Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova (in; * June 23rd 1889 - † March 5th 1966) is the pen name of Anna Andreïevna Gorenko (in), one of most important the poetess S Russian of the 20th century. Égérie of the acmeists, called the “queen of the Neva” or “the Heart of the Age of Money”, Anna Akhmatova remains today still one of the greatest female figures of the Russian literature.

The work of Akhmatova is composed small lyric poems as well, kind which it contributes to renew, which great poetic compositions, like Requiem , its dark masterpiece on Stalinist terror. The recurrent themes of its work are the time which passes, the memories, the destiny of the creative woman and the difficulties to live and write in the shade of the Stalinisme.

Biography

Youth

Akhmatova was born in Bolchoï Fontan, close to Odessa, third of the six children of a father engineer of marine. As of 1890 the family settles with Tsarskoïe Selo where Anna remains until the 16 years age. She grows in an easy medium, very early learns French with Tsarskoïe Selo. She writes poetry as of the 11 years age, inspired by her favorite poets: Root, Evguéni Baratynski and Pouchkine. His/her father fearing for the reputation of his patronym, it takes the pseudonym of Akhmatova name of origin Tatar of his grandmother.

After the separation of his/her parents in 1905, it lives with his/her mother and his/her brothers and sisters then undertakes studies of right in a school for girls of the good company to Kiev. During its studies, it meets the poet Nikolaï Goumilev whom it ends up marrying in 1910, after he made him an assiduous court. The couple passes its honeymoon to Paris after which Nicolaï forsakes his young wife to travel in Africa. During two years, Anna travels in north from Italy and in Paris, where it meets Modigliani amongst other things - its drawings of the poetess since became famous - and assists with the first successes of the round of the Russian Ballets in Western Europe. Of these voyages, it will remain deeply marked by the architecture of Italy. Of its marriage with Goumilev it will have a son, Lev Goumilev which will become one of most important Russian historians the, initiator of the neo-eurasism.

The “money Age”

Akhmatova, Ossip Mandelstam and Goumilev, which created the movement, become the organizers of the Acméisme, breaking with the symbolism, privileging simplicity and the concision in the language and are joined soon by other authors. Contrary to the esoteric meetings of the Symbolists, the meetings of the acméïstes resemble seminars more where to test, inter alia, of novel methods of writing. In addition to at Pouchkine, Anna Akhmatova draws its inspiration at Innokenti Annensky, a precursor of the acmeism, at Verlaine or the young person Vladimir Maïakovski. After having begun again studies of Literature to Saint-Pétersbourg, it publishes his first collects entitled the Evening in 1912 which is a great success. Before the following collection, the Rosary , does not appear in 1914 thousands of women had started to compose of the poems to the manner of Anna Akhmatova . Its first works describe usually a man and a woman implied in the most intense moments and most ambiguous of their reports/ratios. Such parts were imitated much and parodied later by Vladimir Nabokov and others. This success pushed Akhmatova to be exclaimed: “I learned with our wives how to speak but cannot how make them conceal”.

She binds friendship, sometimes more, with many artists of the time, such Alexandre Blok, Boris Anep,… Its aristocratic manners and its artistic rigor made it appreciate within the circle of the acmeists who honor it with the titles of “Queen of Neva” and “Heart of the Silver plated Age”, name under which will be known this period in the history of Russian poetry. Several decades later, Anna will remember this blessed period of its life in longest of its work, the Poésie without hero (1940-65), inspired by the Eugene Onéguine of Pouchkine.

Black years

The following collection White Crowd appears in 1917 but its diffusion suffers from the events of the time. In 1918, it divorces Goumilev for remarier the assyriologist Vladimir Chileïko from which it will separate in 1921, then the historian and critic art Nikolaï Pounine. She will refuse by after the proposals for a union of Boris Pasternak. The new authorities considering its work socially too not very relevant , Akhmatova is condemned like middle-class element and its prohibited poetry of publication as of 1922 and for more than thirty years. Akhmatova earns its living with difficulty by translating Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore or Leopardi and by publishing tests, including some brilliant tests on Pouchkine in specialized magazines. Nevertheless, its works will never cease circulating under the coat.

Nikolaï Goumilev, which had never made mystery of sound Anti-communisme, is stopped by the Tcheka under pretext which he was monarchist, in what constitutes, for many historians, the first business assembled of any part by the secret services of the Soviets. He will be shot in August 1921. All the friends and close to Akhmatova which did not emigrate are repressed, off-set or carried out. Nikolaï Pounine will be stopped in 1935 and will die in the Stalinist camps in 1953. His/her son will be him stopped for the first time and deportee in 1938. Akhmatova will always refuse to emigrate, considering that it would be a treason towards its language and its culture.

The patriotic Great War makes it possible to see its works again published: in 1940 it becomes member of the Union of the Soviet writers and its poetries appear monthly in the Zvezda review. She testifies to the Siège of Leningrad. Its poem Courage will be published in 1942 with the one of the Pravda. But, as of the end of the conflict, victim of the artistic Jdanovisme , it is erased Union of the writers as of 1946 for erotism, mysticism and political indifference and does not manage any more to publish officially. About it Jdanov wrote that it was " a nun or a whore, or rather at the same time a nun and a whore who Marie indecency with the prière".

However its poetries will never cease being diffused in a clandestine way by the word of mount and in the Samizdat S. Some poetries with the glory of Stalin appear in the weekly magazine Ogonyok in the Fifties, which were made up to gain the release for his/her son, exiled in Siberia. Lev, which fought in the air force during the war, indeed was again stopped in 1949 and was condemned to 15 years of forced labor. It will be released in 1956.

The slow rehabilitation

After the death of Stalin, Akhmatova will be slowly rehabilitated and will reappear gradually on the Soviet literary scene. At this point in time it continues the composition of its most important works, Poèmes without hero and Requiem , of works in the homage of the victims of Stalinist terror. A censured edition of its work is published which makes obviously the dead end on Requiem . When the poet Robert Frost the visit in his Datcha in 1962 it writes: I had all - poverty, the ways towards the prisons, the fear, the poems only selected by heart, and the poems flarings. And humiliation, and pains it. And you do not know anything on this subject and did not can include/understand it if I told it to you… . In 1964 it is authorized to leave the USSR to receive a price of poetry of Taormina and it is made doctor honoris causa University of Oxford. Its datcha of Komarovo is attended by Joseph Brodsky and other young poets.

Two years before its death, at the 75 years age, it is named with the presidency of the Union of the writers. Died with Domodedovo close to Moscow in 1966, it will not see the integral publication of a work published in 1986 in Moscow.

Work

The recent work most complete in French is the special issue of the Review of the Humanities " Anna Akhmatova" , Geneva, Zoe Editions, 1996; 1-3. The book contains new translations of 70 poems, two studies of Akhmatova on Pouchkine, the studies on Anna Akhmatova and its contemporaries (Pasternak, Ossip Mandelstam, Marina Tsvetaiéva), on Akhmatova and Modigliani, Akhmatova and Isaiah Berlin, Akhmatova and the Russian Formalisme etc

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