Akhmatova: Poems

by Anna Akhmatova, D.M. Thomas (Translator), Peter Washington (Editor)

A legend in her own time both for her brilliant poetry and for her resistance to oppression, Anna Akhmatova--denounced by the Soviet regime for her "eroticism, mysticism, and political indifference"--is one of the greatest Russian poets of the twentieth century.
Before the revolution, Akhmatova was a wildly popular young poet who lived a bohemian life. She was one of the leaders of a movement of poets whose ideal was "beautiful clarity"--in her deeply personal work, themes of love and mourning are conveyed with passionate intensity and economy, her voice by turns tender and fierce. A vocal critic of Stalinism, she saw her work banned for many years and was expelled from the Writers' Union--condemned as "half nun, half harlot." Despite this censorship, her reputation continued to flourish underground, and she is still among Russia's most beloved poets.

Here are poems from all her major works--including the magnificent "Requiem" commemorating the victims of Stalin's terror--and some that have been newly translated for this edition.

Genres: Poetry, Russia, Russian Literature, Classics, 20th Century, Literature, Poetry Plays

256 pages, Hardcover

First published May 16, 2006

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

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anguished and stunning. I’ll include one example for brevity’s sake, but there are many in this collections that made me catch my breath.


Northern Elegies – The Fifth (1944)

I, like a river,
Have been turned aside by this harsh age.
I am a substitute. My life has flowed
Into another channel
And I do not recognize my shores.
O, how many fine sights I have missed,
How many curtains have risen without me
And fallen too. How many of my friends
I have not met even once in my life,
How many city skylines
Could have drawn tears from my eyes,
I who know only the one city
And by touch, in my sleep, I could find it ...
And how many poems I have not written,
Whose secret chorus swirls around my head
And possibly one day
Will stifle me ...
I know the beginnings and the ends of things,
And life after the end, and something
It isn’t necessary to remember now.
And another woman has usurped
The place that ought to have been mine,
And bears my rightful name,
Leaving me a nickname, with which I’ve done,
I like to think, all that was possible.
But I, alas, won’t lie in my own grave.

But sometimes a madcap air in spring,
Or a combination of words in a chance book
Or somebody’s smile, suddenly
Draws me into that non-existent life.
In such a year would such have taken place,
Something else in another: travelling, seeing,
Thinking, remembering, entering a new love
Like entering a mirror, with a dull sense
Of treason, and a wrinkle that only yesterday
Was absent ...
But if, from that life, I could step aside,
And see my life such as it is, today,
Then at last I’d know what envy means ...

[William2 · Rating 4 out of 5]

D.M. Thomas's translations are surprisingly lyrical. There is the sense, so deftly is the prosody handled, that some of these were written in English. One is filled with awe at times. It's the earlier poems I prefer to the later serious ones, which tend to be be a slog. I think this volume, which contains the stirring "Requiem," is an excellent place to start for those curious about Akhmatova's poetry. Highly recommended.

[Atri · Rating 5 out of 5]

A post-revolutionary poet who witnessed both the World Wars, and was persecuted by the Stalinist regime, Anna Akhmatova is perhaps the most lyrical and brilliant voice amongst her contemporary Russian compatriots (Pasternak, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva). She has transcended her harsh and tragic reality (her husband was shot, and her son was incarcerated, while she endured exile, destitution and penury) by identifying with a country decaying in the throes of a brutal authoritarian regime. The poignant aestheticism juxtaposed with the subtle allusions to heinous atrocities express both her seething condemnation and her persistent attempts to come to terms with a remorseless fate that has taken away everything from her, except her puissant sublime words.

"...Time I confessed
At least to one crime: I write
In invisible ink, and light
Breaks only when it's reflected
In a glass. Since I am bereft
All others, from this one road left
I shall not quickly be deflected."

(from 'Poem without a Hero')

[Arden · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

anna akhmatova is, in my humble opinion, one of the greatest poets of all time. there is no one who can capture the slant of a feeling quite like her. the range this collection exhibits is exceptional, from early lighter poems to the late serious and historical masterpieces. my personal favourite is requiem, which may seem a simplistic choice until you read it and are wowed in turn by the poet's mastery and understanding of the time she lived in. this is my third collection of akhmatova's, so perhaps it is time to branch out to her contemporaries, but i cannot help but hold a continued candle for a woman with such a gift for language. if i've ever wanted to learn russian, it's to understand what these poems are truly like, her writing without an intermediary. the lyrical approach akhmatova takes to nature and politics alike is a source of joy and inspiration for me.

[Lizzie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Haunting and cold and devastating. "I was gay, and bold, and wicked/And never knew I was happy" (pg. 51).

It's been over a month since I finished this collection, and what remains most strongly are the moments of intense emotion, captured and preserved in one or two line images: "And street bonfires blazing red/Like roses in snow are flowering" (p. 67). Akhmatova's life was hard, beyond my experience, and I feel it when she cries, "There is a frontier-line in human closeness/That love and passion cannot violate-...Those striving towards it are demented, and/If the line seem close enough to broach-/Stricken with sadness... Now you understand/Why my heart does not beat beneath your touch" (p. 72). Of all her poems of loss, I was wrecked by Lot's Wife:

And the just man trailed God's messenger,
His huge, light shape devoured the black hill.
But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:
'It's not too late, you can look back still

At the red towers of Sodom, the place that bore you,
The square in which you sang, the spinning-shed,
At the empty windows of that upper storey
Where children blessed your happy marriage-bed.'

Her eyes that were still turning when a bolt
Of pain shot through them, were instantly blind;
Her body turned into transparent salt,
And her swift legs were rooted to the ground.

Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
She who gave up her life to steal one glance (p. 105)

When reading this poem I was reminded most strongly of Ghayath al-Madhoun's The Celebration, and his line, "put your dreams in the shed, and give the plants on the balcony plenty of water/for the discussion with iron may go on for a while." It's the loss of all small, good things, civilization, in the fighting and the flight. "Like the high power/Of purest sound, Separation, you're/Homeward-bound. Familiar buildings/Look out from death at us- And there are still things/A hundred times worse/For me to face than all/I faced, that other time... Through my crucified capital/I'm going home" (p. 127)

Lot's Woman is also a much translated poem, and it is here that I wonder if D.M. Thomas's efforts are among the best. Judith Hemschemeyer's version, missing a stanza, still flows with a rhythm lost in Thomas's version:

And the righteous man followed the envoy of God,
Huge and bright, over the black mountain.
But anguish spoke loudly to his wife:
It is not too late, you can still gaze

At the red towers of your native Sodom,
At the square where you sang, at the courtyard where you spun,
At the empty windows of the tall house
Where you bore children to your beloved husband. . . .

Who will weep for this woman?
Isn't her death the least significant?
But my heart will never forget the one
Who gave her life for a single glance.

Then again, I infinitely prefer the crux of the poem in Thomas's mouth: "Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?" Ignorant of Russian, I am unable to judge beyond the effect in English.

Of course, the crowning poems of this or any Akhmatova collection are Requiem and Poem Without a Hero. They are bare and prophetic, as promised:

I should like to call you all by name,
But they have lost the lists...

I have woven for them a great shroud
Out of the poor words I overheard them speak.

I remember them always and everywhere,
And if they shut my tormented mouth,

Through which a hundred million of my people cry,
Let them remember me also...

And if ever in this country they should want
To build me a monument

I consent to the honour,
But only on condition that they

Erect it not on the sea-shore where I was born:
My last links there were broken long ago,

Nor by the stump in the Royal Gardens,
Where an inconsolable young shade is seeking me,

But here, where I stood for three hundred hours
And where they never, never opened the doors for me (p. 193-4).

[Nick Black]

love Akhmatova in the scattered fragments i've stumbled upon. this will, i think, be my Poetry Volume for the Year 2011.

[Ostap Bender · Rating 4 out of 5]

I first became aware of poet Anna Akhmatova from portraits of her in the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, one painted by Nathan Altman in 1914, the other by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin in 1922. At once fashionable and striking, the first captures her at 25 in her ascent, having travelled to Paris a few years earlier, famously meeting Modigliani and forming quite a relationship with him, and having already published two volume of poetry (‘Evening’ and ‘Rosary’). The second, three volumes of poetry and eight years later, was made a year after her first husband Nikolay Gumilev had been rounded up with 61 others and shot. It reflects the grim sobriety of an intellectual whose world is about to crumble, but even it doesn’t anticipate just how difficult it will be over the coming decades – her poetry banned by Stalin, watching friends sent off to the gulags and being executed, and standing outside a prison for hundreds of hours, pleading on her son’s behalf after he too was jailed. ‘Requiem’, a longer poem from 1957 about that experience, is a tour-de-force, reflecting a mother’s grief, an intellectual’s anger, and beautiful poetic moments:

“Gently flows the gentle Don,
Yellow moonlight leaps the sill,

Leaps the sill and stops aston-
ished as it sees the shade

Of a woman lying ill,
Of a woman stretched alone.

Son in irons and husband clay.
Pray. Pray.”

…and my understanding those last two lines are nearly impossible to translate from the original. Akhmatova would also live through the siege of Leningrad in WWII and great poverty. Her poetry being memorized in bits and pieces by close friends because she wasn’t allowed to write it is a real-life Fahrenheit 451, and her story of perseverance and strength through this oppression is truly inspiring.

This collection includes poems spanning her entire life, and while there are certainly common themes, her range is broad – from her direct, approachable style (most of which I quote below, out of practicality), to her elegies and avant-garde symbolic works (e.g. ‘Poem Without a Hero’). Through it all, while clearly haunted, she endures.

A few samples…

Untitled (1910)
I share my room with
A slow black snake;
It’s like me, just as lazy,
Just as cold.

In the evening I make up
Marvellous stories, on the rug
By the fire’s glow. Its emerald
Eyes gaze at me indifferently.

At night the dead, mute icons hear
Moans of resistance … It’s true
I’d take my desires elsewhere
Were it not for the serpent eyes.

In the morning I’m compliant again,
I melt like a slender candle;
Then from my bare shoulder
A black strap slides.


Untitled (1915)
There is a frontier-line in human closeness
That love and passion cannot violate –
Though in silence mouth to mouth be soldered
And passionate devotion cleave the heart.

Here friendship, too, is powerless, and years
Of that sublime and fiery happiness
When the free soul has broken clear
From the slow languor of voluptuousness.

Those striving towards it are demented, and
If the line seem close enough to broach –
Stricken with sadness … Now you understand
Why my heart does not beat beneath your touch.


Untitled (1940)
Some walk in a straight line,
Others in circles,
Waiting to return home, hoping
Their sweethearts have waited.
But I walk neither straight ahead
Nor aslant,
But to nowhere and never,
Like a derailed train.


In Dream (1946)
Black and enduring separation
I share equally with you.
Why weep? Give me your hand,
Promise me you will come again.
You and I are like high
Mountains and we can’t move closer.
Just send me word
At midnight sometime through the stars.

[Rebecca · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some excerpts for your pleasure:
"The mignonette smells of water,
Apple-tang clings to love,
But we were always taught that
Blood smells only of blood."

"Some gaze into tender faces,
Others drink until morning light,
But all night I hold conversations
With my conscience who is always right."

"The pillow hot
On both sides,
The second candle
Dying, the ravens
Crying. Haven't
Slept all night, too late
To dream of sleep...
How unbearably white
The blind on the white window.
Good morning, morning!"

I think I preferred her earlier poems, full of imagery. Later, after much suffering the poems collected here are more ambitious, longer, full of allusions and obsessed with death and the passage of time. She should be more well known.

[Caroline Pralin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ахма́това is a mountain oolong - grown in the cold wind whipped heavens stretching for the light of all things french, lovers and occasionally justice. I drank her poems without sugar, but sweetened the bitterness they left in my mouth by reading the epilogue provided. There are countless mirrors and doubles and twins in this collection, but less explanations and practically no comfort. I love the brutality and nightmarish mirrors, but I can't penetrate the icy tar that coats the portraits (mirrors?) and smell Ахма́това's skin.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

So depressingly beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. I couldn't help but look up the history on her life. So beautiful. I wish I could read it in the original language though, although the translation was beautiful. Did I say it was beautiful?

[Andrea Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

To have finally had the chance to learn of Anna Akmatova and read her poetry is to be transported to another time and place. Poetry is a journey with reverence for inspiration and interpretation of the soul. Akamatova a brave woman who wrote with passion and determination.

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a great poet. Loved this book very much.

[Alleytia Bennett · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible imagery, insight into Russian history and culture. A fascinating poet with a tumultuous mind.

[Hala · Rating 5 out of 5]

She is out of the world.. Loved it

[Jared Pechacek · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful, bleak, and painful.

[Deb (Readerbuzz) Nance · Rating 4 out of 5]

Browsed.

[vinnie · Rating 5 out of 5]

November 1961 (in delirium)

[Nick Carney · Rating 4 out of 5]

Did not read everything in this collection. Nor am I qualified to say what good poetry is. However I found "Requiem" particularly moving. Definitely check it out, it is a quick read!

[Emily Taylor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kept picking this one up & putting it back down. Note to self to read more translations at some point

[tortoise dreams · Rating 5 out of 5]

A valuable collection of poetry covering the whole writing life of the great Russian poet, Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966).

Poetry Review: Anna Akhmatova is a perfect introduction to a poet too unfamiliar in the West. This Everyman's Library Pocket Poets edition, translated by D.M. Thomas, helps rectify the oversight of a writer who lost many creative years when her work was banned by the Stalin regime. Anna Akhmatova's writing reflects the course of modern Russian history. Known as a St. Petersburg poet, she lived and wrote from the time of the tsars until after the death of Stalin. She began as a leader of the Acmeists, a Russian movement that, similar to the Imagists, was devoted to simple, direct, clear, and exact writing, opposed to the convolutions of the earlier Symbolists. Even her later writing is usually concise and pointed. Her work is known for its lyricism and her popular early poems told of love's sorrows: "How unbearably white/the blind on the white window." For her, love consisted of both passion and suffering, parting, leading to anger and then to loneliness and despair. "An autumn whisper between the maples/Kept urging 'die with me'." But pain could find some comfort in a confessional sort of religion, flesh balanced by spirit. "... a red maple leaf/marks the pages of the Song of Songs." A patriot in the truest sense of the word, she refused to emigrate despite her dissent from the Revolution, government disapproval (her works banned, her husband shot, her son sent to labor camps), and the hardship of the Second World War. After publishing mostly lyrical love poetry from 1912 to 1922, she was unable to publish until 1940. She then wrote poems in solidarity with London and Paris after they were attacked. But the poems of this later period primarily reflected her country's pain and tragedy during the war (she was one of those besieged in Leningrad before being evacuated) in poems that were dark and despairing, but demonstrated her fervent love of country by promoting sacrifice and extolling the martyrs of the war. "We've all had to learn not to sleep for three years./In the morning we shall find out/Who has died in the night." Her earlier poems, however, led to Akhmatova being famously condemned as "a nun and a harlot" by a government official in 1946. After this attack, her work was again suppressed until 1958. "The glass doorbell rings/shrilly ... Is today really the date? ... Don't let it be me." In her final period she could examine the years and losses during the Stalinist era. Akhmatova reflected on the tragedies perpetrated by the government and Russian experience and history during her lifetime and 60-year writing career (beginning in 1907), as in her famous works Requiem, which addressed the sadness and suffering mixed with steadfast hope, but always outraged by the injustice of the Stalinist era; and Poem Without a Hero, a historical epic of the times. There is a short but helpful "Notes" section at the end, yet for non-Russians there is so much we'll miss and fail to understand. My one small complaint is that translating a foreign language into rhyme well seems impossible to me. Other than that, this volume has much to appreciate. There's almost too much; the palette is so broad the book requires rereading the rereading. The Everyman's Library edition is variously titled Akhmatova (on the cover), Akhmatova Poems (on the title page), and Anna Akhmatova Poems (on page 11). Whatever, it is a perfect gift and fits easily in any backpack or purse. [5★]

[Janna · Rating 5 out of 5]

absolutely stunning book of poetry. I included some that really stood out to me below. Most of the poems don’t have titles so for those I just put my favorite line of the poem below:

- Legend of an unfinished portrait (pg.29)

- “When they've read my grievous story,/ May they smile behind their desklids./ If I can't have love, if I can't find peace,/ Give me a bitter glory.” (pg. 29)

- “All is for you: the daily prayer,/ The sleepless heat at night,/ And of my verses, the white/ Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.” (Forgot to record page number)

- “Westward the sun is dropping,/ And the roofs of towns are shining in its light./ Already death is chalking doors with crosses/ And calling the ravens and the ravens are in flight.” (pg. 90)

- “Your tender voice even more ringing.../ Only your serene brow/ Has taken from time's wing/ A scattering of snow.” (pg.100)

- “There I shall become forever blessed,/ There my burning eyelids will find rest,/ And I'll regain a gift I've lost - to weep.” (pg. 110)

- Willow (pg. 120)

- “When a man dies/ His portraits change./ His eyes look at you/ Differently and his lips smile/ A different smile.” (pg.122)

- In the forest the trees vote (pg. 139)

- “The souls of those I love are on high stars./ How good that there is no-one left to lose/ And one can weep.” (pg. 146).

- In Dream (pg. 149)

- “And that heart no longer answers/ To my voice of honey and tar./ Everything is over ... and my song wanders/ Into the empty night, where you no longer are.” (pg. 152)

- Last Rose (pg. 174)

- To Death (pg. 189)

- “For one moment of peace here/ I would give up the grave's peace.” (pg. 205)

[K.m. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speaking as one of a generation of people living under the weight of the fear, violence, loss and want of two world wars and part of a generation of artists and thinkers oppressed, imprisoned, arrested, exiled, censored and executed by their government, Akhmatova's words are weighty. She grieves and remembers and prays in verse. Writing circumspectly (sometimes), to dodge censorship, Akhmatova's personal tragedies speak more broadly. The translator's commentary was helpful, and thankfully separate from Akhmatova's words.

'They wiped your slate/ With snow, you're not alive./ Bayonets twenty-eight/ And bullet-holes five./ It's a bitter present,/ Love, but I've sewed it./ Russia, an old peasant/ Killing his meat.'
(Presumably about her husband, who was executed as a counterrevolutionary)

[Ariadna73 · Rating 4 out of 5]

So beautiful and sad! The poem I liked the most was that about the women that are waiting in line in front of a prison, wanting to see their husbands, sons, brothers, who are incarcerated for various reasons related to war. The beauty of the images and the sadness of the feelings brought tears to my eyes.




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[Justine · Rating 5 out of 5]

"I, like a river,
Have been turned aside by this harsh age.
I am a substitute. My life has flowed
Into another channel
And I do not recognize my shores."
- the fifth

I read these poems on my lunch break the last few days. I had a period in high school when I was obsessed with pre and post revolutionary Russia literature and bumped into akhmatova as pure accident. Her poems changed my life as a high schooler I will never stop appreciating how damn brave and outspoken this woman was.

[Jules · Rating 4 out of 5]

Akhmatova's voice cries out from her poems. In "Requiem" we can feel her pain of waiting, the existential lines, the brutality of Stalin's Russia. Her earlier work is equally elegiac, in "By the Seashore" for instance. There is a mastery and command of voice in this, authenticity, anguish and sadness that cannot seem to be lifted from out the shadow of her work.

[Benjamin Wallace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Anna Akhmatova was such a wonderous and powerful poet. She wholly contained a capacity to capture love, delirium, and utter horrors into moments of creation that reflect our hearts and souls perfectly.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

pretty and cold

[Matt Woodle · Rating 5 out of 5]

Akhmatova made me believe in the beauty of poetry. She also made me believe that you could write an entire story, an entire universe even, in about fourteen words or less. She's brilliant!

[Tanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautiful!

[Irwan · Rating 4 out of 5]

This little book of compilation gives a broad sweeping take of Akhmatova's work. I like it. Would love to read more of hers.