by one critic as “grim, spare and laconic". The following year, Anna and Nikolai divorced and Anna married Vladimir Shileiko, an Assyriologist and poet.
Four years later, in 1921, Anna’s ex-husband Nikolai, an avowed anti-communist, was executed by the Soviet secret police. Despite the fact that Anna and Nikolai had divorced, she was still seen as connected to him and his views. This had significant consequences for Anna’s career. Though Anna published two successful collections of poetry that year, she subsequently found it difficult to find a publisher for her work.
From that point on, Anna’s troubles grew. From 1925 to 1940, her poetry was unofficially banned in the Soviet Union. Communist leadership found it too focused on love and God, deeming her works distasteful to those loyal to the cause.
Silenced by powerful opponents, Anna publicly turned away from poetry. Instead, she focused on critiquing the works of Pushkin and translating great works of European literature. She also translated volumes of Korean and Armenian poetry.
In 1928, Anna and her second husband divorced. Soon after she married Nikolay Punin, an art historian and critic.
For Anna, like many in the Soviet Union, the 1930s were brutal. She found herself on the wrong side of government favor. Her husband and son were arrested and released in 1935. Her son was arrested once again in 1938 and was sent to a gulag for 5 years. During this period, she wrote a long, moving poem dedicated to Stalin’s victims entitled Requiem, though it would not be published in the Soviet Union until the late 1980s.
In 1940, after 15 years of her poetry being essentially banned, a few of Anna’s poems were published in a monthly literary magazine and a collection of her previously published poems was re-released. But Anna’s good luck was short-lived. Those in power had another change of heart and the collection was pulled from bookstores and library shelves.
Despite the Soviet Government’s general dislike of Anna, it was clearly understood that she had significant influence. With the start of World War II, Anna was apparently back in favor. In 1941 as German troops invaded Russia, Anna was asked to give a radio address to the women of what was then called Leningrad and what is now known as St. Petersburg. She also traveled to war hospitals where she read to and wrote poetry about the wounded.
At the end of the war, Anna returned to what’s now St. Petersburg where her poetry was again published in literary magazines and the like.
Then in 1946, the tides turned once more. The Central Committee of the Communist Party banned publication of her poetry due to its, “eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference.” She was ostracised from the literary community and a book of her unpublished poems due for release was destroyed.
In 1949, Anna’s son, Lev, was arrested again. Desperate to free him, Anna wrote poems lauding Stalin and his regime. In one such poem she wrote, “Where Stalin is, there is Freedom, Peace, and the grandeur of the earth.”
Some of those poems were published but they did not win Lev his freedom. He remained imprisoned until 1956.
After Stalin’s death, Anna’s position in Russian literary society was somewhat reestablished. New and never-before published collections were released, including both her poetry and translations.
Inside the Soviet Union, Anna’s genius was once again increasingly recognized by the people. She enjoyed widespread appreciation and popularity for writing about the pain experienced by so many. Her poem Requiem, which detailed life during Stalin’s decades of terror, is perhaps her most famous poem and provides what many consider to be the definitive depiction of life under the Great Purge.
Outside of the Soviet Union, Anna’s genius was celebrated by the world of academia. She received the Etna-Taormina prize in Italy in 1964 and an honorary doctorate from Oxford the following year.
Anna Akhmatova died in Leningrad in 1966. She was 78 years old.
Anna’s legacy lives on to this day in her remarkable words, written throughout her tragic life. Though she found herself in the crosshairs of political turmoil and oppression, she wrote on and through her poetry told the story of a generation.
All month, we’re talking about Storytellers. For more on why we’re doing what we’re doing, check out our newsletter, Womannica Weekly.
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As always, we’ll be taking a break for the weekend. Talk to you on Monday!