Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova

by Anna Akhmatova, Judith Hemschemeyer (Translator), Roberta Reeder (Editor)

A companion to The Complete Poems, this collection offers in a bilingual format some of the Russian poet’s most intense and lyrical moments, while retaining a preface by Roberta Reeder and accompanying notes for Judith Hemschemeyer’s translations. "We needn’t worry again about how to read Akhmatova in translation."—The Observer (London) "In this restrained and accurate translation ... the sense and message strike with all the weight of the original." —New York Times Book Review

Judith Hemschemeyer began translating Akhmatova in 1976. She is a professor at the University of Central Florida, and has published several books of poetry and translations. Roberta Reeder has taught at Harvard and Yale and is the author of Akhmatova’s biography, Anna Akhmatova: Poet & Prophet.

Also available by Anna Akhmatova
The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova
PB $29.00, 0-939010-27-5 • CUSA

A companion to The Complete Poems, this collection offers some of the Russian poet's most intense and lyrical moments in bilingual format, while retaining a preface by Roberta Reeder and accompanying notes for Judith Hemschemeyer's translations. "We needn't worry again about how to read Akhmatova in translation." -The Observer (London) "In this restrained and accurate translation ... the sense and message strike with all the weight of the original." -New York Times Book Review

Genres: Poetry, Russian Literature, Russia

289 pages, Paperback

Published October 1, 2000

About the author

also known as: Анна Ахматова

Personal themes characterize lyrical beauty of noted work of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko; the Soviet government banned her books between 1946 and 1958.

People credit this modernist of the most acclaimed writers in the canon.

Her writing ranges from short lyrics to universalized, ingeniously structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935-40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her work addresses a variety of themes including time and memory, the fate of creative women, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism. She has been widely translated into many languages, and is one of the best-known Russian poets of 20th century.

In 1910, she married the poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian.

Nikolay Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for activities considered anti-Soviet; Akhmatova then married a prominent Assyriologist Vladimir Shilejko, and then an art scholar, Nikolay Punin, who died in the Stalinist Gulag camps. After that, she spurned several proposals from the married poet, Boris Pasternak.

After 1922, Akhmatova was condemned as a bourgeois element, and from 1925 to 1940, her poetry was banned from publication. She earned her living by translating Leopardi and publishing essays, including some brilliant essays on Pushkin, in scholarly periodicals. All of her friends either emigrated or were repressed.

Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however. Akhmatova died at the age of 76 in St. Peterburg. She was interred at Komarovo Cemetery.

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

Reviews

[Noel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Sentence

And the stone word fell
On my still-living breast.
Never mind, I was ready.
I will manage somehow.

Today I have so much to do:
I must kill memory once and for all,
I must turn my soul to stone,
I must learn to live again —

Unless … Summer’s ardent rustling
Is like a festival outside my window.
For a long time I’ve foreseen this
Brilliant day, deserted house.

* * *

Her first husband was executed. Her son was imprisoned for more than a decade in Siberian prison camps. Her third husband died in prison. She herself survived in large part because she was so popular the regime was careful not to attack her directly. Every scrap of paper having a possibility of being used as evidence, Anna Akhmatova and her friends would learn her poems by heart before burning them in an ashtray.

Knowing this, for me, only deepened the effect of seeing her poems evolve from brief (but very well-wrought) love-lyrics to much longer and more complex grief-cycles with a fascinating constellation of images. It’s very sad. But her determination to stay and bear witness to the terrible events overtaking her country, and be a steady light—could there be anything more inspiring? I think she was a living testament to the power of words—even in a time when they weren’t enough.


Portrait of Anna Akhmatova, by Yuri Annenkov.

[Lucy · Rating 5 out of 5]

REQUIEM
No, not under the vault of alien skies,
And not under the shelter of alien wings--
I was with my people then,
There, where my people, unfortunately, were.

INSTEAD OF A PREFACE
In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months in the prison lines of Leningrad. Once, someone "recognized" me. Then a woman with bluish lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard me called by name before, woke up from the stupor to which everyone had succumbed and whispered in my ear (everyone spoke in whispers then):
"Can you describe this"
And I answered, "Yes, I can."
Then something that looked like a smile passed over what had once been her face. (131)

[Ted · Rating 4 out of 5]

And when in suicidal anguish
The nation awaited its German guests,
And the stern spirit of Byzantium
Had fled from the Russian Church,
When the capital by the Neva,
Forgetting her greatness,
Like a drunken prostitute
Did not know who would take her next,
A voice came to me. It called out comfortingly,
It said, "Come here,
Leave your deaf and sinful land,
Leave Russia forever.
I will wash the blood from your hands,
Root out the black shame from your heart,
With a new name I will conceal
The pain of defeats and injuries."
But calmly and indifferently,
I covered my ears with my hands,
So that my sorrowing spirit
Would not be stained by those shameful words.

Autumn 1917

[VERTIGO dizzy]

equally harrowing and beautiful read, a modernist Dickinson who survived into postwar russia. i enjoy reading short collections like this so i could ‘taste’ as many authors so that i could to see which ones i should delve in more deeply, and she is one of those poets that i will definitely have to continue discovering. also i will briefly note, her writing is of one of those rare poets who writes so simply in language, and is simultaneously able to convey the ‘deepest’ feelings and ideas. i find it so incredibly admirable partly because that is what i try to do with my own writings.

🌀🌀🌀

We are all carousers and loose women here;
How unhappy we are together!
The flowers and birds on the wall
Yearn for the clouds.

You are smoking a black pipe,
The puff of smoke has a funny shape.
I've put on my tight skirt
To make myself look still more svelte.

The windows are sealed tight.
What's out there — hoarfrost or a storm?
You gaze with the eyes
Of a cautious cat.

Oh, I am sick at heart!
Isn't it the hour of death I await?
But that woman dancing now
Will be in hell, no doubt.

January 1, 1913

🌀🌀🌀

— to M. Lozinsky

It drags on forever — this heavy, amber day!
How unsufferable is grief, how futile the wait!
And once more comes the silver voice of the deer
From the menagerie, telling of the northern lights.
And I, too, believed that somewhere there was cold snow,
And a bright blue font for the poor and the ill,
And the unsteady dash of little sleighs
Under the ancient droning of distant bells.

1913

🌀🌀🌀

— to M. Lozinsky

They are flying, they are still on their way,
The words of love and release.
I feel that uneasiness that comes before a poem,
And my lips are cold as ice.

But there, where a few scraggly birches
Cling to the windows and rustle dryly —
A dark red wreath of roses twines
And the voices of invisible speakers resound.

And farther on — a light unbearably lavish,
Like hot red wine ...
Already a fragrant, burning wind
Sears my consciousness.

Summer 1916
Slepnyovo

🌀🌀🌀

N. V. N.

There is a sacred boundary between those who are close
And it cannot be crossed by passion or love —
Though lips fuse in dreadful silence
And the heart shatters to pieces with love.

Friendship is helpless here, and years
Of exalted and ardent happiness,
When the soul is free and a stranger
To the slow languor of voluptuousness.

Those who strive to reach it are mad, and those
Who reach it — stricken by grief ...
Now you understand why my heart
Does not beat faster under your hand.

May 1915
Petersburg

🌀🌀🌀

The twenty-first. Night. Monday.
The outlines of the capital are in mist.
Some idler invented the idea
That there's something in the world called love.

And from laziness or boredom,
Everyone believed it and here is how they live:
They anticipate meetings, they fear partings
And they sing the songs of love.

But the secret will be revealed to the others,
And a hush will fall on them all ...
I stumbled on it by accident
And since then have been somehow unwell.

1917
Petersburg

🌀🌀🌀

from REQUIEM

V

For seventeen months I've been crying out,
Calling you home.
I flung myself at the hangman's feet,
You are my son and my horror.
Everything is confused forever,
And it's not clear to me
Who is a beast now, who is a man,
And how long before the execution.
And there are only dusty flowers,
And the chinking of the censer, and tracks
From somewhere to nowhere.
And staring me straight in the eyes,
And threatening impending death,
Is an enormous star.

1939


EPILOGUE I

I learned how faces fall,
How terror darts from under eyelids,
How suffering traces lines
Of stiff cuneiform on cheeks,
How locks of ashen-blonde or black
Turn silver suddenly,
Smiles fade on submissive lips
And fear trembles in a dry laugh.
And I pray not for myself alone,
But for all those who stood there with me
In cruel cold, and in July's heat,
At that blind, red wall.

🌀🌀🌀


CREATION

It happens like this: a kind of languor;
A ceaseless striking of a clock is heard;
Far off, a dying peal of thunder.
I somehow sense the groaning and the sorrows
Of unrecognized, imprisoned voices,
A kind of secret circle narrows;
But in the abyss of whispers and ringing
Rises one triumphant sound
Such an absolute silence surrounds it
That one can hear the grass growing in the woods,
How misfortune with a knapsack plods the earth ...
But now words are beginning to be heard
And the signaling chimes of light rhymes —
Then I begin to comprehend,
And the simply dictated lines
Lie down in place on the snow-white page.

November 5, 1936
Fountain House

🌀🌀🌀

from CINQUE

5

We hadn't breathed the poppies' somnolence,
And we ourselves don't know our sin.
What was in our stars
That destined us for sorrow?
And what kind of hellish brew
Did the January darkness bring us?
And what kind of invisible glow
Drove us out of our minds before dawn?

January 11, 1946

🌀🌀🌀

from NORTHERN ELEGIES

FOURTH

The last key — is the cold key of oblivion.
It gives sweeter satisfaction than all the ardors of the heart.
-Pushkin

There are three ages to memories,
And the first — is like just yesterday.
The soul is under their blissful arch,
And the body basks in their blissful shade.
Laughter has not yet died, tears flow,
The ink blot on the desk has not faded —
And, like a seal on the heart, the kiss,
Unique, valedictory, unforgettable ...
But this does not long endure ...
Already there is no arch overhead, but somewhere
In a remote suburb, a solitary house,
Where it is cold in winter, hot in summer,
Where there are spiders, and dust on everything,
Where ardent letters are decomposing,
Portraits are stealthily changing.
People walk to this house as if to their grave,
And wash their hands with soap when they return,
And blink away a facile tear
From weary eyes — and breathe out heavy sighs ...
But the clock ticks, one springtime is superseded
By another, the sky glows pink,
Names of cities change
And there are no remaining witnesses to the events,
And no one to weep with, no one to remember with.
And slowly the shades withdraw from us,
Shades we no longer call back,
Whose return would be too terrible for us.
And waking one morning we realize that we have forgotten
Even the path to that solitary house,
And, choking with anger and shame,
We run there, but (as it happens in dreams),
Everything has changed: the people, the objects, the walls,
And nobody knows us — we are strangers.
We don't find ourselves there ... My God!
And then it is that bitterness wells up:
We realize that we couldn't have fit
That past into the boundaries of our life,
And that it is almost as foreign to us
As to our next-door neighbor,
That those who died we wouldn't recognize,
And those from whom God separated us
Got along perfectly well without us — and even
That everything turned out for the best ...

February 5, 1945


FIFTH

ABOUT THE 1910'S

You — the conqueror of life, And I - your unfettered friend.
-N. Gumilyov

And there was no rosy childhood ...
Freckles and toy bears and curls,
And doting aunts and scary uncles, or even
Friends among the river pebbles.
I myself, from the very beginning,
Seemed to myself like someone's dream or delirium,
Or a reflection in someone else's mirror,
Without flesh, without meaning, without a name.
Already I knew the list of crimes
That I was destined to commit.
And so, wandering like a somnambulist,
I stepped into life and startled it:
It stretched before me like the meadow
Where once Proserpina strolled.
Before me, who was without family, unskilled,
Doors unexpectedly opened
And people streamed out and exclaimed:
"She came, she herself came!"
But I looked at them in astonishment
And I thought: "They must be mad!"
And the more they praised me,
The more people admired me,
The more frightful it was to live in the world,
And the more I yearned to awaken,
For I knew that I would pay dearly
In prison, in the grave, in the madhouse,
Wherever someone like me must awaken -
But the torture dragged on as good fortune.

July 4, 1955
Moscow


SEVENTH

And I have been silent, silent for thirty years.
The silence of arctic ice
Stands through innumerable nights,
Closing in to snuff out my candle.
The dead are silent like this, but that's understandable
And not as horrible....

My silence can be heard everywhere.
It fills the courtroom,
And it could have drowned out
The roar of rumor, and like a miracle
It puts its stamp on everything.
It is part of everything. O God!
Who could have thought up such a role for me?
Allow me for a moment, O Lord,
To begin to become a little bit like someone else.

And could it be I haven't drunk hemlock?
So why didn't I die
As I should have — then and there?

No, not to the one who is searching for these books,
Who stole them, who even bound them,
Who carries them around like secret chains,
Who memorized every syllable

No, not to that one does my dream fly,
And not to that one will I give my blessing,
But only to the one who dared
To hoist my silence on a banner,
Who lived with it, and who believed in it,
Who took the measure of this pitch-dark, bottomless pit

My silence is in music and in song
And in somebody's loathsome love,
In parting, in books ...
In what is least known
In the world.

I myself am sometimes afraid of it,
When with all its weight
It presses on me, breathing and drawing close:
There is no defense, or rather — there is nothing.
Who knows how it turned to stone.
You can imagine how it scorched my heart
And with what kind of fire. Whose concern is it?
Everyone feels so comfortable and accustomed to it.
All of you agree to share it,
Nevertheless it is always mine

It is deforming my fate,
It almost devoured my soul,
But I will break it some day
To summon death to the whipping post.

1958-1964
Leningrad

🌀🌀🌀

... And the deserts of mute squares, Where people were executed before dawn.
-I. Annensky

Everyone left and no one returned,
Only, true to the promise of love,
My latest, at least you looked back
To see the whole sky in blood.
The house was cursed, and cursed was my trade;
Uselessly, a tender song rang out
And I didn't dare raise my eyes
To my terrible fate.
They defiled the immaculate Word,
They trampled the sacred utterance,
So that with the sicknurses of Thirty-Seven
I could mop the bloody floor.
They separated me from my only son,
They tortured my friends in prisons,
They surrounded me with an invisible stockade
Of well coordinated shadowing
They rewarded me with a muteness
That curses the whole cursed world,
They force-fed me with scandal,
They made me drink poison.
And taking me to the very edge,
For some reason they left me there.
I would rather, as one of the city's "crazies,"
Be wandering through the dying squares.

End of the 40's

🌀🌀🌀

CREATION

... it says:
I remember everything simultaneously;
Like the distant beam of a distant lighthouse,
I carry the universe before me
Like an easy burden in an outstretched palm,
And in the depths, mysteriously growing, is the seed
Of what is to come ...

November 14, 1959
Leningrad

[Liliana Valenzuela · Rating 1 out of 5]

I had high hopes for this book, but unfortunately the translation didn't live up to them. I assume it's the rather prosaic translation of these verses that is to fault, as I know she's a well regarded poet in Russian. I wonder which is a better translation. Marian?

[Linds Roberts · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really like this edition--a poet translated these poems into English and managed to maintain the flow that (I imagine) they have in the original Russian.
This version also has the poems in Russian on the opposite page--someday I hope to read them in the original!

[Rachel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Nostalgic, gloomy, and reflective are the poems of Akhmatova. I especially liked this edition because it included the Russian. Akhmatova is pretty much Russia's most famous female poet, and not without reason.

[Zack]

totally worth reading. i usually don't like "selected works" but this collection seemed really cohesive to me

[Sasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not the ultimate translation, but--it's Akhmatova.

[Chloe · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars. Poetry, as opposed to prose, is a huge hit or miss for me. Sometimes I can read a poem 6 times over and know that it affects me, whether I understand it or not; other times I can read a poem 12 times and never extract any meaning. I was curious to read Anna Akhmatova after hearing so much historical praise for her. I liked a few of her poems, in general found her pleasing to read, but I think translated poetry is tricky. Rhythm and meaning are sacrificed, which left a few of these selected poems dull and obscure for me. I had a few favorites, including "Requiem", "Northern Elegies", and a few others I will list here, but was disappointed that "Poem Without a Hero" was absent from this collection. I guess I'll have to seek that one out on my own.

"Native Land"

But there is no people on earth more tearless,
More simple and more full of price.

We don't wear her on our breast in cherished amulets,
We don't, with wrenching sobs, write verse about her,
She does not disturb our bitter sleep,
Nor seem to us the promised paradise.
We have not made her, in our souls,
An object to be bought or sold.
Suffering, sick, wandering over her,
We don't even remember her.

Yes, for us it's the mud on galoshes,
Yes, for us it's the grit on our teeth.
And we grind, and we knead, and we crumble
This clean dust.

But we lie in her and we become her,
And because of that we freely call her – ours.
1961
Leningrad
The hospital in the harbor

"The Last Toast"

I drink to the ruined house,
To the evil of my life,
To our shared loneliness
And I drink to you –
To the lie of lips that betrayed me,
To the deadly coldness of the eyes,
To the fact that the world is cruel and depraved,
To the fact that God did not save."
June 27, 1934

"Voronezh"
O. M.

And the whole town is encased in ice,
Trees, walls, snow, as if under glass.
Timidly, I walk on crystals,
Gaily painted sleds skid.
And over the Peter of Voronezh – crows,
Poplar trees, and the dome, light green,
Faded, dulled, in sunny haze,
And the battle of Kulikovo blows from the slopes
Of the mighty, victorious land.
And the poplars, like cups clashed together,
Roar over us, stronger and stronger,
As if our joy were toasted by
A thousand guests at a wedding feast.

But in the room of the poet in disgrace,
Fear and the Muse keep watch by turns.
And the night comes on
That knows no dawn.
March 4, 1936

[Untitled]

Terror, fingering things in the dark,
Leads the moonbeam to an ax.
Behind the wall there's an ominous knock –
What's there, a ghost, a thief, rats?

In the sweltering kitchen, water drips,
Counting the rickety floorboards.
Someone with a glossy black beard
flashes by the attic window –

And becomes still. How cunning he is and evil,
He hid the matches and blew out the candle.
How much better would be the gleam of the barrels
Of rifles leveled at my breast.

Better, in the grassy square,
To be flattened on the raw wood scaffold
And, amid cries of joy and moans,
Pour out my life's blood there.

I press the smooth cross to my heart:
God, restore peace to my soul.
The odor of decay, sickeningly sweet,
Rises from the clammy sheets.
August 27-28, 1921
Tsarskoye Selo

[treva · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a nice edition with lots of information, both her fascinating biography in preface and the detailed context for each poem in footnotes. And, of course, the lovely translations. Akhmatova has been one of my favorites for many years now, and that is definitely due in large part to Hemschemeyer's skillful translation.

I don't know how anyone has ever survived any era in Russia. At all.