N. Gumilev
Mermaid

I love her, the maiden undine,
Illuminated by the secret of the night,
I love her glow look
And burning rubies...

Marina Tsvetaeva
Anna Akhmatova

In the morning sleepy hour, -
It seems like a quarter to five, -
I fell in love with you
Anna Akhmatova.

Boris Pasternak

The eye is sharp in different ways.
The image is accurate in different ways.
But the solution of the most terrible strength is
Night distance under the gaze of the white night.
This is how I see your appearance and gaze...

Arseny Tarkovsky

“Akhmatova’s muse is characterized by the gift of harmony, rare even in Russian poetry, most characteristic of Baratynsky and Pushkin. Her poems are completed, it is always the final version. Her speech does not turn into a scream or a song, the word lives in the mutual illumination of the whole... Akhmatova’s world teaches mental fortitude, honesty of thinking, the ability to harmonize oneself and the world, teaches the ability to be the person you strive to become.”

German writer Hans Werner Richter wrote an essay for radio. It describes Akhmatova’s reception in Italy: “...Here Russia itself sat in the middle of the Sicilian-Dominican monastery, on a white lacquered garden chair, against the backdrop of the powerful columns of the monastery gallery... The Grand Duchess of Poetry was giving an audience in her palace. Before her stood poets from all European countries - from the West and from the East - small, small and great, young and old, conservatives, liberals, communists, socialists; they stood, lined up in a long line that stretched along the gallery, and came up to kiss Anna Akhmatova’s hand... Each approached, bowed, was met with a gracious nod, and many - I saw - walked away, brightly flushed. Each performed this ceremony in the manner of their country, the Italians - charmingly, the Spaniards - majestically, the Bulgarians - piously, the British - calmly, and only the Russians knew the style that is worthy of Anna Akhmatova. They stood before their monarch, they knelt and kissed the ground. No, they didn't do that, but that's what it looked like, or that's how it could have been. Kissing Anna Akhmatova's hand, it was as if they were kissing the land of Russia, the tradition of their history and the greatness of their literature...

After this, the poets present were asked to read poems dedicated to Anna Akhmatova..."

Questions and tasks

1. What is characteristic of the early lyrics of A. A. Akhmatova?
2. How did A. A. Akhmatova perceive the people's grief during political repression and during the war? How did she perceive her own destiny?
3. What seemed close to you in the poetry of the great Akhmatova?
4. Based on the story about A. A. Akhmatova and the books and articles you have read yourself, prepare a story or essay about the poet.
5. The poetess considered one of the best critical analyzes of her poems to be an article by N.V. Nedobrovo, which ended like this: “After the release of “The Rosary,” Anna Akhmatova, “in view of the undoubted talent of the poetess,” will be called upon to expand the “narrow circle of her personal topics.” I do not join this call - the door, in my opinion, should always be smaller than the temple into which it leads: only in this sense can Akhmatova’s circle be called narrow. And in general, its calling is not in spreading in breadth, but in cutting layers, for its tools are not the tools of a surveyor measuring the land and making an inventory of its rich lands, but the tools of a miner cutting into the depths of the earth to veins of precious ores.<...>Such a strong poet as Anna Akhmatova, of course, will follow Pushkin’s behest.”

   Nedobrovo carefully analyzes the poem “You can’t confuse real tenderness...”. Analyze this poem too, think about the critic’s statement. Do you agree with his assessment? Give reasons for your answer.

6. Yu. F. Karyakin wrote: “If I were a teacher now, I would let the kids out with one, at least one wonderful impression. I would release them with a deep, beautiful and tragic impression of Requiem. So that they love “Requiem” forever, as the fate of Russia and the fate of a woman who turned out to be more courageous than millions of men. And it would be a charge of both compassion and courage.” Do you agree with the critic and publicist?
7. Think about the features of A. Akhmatova’s poetry. For example, literary scholars believe that the author’s emotion in her poems is conveyed “through an external image (“How unbearably white...”), through a detail (“She put it on her right hand...”), that the author often moves from low to high vocabulary. , and from high to low, that poetic speech is often a continuation of the poet’s inner speech (“I clenched my hands under a dark veil...”), that the plot often refers to the past, and the poet turns to the present and even to the future, which for Her characteristic feature is an atmosphere of mystery, and finally, that towards the end of her life, her voice in poetry and especially in the “Requiem” cycle becomes more restrained, stern, and her feelings become ascetic (“And if they shut my exhausted mouth, / To which a hundred million people scream... .”, “I was with my people then...”). How do you understand these conclusions of critics and literary scholars? Do you agree with them? What examples can you give to confirm or refute them?

Improve your speech

1. How do you understand the lines?

   I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
   To be torn to pieces by enemies.

   From others I receive praise - what ashes,
   From you and blasphemy - praise.

2. Prepare a story about Anna Akhmatova and the features of her work, accompanying it with reading her poems.
3. Prepare an expressive reading of one of Akhmatova’s poems by heart.

Composition

Love is the main theme of A. Akhmatova’s work. This amazing woman poet filled her poems with love and tenderness for her husband and son, with a deep feeling for her native land and her people. This feeling is revealed already in the first collections of the poetess - “Evening” (1909−1911), “Rosary” (1912−1914).

Akhmatova admitted: “Poems are a sob over life.” Therefore, her lyrical heroine is mournful and touchingly simple. It is no coincidence that Akhmatova, who joined the Acmeists, shared their convictions that poetry should be brought closer to life. Love, already in her early collections, is an absolutely earthly feeling, devoid of mystical otherworldliness. Already in Akhmatova’s early lyrics there is a gift for conveying the most complex psychological states of love through objects, the material world, through gestures and details.

The feeling of love itself in the collection “Evening” does not develop plot-wise. But the conflict of the love triangle here is explored in many ways (“And when they cursed each other...”, “Love”, “Clenched her hands under a dark veil...”, “Heart to heart is not chained...”, “Song of the last meeting”).

The collection “Rosary Beads” (1914) opens with an epigraph from Baratynsky’s poem:

Forgive me forever! But know that the two guilty

Not just one, there will be names

In my poems, in love stories.

The epigraph gives the entire cycle a feeling of passion and violent emotions. The everyday context of these poems was Akhmatova’s break with her husband Gumilyov (“I have only one smile...”, “My beloved always has so many requests!..”, “I accompanied my friend to the front hall...”). It is traditionally believed that this collection is the most decadent by A. Akhmatova. But it seems to me that this is not entirely true. The poem “Let’s not drink from the same glass...” convincingly speaks about this. In it, the lyrical heroine tries to connect her secret love and the world of specific human relationships.

In the poem “You know, I am languishing in captivity...” there is a feeling of love-captivity of the lyrical heroine, her fascination with this feeling (“Praying for the death of the Lord...”). In the same collection, the motive of God’s punishment, important for Akhmatova, is outlined (in the poem “Pray for the beggar, for the lost ...”). This punishment is perceived traditionally by the lyrical heroine: as a test of the Spirit, of human strength.

Only a few of Akhmatova’s contemporaries grasped the novelty of her next collection, “The White Flock” (1914-1917). Among them was O. E. Mandelstam, who noted his “priestly” style. And, meanwhile, there is every reason to believe that it is from this cycle that the turning point in Akhmatova’s work begins. The final affirmation of a woman occurs not as an object of love, but as a lyrical heroine. Therefore, the image of the beloved is very important here.

O. E. Mandelstam noted: “Akhmatova brought to Russian literature all the complexity and richness of the Russian novel of the 19th century. She developed her poetic form, sharp and original, with an eye on psychological prose.” Akhmatova’s poems are characterized by a plot (“The Black Road Winded…”, “Escape”, etc.), variety and subtlety of lyrical experiences. Love dominates the cycle, but the lyrical heroine of the cycle has not changed internally. We feel her independence from the all-consuming feeling of “cruel youth.”

The space of the cycle also changes, but this is not just “geography”. It contains a poem that shows the change in the spiritual “space” of the cycle:

Oh, there are unique words

Whoever said them spent too much.

Only blue is inexhaustible

Heavenly, and the mercy of God.

In “The White Flock” the lyrical heroine is already a mature woman. She comprehended eternal values ​​for herself: freedom, life, death. Therefore, even in poems that develop a range of familiar love themes (anticipation of happiness, meeting, separation, “hidden” love, sadness about the past), new qualities of the lyrical heroine appear: the dignity of suffering, love, the ability to relate one’s feelings to the vastness of the world. It is in this cycle that we find experiences of the tragic fate of Russia in anticipation of the troubles of the First World War (“July 1914”, “That voice, arguing with great silence ...”, “In memory of July 19, 1914”).

Akhmatova joins the common misfortune and fate of Russia. In the preface to the poem “Requiem” (1935-1940), the poetess wrote: “During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad.” Her only son Lev Gumilyov was arrested. Akhmatova fits her drama and fate into laconic lines:

This woman is sick

This woman is alone.

Husband in the grave, son in prison,

Pray for me.

However, the lyrical heroine sees her poetic and human mission in conveying the sorrow and suffering of the “hundred-million” people. She becomes the “voice of the people” during the years of total and forced silence of all:

For them I wove a wide cover

From the poor, they have overheard words.

The theme of death in the poem determines the theme of madness (“Madness is already a wing…”). Madness itself appears here as the final limit of the deepest despair and grief, when the lyrical heroine seems to distance herself from herself:

No, it's not me, it's someone else who is suffering. I couldn't do that...

The lyrical heroine of A. Akhmatova went through a complex evolution. From deeply personal experiences she came to suffering for the entire Russian people, with whom she shared the most terrible time in history.

From the memoirs of contemporaries about A. A. Akhmatova (end)

Questions and tasks

1. What is characteristic of the early lyrics of A. A. Akhmatova?

2. How did A. A. Akhmatova perceive the people’s grief during political repression and during the war? How did she perceive her own destiny?

3. What seemed close to you in the poetry of the great Akhmatova?

4. Based on the story about A. A. Akhmatova and the books and articles you have read yourself, prepare a story or essay about the poet.

5. The poetess considered one of the best critical analyzes of her poems to be an article by N.V. Nedobrovo, which ended like this: “After the release of “The Rosary”, Anna Akhmatova, “in view of the undoubted talent of the poetess,” will be called for expanding the “narrow circle of her personal topics.” I do not join this call - the door, in my opinion, should always be smaller than the temple into which it leads: only in this sense can Akhmatova’s circle be called narrow. And in general, its calling is not in squandering breadth, but in cutting layers, for its tools are not the tools of a surveyor measuring the land and making an inventory of its rich lands, but the tools of a miner cutting into the depths of the earth to veins of precious ores.<...>Such a strong poet as Anna Akhmatova, of course, will follow Pushkin’s behest.”

Nedobrovo carefully analyzes the poem “You can’t confuse real tenderness...”. Analyze this poem too, think about the critic’s statement. Do you agree with his assessment? Give reasons for your answer.

6. Yu. F. Karyakin wrote: “If I were a teacher now, I would let the kids out with one, at least one wonderful impression. I would release them with a deep, beautiful and tragic impression of Requiem*. So that they love “Requiem” forever, as the fate of Russia and the fate of a woman who turned out to be more courageous than millions of men. And it would be a charge of both compassion and courage.” Do you agree with the critic and publicist?

7. Think about the features of A. Akhmatova’s poetry. For example, literary scholars believe that the author’s emotion in her poems is conveyed through an external image (“How unbearably white ...”), through a detail (“She put it on her right hand ...”), that the author often moves from low to high vocabulary, and from high to low, that poetic speech is often a continuation of the poet’s inner speech (“Clenched her hands under a dark veil...”), that the plot often refers to the past, and the poet turns to the present and even to the future, which for her a characteristic feature is the atmosphere of mystery, and finally, that towards the end of her life, her voice in poetry and especially in the “Requiem” cycle becomes more restrained, stern, and her feelings become ascetic (“And if they shut my exhausted mouth, / To which a hundred million people scream... ", "I was then with my people..."). How do you understand these conclusions of critics and literary scholars? Do you agree with them? What examples can you give to confirm or refute?

Improve your speech

1. How do you understand the lines?

I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
To be torn to pieces by enemies.

From others I receive praise - what ashes,
From you and blasphemy - praise.

2. Prepare a story about Anna Akhmatova and the features of her work, accompanying it with reading her poems.

3. Prepare an expressive reading of one of Akhmatova’s poems by heart.

Lamentation

Worship the Lord
In His holy court.
The holy fool is sleeping on the porch
A star is looking at him.
And, touched by an angel's wing,
The bell spoke
Not in an alarming, menacing voice,
And saying goodbye forever.
And they leave the monastery,
Having given away the ancient vestments,
Miracle workers and saints,
Leaning on the sticks.
Seraphim - to the forests of Sarov
Graze the rural herd,
Anna - to Kashin, no longer a prince,
Tugging at prickly flax.
The Mother of God sees off
He wraps his son in a scarf,
Dropped by an old beggar woman
At the Lord's Porch.

Excerpt from the article by V. G. Morov “St. Petersburg Exodus”,
dedicated to the analysis of Akhmatov's poem

On May 21, old style, the Russian Orthodox Church celebrates the feast of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, established in the 16th century in memory of the deliverance of Moscow from the invasion of the Crimean Tatars in 1521.

In the middle of the 16th century, surrounded by Metropolitan Macarius, evidence of this miracle was compiled into the story of “the newest miracle...”, which was included as an integral part in the “Russian Time Book”, “Nikon’s (Patriarchal) Chronicle” and in the “Book of the Degrees of the Royal Genealogy”.

“The Newest Miracle...”, depicting the events celebrated by the Church on May 31, sets the religious, historical and literary background of Akhmatova’s “Lamentations”. The memory of the Moscow sign not only suggests the name of Akhmatova’s holy fool (“the holy fool sleeps on the porch”—isn’t that the holy god-walker Vasily?), but also indirectly evokes the lines: “And touched by an angelic wing, / The bell began to speak...” - And abie hears, "to the great noise and the terrible swirl and ringing, "to the square bells...

Akhmatova’s treatment of chronicle evidence is alien to attempts to rehash an ancient legend, a romantic (ballad) retelling of the wonders and signs of 1521. Akhmatova is not “transported” anywhere and does not “get used to” anything; she remains faithful to her time and her destiny. The hidden conjugation of the saint’s exodus, separated by several centuries (1521-1922), is achieved in “Lamentation” by means that make Akhmatova’s poetic experience related to the techniques of medieval scribes: the poet borrows the plot frame of the chronicle narrative (more precisely, its fragment) and reveals in its forms the providential event of his era. The sources of binding symbolic dependencies are not only the coincidences and parallels of “The Miracle...” and the “Lamentation,” but also their oppositions, plot “twists” that separate the narratives: in Akhmatova’s sign, the host of saints and wonderworkers does not return to the abandoned monastery in which they remain The Virgin Mary with the Eternal Child. In addition to the first plan - an “artless” cry on the haystacks of an orphaned city, Akhmatov’s poem contains a second, symbolic plan, covertly testifying to the tragic breakdown of Russian life.

While maintaining a genetic connection with the funeral lament (and, consequently, with the oral folklore tradition), hagiographic and chronicle laments experienced the transformative influence of Christian views. Without denying the “legitimacy” and naturalness of crying for the dead, Christ himself shed tears at the tomb of Lazarus. The Church never tired of condemning the frenzied, screaming contrition for the departed. For a Christian, the death of a loved one is not only a personal loss, but also a reminder of the sin that once “conceived” death. The death of a neighbor should awaken repentant feelings in Christians and evoke tears of repentance for their own sins. “Why shouldn’t the Imam cry when I think about death, when I see my brother lying in the grave, inglorious and ugly? What do I miss and what do I hope for? Just grant me, Lord, before the end, repentance.” Often, book lamentations transformed the funeral lament into a tearful prayer, which made it easier to acquire the firstfruits of the Christian life of unceasing repentance.

The proximity in the “Lamentation” of the Sarov miracle worker and the blessed Tver princess is justified not only chronologically (the time of glorification of the saints), but also biographically (their place in the poet’s life). Akhmatova’s great-grandfather on the maternal side, Yegor Motovilov, belonged to the same family as Simbirsk conscience judge Nikolai Aleksandrovich Motovilov - “a servant of the Mother of God and Seraphim,” a zealous admirer of the Sarov ascetic, who left the most valuable testimonies about him. At the beginning of the 20th century, during the days of preparation for the canonization of St. Seraphim, the surviving papers of N. A. Motovilov were the most important source for the life of the saint.

A clear biographical motif, permeating the six-century historical layer, connects Akhmatova’s life with the fate of St. Anna Kashinskaya. The poet's birthday (July 11, old style) differs by only one day from the day of remembrance of the blessed Tver princess (July 12, old style), and the life destiny of the saint. Anna, who lost her husband and two sons in the Golden Horde, was perceived in 1922 (several months after the execution of N.S. Gumilev) as a tragic proclamation of the fate of Akhmatova herself.

The historical allusions that permeate “The Lamentation” are not limited to glances at the story of the “Newest Miracle...” and indirect allusions to the canonizations of the beginning of the century. Lines characteristic of Akhmatova’s poetry:

And they leave the monastery,
Having given away the ancient vestments,
Miracle workers and saints,
Leaning on the sticks

sounded in the fifth year of the revolution not so much in the lyrical, but in the “propaganda” register. By the end of 1921, famine, turned into an instrument of civil war, engulfed 23 million residents of Crimea and the Volga region. The Russian Orthodox Church and POMGOL, created with the participation of the “bourgeois” intelligentsia, rushed to help the suffering. Church and public charity, escaping the control of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), did not correspond to the views of the Bolshevik leadership. In an effort to curb the seditious initiative of the Church, on February 6 (19), 1922, the All-Russian Central Executive Committee adopted a resolution on the forced confiscation of church valuables, including sacred vessels and bowls used in worship. February 15 (28), 1922 St. Patriarch Tikhon said - ... From the point of view of the Church, such an act is an act of sacrilege, and We considered it our sacred duty to find out the Church’s view of this act, and also to notify Our faithful spiritual children about this...”

The very first lines of the “Lamentation” suggest what kind of “monastery” Akhmatova meant in her lament. Verse XXVIII of Psalm: Worship the Lord in His holy courtyard (slightly paraphrased in the beginning of Akhmatova’s poem) was inscribed on the pediment of the Vladimir Cathedral in St. Petersburg. (“The inscriptions taken down a long time ago: To this house befits the sanctity of the Lord in the length of days on the Engineering Castle, worship the Lord in His holy courtyard at the Vladimir Cathedral appeared on the pediments,” Akhmatova wrote in a prose sketch in 1962). Consecrated in honor of the Vladimir Icon of the Mother of God, the temple built by Starov embodied Moscow legends on the banks of the Neva, and, linking her “Lamentation” with it, Akhmatova initially, with the opening lines of the poem, indirectly pointed to the chronicle source of her lament.

Compared to the story of the miraculous salvation of Moscow through the prayerful intercession of the Cathedral of Saints, the opening of Akhmatova’s “Lamentation” looks much darker: the heavenly patrons of Russia are leaving the monastery, and no one is preventing their outcome. However, this night procession of miracle workers, filled with tragedy, still remains for Akhmatova a conditional (“unless you repent...”) prophetic sign, and not a fulfilled sign of an inevitable apocalyptic execution.

In Akhmatova’s lament, the saints and wonderworkers, leaving the monastery, do not shake the dust of the earthly world from their feet, entrusting Russia to its fatal fate. “Acmeistic” concreteness of Akhmatova’s “Lamentation”:

Seraphim in the forests of Sarov...
Anna in Kashin...

transforms the night exodus of the miracle workers into a saving mission, with which the patron saints of Russia are coming across Russian soil. The Mother of God herself remains in the suffering city ( The Mother of God sees off /He wraps his son in a scarf...), without taking away from Russia its intercession and protection...

What prompted Akhmatova, using the traditional poetic genre (lamentation), to revise the plot of “The Newest Miracle...” that lies at the heart of the poem? The narrative of the 16th century, attested by Church Tradition, makes it difficult to transform its plot in some other poetic text (especially one built on the biblical reminiscences of “Worship the Lord...”). The plot metamorphosis accomplished in Akhmatova’s “Lamentation” will be hardly acceptable poetic license if it is not will be justified by some other (recent) revelation that took place in the poet’s memory.

The heavenly signs of the revolutionary era mystically justified Akhmatova’s rethinking of the plot. On March 2, 1917, the day of the abdication of the last Russian sovereign, a miraculous image of the Sovereign Mother of God was found in the village of Kolomenskoye near Moscow. In the icon, the Mother of God appeared in a royal crown with a scepter and an orb in her hands, visibly testifying to the world that She, the Lady of Heaven, accepted the insignia of royal power over Russia, torn apart by turmoil. The concern of the Mother of God for the fate of the people possessed by revolutionary madness, clear to millions of Orthodox Christians, imparted providential significance to the ending of Akhmatova’s “Lamentation”, completed by the vision of the sovereign patroness of Russia on the hundred squares of the Neva capital.

The above judgments do not allow us to judge with decisive certainty how consciously Akhmatova connected her “Lamentation” with the Sovereign image of the Mother of God. However, any diligent research into Akhmatova’s innermost intentions is unlikely to require continuation. The true poetic word testifies to more than the poet intends to say. Already the ancients indisputably understood that it is not so much the poet who pronounces the word, but rather the word that is spoken through the poet. A poetic word once spoken is revealed in a horizon of semantic connections over which the author has no control. And, having seen the Virgin Mary seeing off a host of saints (among them St. Seraphim and St. Anna), Akhmatova gave her poem “the seventh and twenty-ninth meanings,” turning the “lost” on the pages of “Anno Domini” “Lamentation” into a lament for Russia and to her Martyr King.

Valeeva Farida

The essay shows the tragedy of the individual, family and people in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”.

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“The tragedy of the individual, family, people in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

The tragedy of the individual, family, people in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

The wound inflicted on the homeland, each of

feels us in the depths of his heart.

V. Hugo.

A person’s life is inseparable from the life of the state in which he lives. Each era in the formation and development of the Russian state forged and shaped the Russian national character, which was formed on the basis of love and devotion to the Fatherland, self-sacrifice in the name of the Motherland. At all times, patriotism, a sense of duty to the Fatherland, and the invincibility of the spirit have been valued and celebrated on Russian soil.

During the formation and development of the Soviet state, the sense of national identity, the sense of involvement in the destinies of the country, people, and history were revived and strengthened. A. Akhmatova, the great poetess of the 20th century, who wrote her wonderful poems in an era of great social changes and disasters, became an example of true patriotism and loyalty to the fatherland. The trials that befell the Russian people are embodied in her lyrics. Whatever Anna Akhmatova wrote about: about the First World War, the events of 1917, Stalin’s repressions, the Great Patriotic War, the “Khrushchev Thaw” - her civic and universal position remained unchanged: in all trials she was with her people. Her work was distinguished by a sense of involvement in the destinies of the country, people, and history. The bitter trials that befell Russia did not break Akhmatova’s determination to share the fate of her destroyed, hungry, bleeding wars, but still beloved and native country.

True poetry is beautiful because it expresses the high truth of the poet’s soul and the merciless truth of time. A. Akhmatova understood this, and so do we, the readers who love her poetry. I am sure that many generations of readers will love her poems that penetrate straight to the soul.

To understand the great courage of Akhmatova’s soul, let’s re-read the most tragic work, “Requiem,” dedicated to the events of a terrible era in the history of the Russian state - Stalin’s repressions. The truth is not only the death of innocent people, blood and tears, it is also a cleansing of everything vile, dirty and terrible that happened during the period of Bolshevik terror against its people. Silencing this aspect of the life of our state threatens with new tragedies. Openness cleanses, makes it impossible for this to happen ever again in our history.

The poem "Requiem" was created from 1935 to 1940. In those distant years, the poem could only be read in handwritten copies. What truth did this work of Akhmatova contain that they were afraid to make it public for so long? This was the truth about Stalin's repressions. Akhmatova knew about them firsthand: her only son Lev Gumilyov was arrested, whose father, the famous Russian poet N. Gumilyov, a former tsarist officer, was arrested by the Bolsheviks.

Anna Andreevna spent seventeen long months in prison lines while the fate of her son was being decided. One day they recognized her in this mournful line and asked: “Can you describe this?” Akhmatova firmly answered: “I can.” It was an oath to the people with whom she was always together, sharing all their misfortunes.

Yes, Akhmatova fulfilled her oath. It was her duty to the people - to convey to future generations the pain and tragedy of that terrible time in the history of our state. It was a time, as the poetess figuratively writes, when “the stars of death ran over people and Rus', which had not broken either under the Horde or under the invasion of Napoleon, writhed “under the bloody boots” of its own sons...” Writing such a poem can be considered a heroic feat. After all, the text of the poem could have been a death sentence for Anna Akhmatova herself. She described a time “when only the dead smiled and were glad for the peace,” when people suffered either in prisons or near them. Akhmatova, “the three hundredth with a parcel and with her hot tear,” stands in line next to her “unwitting friends” near the Kresta prison, where her arrested son is, and prays for everyone who stood there “both in the bitter cold and in the July heat".

The arrest of Akhmatov’s son is correlated with death, because the very fact of restriction of freedom in those years became in fact a sentence. She compares herself with the Streltsy wives during the reprisal against the rebel Streltsy in the era of Peter I, who were exiled along with their families or executed by the Russian people. She is no longer able to make out now “who is the beast, who is the man, and how long will it be to wait for execution,” since the arrest of one of the family members in those years threatened everyone else with at least exile. And the slander was not supported by evidence. And yet Akhmatova resigned herself, but the pain in her soul did not subside. She and her son endure these “terrible white nights,” constantly reminding them of imminent death. And when the verdict is passed, one has to kill the memory and force the soul to petrify in order to “learn to live again.” Otherwise, only an “empty house” will remain. On the other hand, Akhmatova is ready to accept death, she is even waiting for it, because she “doesn’t care now.” The heroine is also indifferent to the form in which she accepts her last companion - death. Madness, delirium or humility?

The central position in the work is occupied by the crucifix. This is its emotional and semantic key. I think the climax is when the "Great Star" of death disappeared and "the heavens melted into fire." The crucifixion in the Requiem is the embodiment of the Way of the Cross, when Magdalene “fought and wept”, and the mother had to come to terms with the death of her child. The Mother’s silence is sorrow, a requiem for all those who were in the “convict holes.”

The epilogue is a continuation of muteness and madness and at the same time a prayer “for everyone who stood there with me.” The “red blind wall” represents those people who were behind it, who are in the Kremlin. They “went blind” because they had neither soul, nor compassion, nor any other feelings, nor sight to see what they had done with their own hands...

The second part of the epilogue, both in the melody of intonation and in meaning, can be correlated with the ringing of a bell, announcing a burial, a mourning:

The funeral hour has approached again,

I see, I hear, I feel you.

The autobiographical nature of “Requiem” is beyond doubt; it reflects the tragedy of the entire people, containing the drama of a woman who lost her husband and son:

Husband in the grave, son in prison e,

Pray for me...

The grief of a woman who has gone through all the circles of hell is so great that before her “the mountains bend, the great river does not flow...”. Maternal grief hardens the heart and kills the soul. A mother’s expectation of the most terrible thing—a death sentence for her child—almost deprives a woman of her sanity: “madness has already covered half of her soul.” Akhmatova turns to death, calling it for herself as a way of getting rid of inhuman torment. But the poetess speaks not only about herself, about her grief, she emphasizes that she shared the fate of many mothers. She would like to name all the sufferers who stood with her, “but the list was taken away, and there is no place to find out.” Separation from son. Maybe forever, maybe not. The yellow color that Akhmatova mentions is also symbolic. The color of separation and the color of madness. A woman who has suffered the death of her husband and the arrest of her son is distraught; she identifies herself with a lonely shadow and asks to pray with her. But the voice of Nadezhda, singing in the distance, permeates the entire work. Akhmatova does not believe in this horror:

No, it's not me, it's someone else who's suffering.

I couldn't do that...

She is simply “one woman.” She is also the “cheerful sinner from Tsarskoye Selo”, who previously had no idea about such a bitter fate ahead, and, finally, the Virgin Mary. Akhmatova cannot find herself, cannot understand and accept this pain.

The poem “Requiem” is not only the poetess’s story about a personal tragedy, it is also a story about the tragedy of every mother of those years, about the tragedy of an entire country. The poetess mourns the fate of her homeland, but during the years of difficult trials she remains faithful to it:

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.

Akhmatova hoped that, even if her mouth was clamped, “at which a hundred million people are screaming,” she would also be remembered on the eve of her “funeral day.” Akhmatova ends her poem with a testament: if someday, she writes, they want to erect a monument to her in Russia, then she asks not to erect it either by the sea, where she was born, or in Tsarskoye Selo, where she spent her happy youth,

And here, where I stood for three hundred hours

And where they didn’t open the bolt for me.

Akhmatova’s son, having spent almost twenty years in prisons and camps, surprisingly remained alive. He became a famous historian and ethnographer. In 1962, Akhmatova brought the poem to the New World magazine. Received a refusal. That same year, the poem was sent abroad and published in Munich. During her lifetime, Akhmatova saw only this publication. And only in the 80s we were able to read the poem “Requiem” published in our homeland.

Fortunately, the time of Stalinist repressions, which affected almost every family in the country, remains in the distant past. And we can consider Akhmatova’s “Requiem” a monument to the great grief of the people and the entire country, destitute and tortured. I would like to end the essay with the words of Anna Andreevna: “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.”