Anna Gorenko biography. Literary and historical notes of a young technician. Popular recognition of the talent of the poetess

Celebrity biography - Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova (Anna Gorenko) is a Russian and Soviet poetess.

Childhood

Anna was born in a large family on June 23, 1889. She will take the creative pseudonym "Akhmatova" in memory of the legends about her Horde roots.

Anna spent her childhood in Tsarskoe Selo near St. Petersburg, and every summer the family went to Sevastopol. At the age of five, the girl learned to speak French, but studying at the Mariinsky Gymnasium, where Anna entered in 1900, was difficult for her.

Akhmatova's parents divorced when she was sixteen years old. Mom, Inna Erazmovna, takes the children to Evpatoria. The family did not stay there for long, and Anna is finishing her studies in Kyiv. In 1908, Anna becomes interested in jurisprudence and decides to study further at the Higher Women's Courses. The result of the training was knowledge of Latin, which later allowed her to learn Italian.

Baby photos of Anna Akhmatova

The beginning of the creative path

Passion for literature and poetry began with Akhmatova since childhood. She wrote her first poem at the age of 11.

For the first time, Anna's works were published in 1911 in newspapers and magazines, and a year later the first collection of poems "Evening" was published. The poems were written under the influence of the loss of two sisters who died of tuberculosis. Her husband Nikolai Gumilyov helps to publish poems.

Young poetess Anna Akhmatova

Career

In 1914, the Rosary collection was published, which made the poetess famous. It is becoming fashionable to read Akhmatova's poems, young Tsvetaeva and Pasternak admire them.

Anna continues to write, new collections "White Flock", "Plantain" appear. The poems reflected Akhmatova's feelings about the First World War, the revolution, the civil war. In 1917, Anna falls ill with tuberculosis and recovers for a long time.

Starting in the twenties, Anna's poems began to be criticized, censored as inappropriate to the era. In 1923, her poems cease to be printed.

The thirties of the twentieth century become a difficult test for Akhmatova - her husband Nikolai Punin and son Lev are arrested. Anna spends a long time near the Kresty prison. During these years, she writes the poem "Requiem", dedicated to the victims of repression.

In 1939, the poetess was accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers.
During the Great Patriotic War, Akhmatova was evacuated from Leningrad to Tashkent. There she creates poems of military subjects. After the blockade is lifted, he returns to his hometown. During the crossings, many works of the poetess were lost.

In 1946, Akhmatova was removed from the Writers' Union after her work was sharply criticized in a resolution of the Organizing Bureau of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks. At the same time as Anna, Zoshchenko is also being criticized. Akhmatova was restored in the Writers' Union in 1951 at the suggestion of Alexander Fadeev.

The poetess reads a lot, writes articles. The time in which she worked left an imprint on her work.

In 1964, Akhmatova was awarded the Etna-Taormina Prize in Rome for her contribution to world poetry.
The memory of the Russian poetess was immortalized in St. Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa, Tashkent. There are streets named after her, monuments, memorial plaques. During the life of the poetess, her portraits were painted.

Portraits of Akhmatova: artists Natan Altman and Olga Kardovskaya (1914)

Personal life

Akhmatova was married three times. Anna met her first husband Nikolai Gumilyov in 1903. They married in 1910 and divorced in 1918. The marriage with her second husband Vladimir Shileiko lasted 3 years, the last husband of the poetess Nikolai Punin spent a long time in prison.

In the photo: the poetess with her husband and son

Lyovushka with his famous mother

Son Leo was born in 1912. Spent over ten years in prison. He was offended by his mother, believing that she could help to avoid imprisonment, but did not.

Lev Gumilyov spent almost 14 years in prisons and camps, in 1956 he was rehabilitated and found not guilty on all counts.

Of the interesting facts, one can note her friendship with the famous actress Faina Ranevskaya. On March 5, 1966, Akhmatova died in a sanatorium near Moscow, in Domodedovo. She was buried near Leningrad at the Komarovsky cemetery.

Grave of Anna Akhmatova

One of the brightest, most original and talented poetesses of the Silver Age, Anna Gorenko, better known to her admirers as Akhmatova, lived a long and tragic life. This proud and at the same time fragile woman witnessed two revolutions and two world wars. Her soul was scorched by the repressions and deaths of the closest people. The biography of Anna Akhmatova is worthy of a novel or a film adaptation, which was repeatedly undertaken by both her contemporaries and a later generation of playwrights, directors and writers.

Anna Gorenko was born in the summer of 1889 in the family of a hereditary nobleman and retired naval engineer Andrei Andreevich Gorenko and Inna Erazmovna Stogova, who belonged to the creative elite of Odessa. The girl was born in the southern part of the city, in a house located in the Bolshoi Fountain area. She was the third oldest of six children.

As soon as the baby was a year old, her parents moved to St. Petersburg, where the head of the family received the rank of collegiate assessor and became an official of the State Control for special assignments. The family settled in Tsarskoye Selo, with which all childhood memories of Akhmatova are connected. The nanny took the girl for a walk in Tsarskoye Selo Park and other places that she still remembered. Children were taught secular etiquette. Anya learned to read from the alphabet, and she learned French at an early age, listening to how the teacher teaches it to older children.

The future poetess received her education at the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium. Anna Akhmatova began writing poetry, according to her, at the age of 11. It is noteworthy that poetry for her was opened not by the works of Alexander Pushkin and, whom she fell in love with a little later, but by the majestic odes of Gabriel Derzhavin and the poem "Frost, Red Nose", which her mother recited.

Young Gorenko fell in love with Petersburg forever and considered it the main city of her life. She was very homesick for his streets, parks and the Neva when she had to leave with her mother to Evpatoria, and then to Kyiv. Parents divorced when the girl was 16 years old.

She finished her penultimate class at home, in Evpatoria, and finished the last class at the Kyiv Fundukleevskaya gymnasium. After completing her studies, Gorenko becomes a student of the Higher Women's Courses, choosing the Faculty of Law for herself. But if Latin and the history of law aroused a keen interest in her, then jurisprudence seemed boring to the point of yawning, so the girl continued her education in her beloved St. Petersburg, at N. P. Raev’s historical and literary courses for women.

Poetry

In the Gorenko family, no one was engaged in poetry, "as far as the eye sees around." Only on the line of Inna Stogova's mother was a distant relative Anna Bunina, a translator and poetess, found. The father did not approve of his daughter's passion for poetry and asked not to shame his last name. Therefore, Anna Akhmatova never signed her poems with her real name. In her family tree, she found a Tatar great-grandmother, who allegedly descended from the Horde Khan Akhmat, and thus turned into Akhmatova.

In her early youth, when the girl studied at the Mariinsky Gymnasium, she met a talented young man, later the famous poet Nikolai Gumilyov. Both in Evpatoria and in Kyiv, the girl corresponded with him. In the spring of 1910, they got married in the St. Nicholas Church, which still stands today in the village of Nikolskaya Slobodka near Kyiv. At that time, Gumilyov was already an accomplished poet, known in literary circles.

The newlyweds went to celebrate their honeymoon in Paris. This was Akhmatova's first meeting with Europe. Upon his return, the husband introduced his talented wife to the literary and artistic circles of St. Petersburg, and she was immediately noticed. At first, everyone was struck by her unusual, majestic beauty and regal posture. Swarthy, with a distinct hump on her nose, the "Horde" appearance of Anna Akhmatova conquered the literary bohemia.

Anna Akhmatova and Amadeo Modigliani. Artist Natalia Tretyakova

Soon, St. Petersburg writers find themselves captivated by the creativity of this original beauty. Anna Akhmatova writes poetry about love, namely this great feeling she sang all her life, during the crisis of symbolism. Young poets try themselves in other trends that have come into fashion - futurism and acmeism. Gumilyova-Akhmatova becomes famous as an acmeist.

1912 becomes the year of a breakthrough in her biography. In this memorable year, not only the only son of the poetess, Lev Gumilyov, was born, but also her first collection entitled “Evening” was published in a small edition. In her declining years, a woman who has gone through all the hardships of the time in which she had to be born and create, will call these first creations "the poor verses of the most empty girl." But then Akhmatova's poems found their first admirers and brought her fame.

After 2 years, the second collection, called "Rosary", is released. And it was already a real triumph. Admirers and critics enthusiastically speak of her work, elevating her to the rank of the most fashionable poetess of her time. Akhmatova no longer needs her husband's protection. Her name sounds even louder than the name of Gumilyov. In the revolutionary 1917, Anna published her third book, The White Flock. It comes out in an impressive circulation of 2,000 copies. The couple parted ways in the turbulent 1918.

And in the summer of 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was shot. Akhmatova was very upset by the death of her son's father and the man who introduced her to the world of poetry.

Anna Akhmatova reads her poems to students

Since the mid-1920s, hard times have come for the poetess. She is under the close attention of the NKVD. It is not printed. Akhmatova's poems are written "on the table." Many of them have been lost in transit. The last collection was published in 1924. "Provocative", "decadent", "anti-communist" poems - such a stigma on creativity cost Anna Andreevna dearly.

The new stage of her work is closely connected with soul-exhausting experiences for her loved ones. First of all, for my son Lyovushka. In the late autumn of 1935, the first wake-up call sounded for a woman: her second husband, Nikolai Punin, and son were arrested at the same time. They are released in a few days, but there will be no more peace in the life of the poetess. From that moment on, she will feel the ring of persecution tightening around her.

After 3 years, the son was arrested. He was sentenced to 5 years in labor camps. In the same terrible year, the marriage of Anna Andreevna and Nikolai Punin ended. The emaciated mother carries the transfers to her son in the Crosses. In the same years, the famous "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova was published.

In order to make life easier for her son and pull him out of the camps, the poetess, just before the war, in 1940 publishes the collection “From Six Books”. Here are collected old censored poems and new ones, "correct" from the point of view of the ruling ideology.

Anna Andreevna spent the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in evacuation, in Tashkent. Immediately after the victory, she returned to the liberated and destroyed Leningrad. From there he soon moved to Moscow.

But the clouds that barely parted overhead - the son was released from the camps - are gathering again. In 1946, her work was destroyed at the next meeting of the Writers' Union, and in 1949, Lev Gumilyov was arrested again. This time he was sentenced to 10 years. The unfortunate woman is broken. She writes requests and letters of repentance to the Politburo, but no one hears her.

Elderly Anna Akhmatova

After leaving the next imprisonment, the relationship between mother and son remained tense for many years: Leo believed that his mother put creativity in the first place, which she loved more than him. He moves away from her.

Black clouds over the head of this famous, but deeply unhappy woman disperse only at the end of her life. In 1951, she was reinstated in the Writers' Union. Akhmatova's poems are being published. In the mid-1960s, Anna Andreevna received a prestigious Italian award and released a new collection, The Run of Time. And the well-known poetess Oxford University awards a doctoral degree.

Akhmatova "booth" in Komarovo

At the end of years, the world-famous poet and writer finally got his own home. The Leningrad Literary Fund allocated her a modest wooden dacha in Komarovo. It was a tiny house, which consisted of a veranda, a corridor and one room.

All the “furnishings” are a hard bed, where bricks were stacked as a leg, a table built from a door, a drawing by Modigliani on the wall and an old icon that once belonged to the first husband.

Personal life

This regal woman had amazing power over men. In her youth, Anna was fantastically flexible. They say that she could easily bend back, reaching the floor with her head. Even the ballerinas of the Mariinsky Theater were amazed by this incredible natural plasticity. She also had amazing eyes that changed color. Some said that Akhmatova's eyes were gray, others claimed that they were green, and still others claimed that they were sky blue.

Nikolai Gumilyov fell in love with Anna Gorenko at first sight. But the girl was crazy about Vladimir Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a student who did not pay any attention to her. The young schoolgirl suffered and even tried to hang herself on a nail. Luckily, he slipped out of the clay wall.

Anna Akhmatova with her husband and son

It seems that the daughter inherited her mother's failures. Marriage with none of the three official husbands did not bring happiness to the poetess. The personal life of Anna Akhmatova was chaotic and somewhat disheveled. They cheated on her, she cheated. The first husband carried his love for Anna through his entire short life, but at the same time he had an illegitimate child, whom everyone knew about. In addition, Nikolai Gumilyov did not understand why his beloved wife, in his opinion, was not at all a brilliant poetess, causes such delight and even exaltation among young people. Anna Akhmatova's poems about love seemed to him too long and pompous.

In the end, they parted.

After parting, Anna Andreevna had no end to her fans. Count Valentin Zubov gave her armfuls of expensive roses and trembled at her mere presence, but the beauty gave preference to Nikolai Nedobrovo. However, Boris Anrepa soon replaced him.

The second marriage with Vladimir Shileiko tormented Anna so much that she dropped: “Divorce ... What a pleasant feeling it is!”

A year after the death of her first husband, she parted ways with her second. Six months later, she marries for the third time. Nikolai Punin is an art critic. But the personal life of Anna Akhmatova did not work out with him either.

Punin, Deputy Commissar of Education Lunacharsky, who sheltered the homeless Akhmatova after a divorce, did not make her happy either. The new wife lived in an apartment with Punin's ex-wife and his daughter, donating money to a common cauldron for food. The son Leo, who came from his grandmother, was placed at night in a cold corridor and felt like an orphan, forever deprived of attention.

Anna Akhmatova's personal life was supposed to change after meeting with the pathologist Garshin, but just before the wedding, he allegedly had a dream about the late mother, who begged not to take the sorceress into the house. The marriage was cancelled.

Death

The death of Anna Akhmatova on March 5, 1966 seems to have shocked everyone. Although she was already 76 years old at that time. Yes, and she was sick for a long time and hard. The poetess died in a sanatorium near Moscow in Domodedovo. On the eve of her death, she asked to bring her a New Testament, the texts of which she wanted to compare with the texts of the Qumran manuscripts.

The body of Akhmatova from Moscow hastened to be transported to Leningrad: the authorities did not want dissident unrest. She was buried at the Komarovsky cemetery. Before his death, the son and mother could not reconcile: they did not communicate for several years.

On the grave of his mother, Lev Gumilyov laid out a stone wall with a window, which was supposed to symbolize the wall in the Crosses, where she carried messages to him. At first, a wooden cross stood on the grave, as Anna Andreevna asked for. But in 1969 the cross appeared.

Monument to Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva in Odessa

The Anna Akhmatova Museum is located in St. Petersburg on Avtovskaya Street. Another one was opened in the Fountain House, where she lived for 30 years. Later, museums, memorial plaques and bas-reliefs appeared in Moscow, Tashkent, Kyiv, Odessa and many other cities where the muse lived.

Poetry

• 1912 - "Evening"
• 1914 - "Rosary"
• 1922 - The White Pack
• 1921 - "Plantain"
• 1923 - "Anno Domini MCMXXI"
• 1940 - "From six books"
• 1943 - “Anna Akhmatova. Favorites»
• 1958 - Anna Akhmatova. Poems»
• 1963 - "Requiem"
• 1965 - The Run of Time

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (in marriage she took the names of Gorenko-Gumilyov and Akhmatova-Shileiko, she bore the name Gorenko as a girl) is a Russian poetess and translator of the 20th century. Akhmatova was born on June 23, 1889 in Odessa. The future significant figure of Russian literature was born in the family of a retired mechanical engineer Andrei Gorenko and Inna Stogova, who was related to the Russian Sappho Anna Bunina. Anna Akhmatova died on March 5, 1966 at the age of 76, after spending the last days in a sanatorium in the Moscow region.

Biography

The family of the outstanding poetess of the Silver Age was revered: the head of the family was a hereditary nobleman, the mother belonged to the creative elite of Odessa. Anna was not the only child, besides her, Gorenko had five more children.

When her daughter was one year old, her parents decided to move to St. Petersburg, where her father got a good position in the State Control. The family settled in Tsarskoye Selo, the little poetess spent a lot of time in the Tsarskoye Selo Palace, visiting places where Alexander Sergeevich Pushkin had previously visited. The nanny often took the baby for walks around St. Petersburg, so Akhmatova's early memories are thoroughly saturated with the northern capital of Russia. Gorenko's children were taught from an early age, Anna learned to read the alphabet of Leo Tolstoy at the age of five, and even earlier she learned French, attending lessons for older brothers.

(Young Anna Gorenko, 1905)

Akhmatova received her education in a women's gymnasium. It was there, at the age of 11, that she began to write her first poems. Moreover, the main impetus for the creativity of the young person was not Pushkin and Lermontov, but the odes of Gabriel Derzhavin and the funny works of Nekrasov, which she heard from her mother.

When Anna was 16 years old, her parents decided to divorce. The girl was painfully worried about moving with her mother to another city - Evpatoria. Later, she admitted that she fell in love with St. Petersburg with all her heart and considered it her homeland, although she was born in another place.

After completing her studies at the gymnasium, the aspiring poetess decides to study at the Faculty of Law, but she did not stay long as a student of the Higher Women's Courses. The creative personality quickly got tired of jurisprudence and the girl moved back to St. Petersburg, continuing her studies at the Faculty of History and Literature.

In 1910, Akhmatova married Nikolai Gumilyov, whom she met in Evpatoria and corresponded for a long time during her studies. The couple got married quietly, choosing a small church in a village near Kyiv for the ceremony. The husband and wife spent their honeymoon in romantic Paris, and after returning to Russia, Gumilyov, already a famous poet, introduced his wife to the literary circles of the northern capital, acquaintances with writers, poets and writers of that time.

Just two years after marriage, Anna gives birth to a son - Lev Gumilyov. However, family happiness did not last long - after six years, in 1918, the couple filed for divorce. In the life of an extravagant and beautiful woman, new applicants for a hand and heart immediately appear - the revered Count Zubkov, the pathologist Garshin, and the art critic Punin. Akhmatova marries the poet Valentin Shileiko for the second time, but this marriage did not last long either. Three years later, she breaks off all relations with Valentine. In the same year, the first husband of the poetess, Gumilyov, was shot. Although they were divorced, Anna was greatly shocked by the news of the death of her ex-husband, she was very upset by the loss of a once close person.

Akhmatova spends her last days in a sanatorium near Moscow, suffering from severe pain. Anna was seriously ill for a long time, but her death still shook the whole country. The body of the great woman was transported from the capital to St. Petersburg, where they were buried in the local cemetery, modestly and simply: without special honors, with a wooden cross and a small stone slab.

creative way

The first publication of poems took place in 1911, a year later the first collection “Evening” was published, released in a small edition of 300 copies. The first potential of the poetess was seen in the literary and art club, where Gumilev brought his wife. The collection found its audience, so in 1914 Akhmatova published her second work, Rosary. This work brings not only satisfaction, but also fame. Critics praise the woman, raising her to the rank of a fashionable poetess, ordinary people are increasingly quoting poems, willingly buying collections. During the revolution, Anna Andreevna publishes the third book - "The White Flock", now the circulation is one thousand copies.

(Nathan Altman "Anna Akhmatova", 1914)

In the 1920s, a difficult period begins for a woman: the NKVD carefully monitors her work, poems are written “on the table”, works do not get into print. The authorities, dissatisfied with Akhmatova's free-thinking, call her creations "anti-communist" and "provocative", which literally blocks the way for a woman to freely publish books.

Only in the 30s Akhmatova began to appear more often in literary circles. Then her poem “Requiem” is published, which took more than five years, Anna is accepted into the Union of Soviet Writers. In 1940, a new collection was published - “From Six Books”. After that, several more collections appear, including "Poems" and "The Run of Time", published a year before his death.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (nee - Gorenko, after her first husband Gorenko-Gumilyov, after a divorce she took the surname Akhmatova, after her second husband Akhmatova-Shileiko, after Akhmatov's divorce). She was born on June 11 (23), 1889 in the Odessa suburb of Bolshoi Fountain - she died on March 5, 1966 in Domodedovo, Moscow Region. Russian poetess, translator and literary critic, one of the most significant figures of Russian literature of the 20th century.

Recognized as a classic of Russian poetry back in the 1920s, Akhmatova was subjected to silence, censorship and harassment (including the decision of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 1946, which was not canceled during her lifetime), many works were not published in her homeland, not only during the life of the author, but and for more than two decades after her death. At the same time, the name of Akhmatova, even during her lifetime, was surrounded by fame among admirers of poetry both in the USSR and in exile.

Three people close to her were subjected to repressions: her first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot in 1921; the third husband, Nikolai Punin, was arrested three times and died in the camp in 1953; the only son, Lev Gumilyov, spent more than 10 years in prison in the 1930s and 1940s and in the 1940s and 1950s.

Akhmatova's ancestors on her mother's side, according to family tradition, ascended to the Tatar Khan Akhmat (hence the pseudonym).

Father is a mechanical engineer in the Navy, occasionally engaged in journalism.

As a one-year-old child, Anna was transferred to Tsarskoye Selo, where she lived until the age of sixteen. Her first memories are those of Tsarskoye Selo: "The green, damp splendor of the parks, the pasture where the nanny took me, the hippodrome, where small motley horses galloped, the old station."

Every summer she spent near Sevastopol, on the shore of the Streletskaya Bay. She learned to read according to the alphabet of Leo Tolstoy. At the age of five, listening to how the teacher worked with older children, she also began to speak French. Akhmatova wrote her first poem when she was eleven years old. Anna studied at the Tsarskoye Selo Women's Gymnasium, at first badly, then much better, but always reluctantly. In Tsarskoe Selo in 1903 she met N. S. Gumilyov and became a constant recipient of his poems.

In 1905, after the divorce of her parents, she moved to Evpatoria. The last class was held at the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium in Kyiv, which she graduated in 1907.

In 1908-10 she studied at the law department of the Kyiv Higher Women's Courses. Then she attended the women's historical and literary courses of N.P. Raev in St. Petersburg (early 1910s).

In the spring of 1910, after several refusals, Akhmatova agreed to become a wife.

From 1910 to 1916 she lived with him in Tsarskoye Selo, for the summer she went to the Gumilyov estate Slepnevo in the Tver province. On her honeymoon, she made her first trip abroad, to Paris. I visited there for the second time in the spring of 1911.

In the spring of 1912, the Gumilyovs traveled around Italy; in September their son Leo () was born.

Anna Akhmatova, Nikolai Gumilyov and son Leo

In 1918, having divorced Gumilyov (in fact, the marriage broke up in 1914), Akhmatova married the Assyriologist and poet V. K. Shileiko.

Vladimir Shileiko - the second husband of Akhmatova

Writing poetry from the age of 11, and publishing from the age of 18 (the first publication in the Sirius magazine published by Gumilyov in Paris, 1907), Akhmatova first announced her experiments to an authoritative audience (Ivanov, M. A. Kuzmin) in the summer of 1910. Defending from the very the beginning of family life, spiritual independence, she makes an attempt to publish without the help of Gumilyov, in the fall of 1910 she sends poems to V. Ya. , Apollo, which, unlike Bryusov, publish them.

Upon Gumilyov's return from an African trip (March 1911), Akhmatova reads to him everything she had written during the winter and for the first time received full approval of her literary experiments. Since that time, she has become a professional writer. Released a year later, her collection "Evening" found a very quick success. In the same 1912, members of the newly formed "Shop of Poets", of which Akhmatova was elected secretary, announced the emergence of a poetic school of acmeism.

Akhmatova's life in 1913 proceeds under the sign of growing metropolitan fame: she speaks to a crowded audience at the Higher Women's (Bestuzhev) Courses, artists paint her portraits, poets turn to her with poetic messages (including Alexander Blok, which gave rise to the legend of their secret romance ). There are new, more or less long-term intimate attachments of Akhmatova to the poet and critic N. V. Nedobrovo, to the composer A. S. Lurie, and others.

In 1914 the second collection was published. "Beads"(reprinted about 10 times), which brought her all-Russian fame, gave rise to numerous imitations, approved the concept of "Akhmatov's line" in the literary mind. In the summer of 1914 Akhmatova writes a poem "By the Sea" going back to childhood experiences during summer trips to Chersonese near Sevastopol.

With the outbreak of World War I, Akhmatova severely limited her public life. At this time, she suffers from tuberculosis, a disease that did not let her go for a long time. An in-depth reading of the classics (A. S. Pushkin, E. A. Baratynsky, Rasin, etc.) affects her poetic manner, the sharply paradoxical style of cursory psychological sketches gives way to neoclassical solemn intonations. Insightful criticism guesses in her collection "White Flock"(1917) the growing "sense of personal life as a national, historical life" (B. M. Eikhenbaum).

Inspiring in her early poems the atmosphere of "mystery", the aura of autobiographical context, Akhmatova introduces free "self-expression" as a stylistic principle into high poetry. The seeming fragmentation, fragmentation, spontaneity of lyrical experience is more and more clearly subject to a strong integrating principle, which gave Vladimir Mayakovsky reason to remark: "Akhmatova's poems are monolithic and will withstand the pressure of any voice without cracking."

The first post-revolutionary years in Akhmatova's life were marked by hardships and complete estrangement from the literary environment, but in the fall of 1921, after the death of Blok, the execution of Gumilyov, she, having parted with Shileiko, returned to active work, participated in literary evenings, in the work of writers' organizations, published in periodicals. In the same year, two of her collections were published. "Plantain" and "Anno Domini. MCMXXI".

In 1922, for a decade and a half, Akhmatova joined her fate with the art critic N. N. Punin.

Anna Akhmatova and third husband Nikolai Punin

In 1924, Akhmatova's new poems were published for the last time before a long break, after which an unspoken ban was imposed on her name. Only translations appear in the press (Rubens' letters, Armenian poetry), as well as an article about Pushkin's "The Tale of the Golden Cockerel". In 1935, her son L. Gumilyov and Punin were arrested, but after a written appeal from Akhmatova to Stalin, they were released.

In 1937, the NKVD prepared materials to accuse her of counter-revolutionary activities.

In 1938, Akhmatova's son was again arrested. The experiences of these painful years clothed in verses constituted a cycle "Requiem", which she did not dare to put down on paper for two decades.

In 1939, after a half-interested remark by Stalin, the publishing authorities offered Akhmatova a number of publications. Her collection "From Six Books" (1940) was published, which included, along with the old poems that had undergone a strict censorship selection, new works that arose after many years of silence. Soon, however, the collection is subjected to ideological scrutiny and withdrawn from libraries.

In the first months of the Great Patriotic War, Akhmatova wrote poster poems (later "Oath", 1941, and "Courage", 1942 became popularly known). By order of the authorities, she is evacuated from Leningrad before the first blockade winter, she spends two and a half years in Tashkent. He writes many poems, works on "A Poem without a Hero" (1940-65), a baroque-complicated epic about the St. Petersburg 1910s.

In 1945-46, Akhmatova incurs the wrath of Stalin, who learned about the visit to her by the English historian I. Berlin. The Kremlin authorities make Akhmatova, along with M. M. Zoshchenko, the main object of party criticism. The resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad” (1946) directed against them tightened the ideological dictate and control over the Soviet intelligentsia, misled by the liberating spirit of national unity during the war. Again there was a ban on publications; an exception was made in 1950, when Akhmatova feigned loyal feelings in her poems, written for the anniversary of Stalin in a desperate attempt to alleviate the fate of her son, once again subjected to imprisonment.

In the last decade of Akhmatova's life, her poems gradually, overcoming the resistance of party bureaucrats and the timidity of editors, come to a new generation of readers.

In 1965 the final collection was published "Running Time". At the end of her days, Akhmatova was allowed to accept the Italian literary prize Etna-Taormina (1964) and an honorary doctorate from Oxford University (1965).

March 5, 1966 in Domodedovo (near Moscow) Anna Andreevna Akhmatova died. The very fact of Akhmatova's existence was a defining moment in the spiritual life of many people, and her death meant the breaking of the last living connection with a bygone era.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova was born on June 23 (11), 1889 (real name Gorenko). Akhmatova's ancestors on her mother's side, according to family tradition, ascended to the Tatar Khan Akhmat (hence the pseudonym). Father is a mechanical engineer in the Navy, occasionally engaged in journalism. As a one-year-old child, Anna was transferred to Tsarskoye Selo, where she lived until the age of sixteen. Her first memories are from Tsarskoye Selo: “The green, damp splendor of the parks, the pasture where my nanny took me, the hippodrome, where small motley horses galloped, the old station ...”

Anna Akhmatova engraving by Yu.Annenkov, 1921

Anna spent every summer near Sevastopol, on the shores of Streletskaya Bay. She learned to read according to the alphabet of Leo Tolstoy. At the age of five, listening to how the teacher worked with older children, she also began to speak French. Akhmatova wrote her first poem when she was eleven years old. Anna studied at the Tsarskoye Selo Women's Gymnasium, at first badly, then much better, but always reluctantly. In Tsarskoe Selo in 1903 she met N. S. Gumilyov and became a constant recipient of his poems. In 1905, after the divorce of her parents, Anna moved with her mother to Evpatoria. The last class was held at the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium in Kyiv, which she graduated in 1907. In 1908-10 she studied at the law department of the Kyiv Higher Women's Courses. Then she attended the women's historical and literary courses of N.P. Raev in St. Petersburg (early 1910s).

In the spring of 1910, after several refusals, Anna Gorenko agreed to become the wife of N.S. Gumilyov. From 1910 to 1916 she lived with him in Tsarskoye Selo, for the summer she went to the Gumilyov estate Slepnevo in the Tver province. On her honeymoon, she made her first trip abroad, to Paris. I visited there for the second time in the spring of 1911. In the spring of 1912, the Gumilyovs traveled around Italy; in September their son Leo (L. N. Gumilyov) was born. In 1918, officially divorcing Gumilyov (in fact, the marriage broke up back in 1914), Akhmatova married the Assyriologist and poet V. K. Shileiko.

First publications. First collections. Success.

Writing poetry from the age of 11, and publishing from the age of 18 (the first publication in the Sirius magazine published by Gumilyov in Paris, 1907), Akhmatova first announced her experiments to an authoritative audience (Ivanov, M. A. Kuzmin) in the summer of 1910. Defending spiritual independence from the very beginning of family life, she makes an attempt to publish without the help of Gumilyov. In the fall of 1910, Akhmatova sent her poems to V. Ya. Bryusov in Russkaya Mysl, asking if she should study poetry. Having received a negative answer, he submits poems to the magazines Gaudeamus, Vseobshchei Zhurnal, Apollo, which, unlike Bryusov, publish them. Upon Gumilyov's return from an African trip (March 1911), Akhmatova reads to him everything she had composed during the winter and for the first time received full approval of her literary experiments. Since that time, she has become a professional writer. Released a year later, her collection "Evening" found a very quick success. In the same year, 1912, members of the newly formed Poets Workshop, of which Akhmatova was elected secretary, announced the emergence of a poetic school of acmeism. Akhmatova's life proceeds under the sign of growing metropolitan fame: she speaks to a crowded audience at the Higher Women's (Bestuzhev) Courses, artists paint her portraits, poets turn to her with poetic messages (including A.A. Blok, which gave rise to the legend of their secret romance ). There are new, more or less long-term intimate attachments of Akhmatova to the poet and critic N. V. Nedobrovo, to the composer A. S. Lurie, and others.

In 1914, the second collection "Rosary" was published, which was reprinted about 10 times. This collection brought her all-Russian fame, gave rise to numerous imitations, affirming the concept of “Akhmatov’s line” in the literary mind. In the summer of 1914, Akhmatova wrote the poem "By the Sea", which goes back to childhood experiences during summer trips to Chersonese near Sevastopol.

"White Flock"

With the outbreak of World War I, Akhmatova severely limited her public life. At this time, she suffers from tuberculosis. An in-depth reading of the classics (A. S. Pushkin, E. A. Baratynsky, Rasin, and others) affects her poetic manner: the sharply paradoxical style of cursory psychological sketches gives way to neoclassical solemn intonations. Insightful criticism guesses in her new collection The White Flock (1917) the growing "sense of personal life as a national, historical life" (B. M. Eikhenbaum). Inspiring in her early poems the atmosphere of "mystery", the aura of autobiographical context, Akhmatova introduces free "self-expression" as a stylistic principle into high poetry. The apparent fragmentation, dissonance, spontaneity of lyrical experience is more and more clearly subject to a strong integrating principle, which gave V.V.

Post-revolutionary years

The first post-revolutionary years in Akhmatova's life were marked by deprivation and complete estrangement from the literary environment. Only in the autumn of 1921, after the death of Blok and the execution of Gumilyov, did she part with Shileiko and return to active work: she participates in literary evenings, in the work of writers' organizations, and publishes in periodicals. In the same year, two of her collections "Plantain" and "Anno Domini. MCMXXI". In 1922, for a decade and a half, Akhmatova joined her fate with the art critic N. N. Punin.

From 1923 to 1935, Akhmatova almost did not write poetry. Since 1924, they stopped printing it - persecution in criticism begins, unwittingly provoked by K. Chukovsky's article “Two Russias. Akhmatova and Mayakovsky. During the years of forced silence, Akhmatova was engaged in translations, studied the works and life of A.S. Pushkin, the architecture of St. Petersburg. She owns outstanding research in the field of Pushkin studies (“Pushkin and the Neva Seaside”, “The Death of Pushkin”, etc.). For many years, Pushkin becomes for Akhmatova salvation and refuge from the horrors of history, the personification of the moral norm, harmony.

With the mid-1920s, Akhmatova associated a fundamental change in her "handwriting" and "voice".

"Requiem"

In 1935, Akhmatova's son L. Gumilyov and her husband N. Punin were arrested. Akhmatova rushed to Moscow, to Mikhail Bulgakov, who was tacitly considered in literary circles to be a "specialist" on Stalin. Bulgakov read Akhmatova's letter to the Kremlin and, on reflection, gave advice: don't use a typewriter. Akhmatova rewrote the text by hand, having little faith in success. But it worked! Without any explanation, the two arrested were released within a week.

However, in 1937, the NKVD was preparing materials to accuse the poetess herself of counter-revolutionary activities. In 1938, Lev Gumilyov was again arrested. The experiences of these painful years clothed in verses made up the Requiem cycle, which for two decades Akhmatova did not even dare to fix on paper. The facts of a personal biography in the "Requiem" acquired the grandeur of biblical scenes, Russia in the 1930s was likened to Dante's hell, Christ was mentioned among the victims of terror, herself, "three hundredth with a transmission", Akhmatova called "the archer's wife."

In 1939, the name of A. Akhmatova was unexpectedly returned to literature. At a reception in honor of the awarding of writers, Comrade Stalin asked about Akhmatova, whose poems his daughter Svetlana loved: “Where is Akhmatova? Why doesn't he write anything? Akhmatova was immediately admitted to the Writers' Union, publishing houses became interested in her. In 1940 (after a 17-year break), her collection “From Six Books” was published, which Akhmatova herself called, not without irony, “a gift from dad to daughter.”

War. Evacuation

The war found Akhmatova in Leningrad. Together with her neighbors, she dug cracks in the Sheremetyevsky Garden, was on duty at the gates of the Fountain House, painted the beams in the attic of the palace with refractory lime, and saw the “burial” of statues in the Summer Garden. The impressions of the first days of the war and the blockade were reflected in the poems "The first long-range in Leningrad", "The birds of death are at their zenith ...".

At the end of September 1941, by order of Stalin, Akhmatova was evacuated outside the blockade ring. Turning in fateful days to the people tortured by him with the words "Brothers and sisters ...", the leader understood that patriotism, deep spirituality and courage of Akhmatova would be useful to Russia in the war against fascism. Akhmatova's poem "Courage" was published in Pravda and then reprinted many times, becoming a symbol of resistance and fearlessness.

A. Akhmatova spends two and a half years in Tashkent. He writes many poems, works on "A Poem Without a Hero" (1940-65). In 1943, Anna Andreevna was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad". And after the war, in the spring of 1946, she was awarded an invitation to a gala evening in honor of the anniversary of the great Victory. When the disgraced poetess suddenly regally stepped onto the stage of the columned hall of the House of the Unions as the former queen of poetry, the hall stood up, arranging an ovation that lasted 15 (!) minutes. So it was customary to honor only one person in the country ...

Decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks of 1946

Soon, Akhmatova incurs the wrath of Stalin, who learned about the visit to her by the English writer and philosopher I. Berlin, and even in the company of W. Churchill's grandson. The Kremlin authorities make Akhmatova, along with M. M. Zoshchenko, the main object of party criticism. The decree of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks directed against them “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad” (1946) tightened the ideological dictate and control over the Soviet intelligentsia, misled by the liberating spirit of national unity during the war.

September 1946, Akhmatova herself called the fourth "clinical famine": expelled from the Writers' Union, she was deprived of ration cards. A listening device was installed in her room, and searches were repeatedly conducted. The decree was included in the school curriculum, and several generations of Soviet people, while still at school, learned that Akhmatova was “neither a nun, nor a harlot.” In 1949, Lev Gumilyov, who went through the war and reached Berlin, was again arrested. To rescue her son from Stalin's torture chamber, Akhmatova grimaced: she wrote a cycle of poems praising Stalin, Glory to the World (1950). She expressed her true attitude towards the dictator in a poem:

Stalin did not accept Akhmatova's sacrifice: Lev Gumilyov was released only in 1956, and the ex-husband of the poetess N. Punin, also arrested a second time, died in Stalin's camps.

Last years. "Running Time"

The last years of Akhmatova's life, after Stalin's death and her son's return from prison, were relatively prosperous. Akhmatova, who never had her own shelter and wrote all her poems “on the edge of the windowsill,” finally got a place to live. There was an opportunity to publish a large collection "The Run of Time", which included Akhmatova's poems for half a century. Akhmatova is nominated for the Nobel Prize.

In 1964, she received the prestigious Etna-Taormina award in Italy, and in 1965 in England, an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.

For twenty-two years, Akhmatova worked on the final work - "A Poem without a Hero." The poem led to 1913 - to the origins of Russian and world tragedy, drew a line under the catastrophes of the twentieth century. In the poem, Akhmatova reflects on the retribution that has overtaken Russia and looks for the cause in the fateful year 1914, in that mystical sensuality, the tavern frenzy into which the artistic intelligentsia, people of its circle, plunged. The magic of coincidences, "roll calls", dates has always been felt by Akhmatova as the basis of poetry, as a mystery that lies at its source. According to one of these significant coincidences, Akhmatova died on the anniversary of Stalin's death - March 5, 1966. The death of Akhmatova in Domodedovo near Moscow, her funeral in Leningrad and her funeral in the village of Komarovo caused numerous responses in Russia and abroad.

The very fact of Akhmatova's existence was a defining moment in the spiritual life of many people, and her death meant the breaking of the last living connection with a bygone era.