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Стихов моих белая стая
«... Творческая судьба Анны Ахматовой сложилась так, что только пять ее поэтических книг – „Вечер“ (1912), „Четки“ (1914), „Белая стая“ (1917), „Подорожник“ (1921) и „Anno Domini“ (в двух редакциях 1921-го и 1922—1923 гг.) составлены ею самой. В течение последующих двух лет ахматовские стихи изредка еще появлялись в периодике, но в 1925-м, после очередного Идеологического Совещания, на котором, по выражению самой Анны Андреевны, она была приговорена к „гражданской смерти“, ее перестали печатать. <...> В настоящее издание включены тексты первых пяти книг Анны Ахматовой, в той редакции и в том порядке, в каком они впервые увидели свет. Первые четыре сборника – „Вечер“, „Четки“, „Белая стая“ и „Подорожник“ публикуются по первому изданию, „Anno Domini“ – по второму, более полному, берлинскому, отпечатанному в октябре 1922-го, но вышедшему с пометкой: 1923. ...»
156 pages, Paperback
First published July 30, 2013
36 people are currently reading
383 people want to read
About the author
Anna Akhmatova
429 books954 followersalso 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.
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.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
July 26, 2017
“And it’s not because I’m tortured
Or by some delirium swayed
That I conjure up misfortune:
It is just my trade.”
And she is really good at it. A brief review would be - Akhmatova rocks but here are a few of my favorite poems (a few, there are several more I copied):
"In closeness, there’s a sacred line
That love and passion cannot cross, -
Let lips in silence merge sublime
And hearts explode from passion’s force.
Both friendship’s powerless and years
Of fiery bliss without rancor,
When spirit’s free and never nears
Dull sensuality’s slow languor.
The ones who seek it - gaze awry,
The ones who’ve found it - lament…
By now, you’ve guessed the reason why
My heart won’t beat under your hand."
******
"The evening sky is gold and vast.
I’m soothed by April’s cool caress.
You’re late. Too many years have passed, -
I’m glad to see you, nonetheless.
Come closer, sit here by my side,
Be gentle with me, treat me kind:
This old blue notebook – look inside –
I wrote these poems as a child.
Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you."
***
"I was born neither early nor late,
This only blessed time was fleeting.
Only God did not grant, I’m afraid,
My heart to live without cheating.
Hence the parlor is all dark inside,
And the friends that I’ve always held close,
As though sorrowful birds of the night,
Sing of love that, alas, never was."
And this one is my favorite:
"Like a white stone at the bottom of the well,
One recollection lies inside of me.
I can’t and do not want to fight its spell:
For me it’s both – my joy and agony.
It seems to me that anyone will sense it
While gazing at my eyes with disbelief
And instantly become more sad and pensive,
While harking to the tale full of grief.
I’ve heard about gods who would endeavor
To turn men into objects with a mind,
To make these wondrous sorrows last forever.
You’ve turned into this memory of mine."
Or by some delirium swayed
That I conjure up misfortune:
It is just my trade.”
And she is really good at it. A brief review would be - Akhmatova rocks but here are a few of my favorite poems (a few, there are several more I copied):
"In closeness, there’s a sacred line
That love and passion cannot cross, -
Let lips in silence merge sublime
And hearts explode from passion’s force.
Both friendship’s powerless and years
Of fiery bliss without rancor,
When spirit’s free and never nears
Dull sensuality’s slow languor.
The ones who seek it - gaze awry,
The ones who’ve found it - lament…
By now, you’ve guessed the reason why
My heart won’t beat under your hand."
******
"The evening sky is gold and vast.
I’m soothed by April’s cool caress.
You’re late. Too many years have passed, -
I’m glad to see you, nonetheless.
Come closer, sit here by my side,
Be gentle with me, treat me kind:
This old blue notebook – look inside –
I wrote these poems as a child.
Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you."
***
"I was born neither early nor late,
This only blessed time was fleeting.
Only God did not grant, I’m afraid,
My heart to live without cheating.
Hence the parlor is all dark inside,
And the friends that I’ve always held close,
As though sorrowful birds of the night,
Sing of love that, alas, never was."
And this one is my favorite:
"Like a white stone at the bottom of the well,
One recollection lies inside of me.
I can’t and do not want to fight its spell:
For me it’s both – my joy and agony.
It seems to me that anyone will sense it
While gazing at my eyes with disbelief
And instantly become more sad and pensive,
While harking to the tale full of grief.
I’ve heard about gods who would endeavor
To turn men into objects with a mind,
To make these wondrous sorrows last forever.
You’ve turned into this memory of mine."
January 24, 2021
“Everything is for you: My daily prayer
And the thrilling fever of the insomniac,
And the blue fire of my eyes,
And my poems, that white flock.”
I am in the process of reading The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, whose work spanned much of the twentieth century, creating both an intimate portrait of her own life and loves and a kind of anguished history of her beloved Russia, where she remains herself beloved. Her work ranges from a kind of formal lyrical approach in her love poetry and in contrast, more direct emotional poetry about the great world wars that were in part fought on Russian soil, and the reign of Stalinist terror.
“Let me bestow upon the world
Something more imperishable than love.”
The poems in this, her third volume, both precede and encompass her experiences with the first World War. During this time she was married to poet Nikolay Gumilyov, divorcing in 1917, and so poems in the collection feature the separations and demise and divorce from him, and also her love of other men--Nikolay Nedoboro, Boris Anrep-- as Gumilyov was often gone from Russia, though he was also unfaithful to her.
“Memory of love, you are painful!”
“Those unkissed lips, unsmiling eyes
Will never return to me.”
“Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you.”
But the anguish here in this still popular volume is not just about lost love but also captures the dread and gloom of the early days of the war and what it did to her and the Russian people.
On August 1, 1914, Russia was at war, and:
“We aged a hundred years
And this happened in a single hour.”
“Warm red liquid sprinkled the trampled fields.”
“I no longer smile.
A freezing wind chills my lips,
One less hope becomes one more song.”
“The sunless, gloomy gardens
And barely audible, the Muse’s voice.”
She prays that “the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”
In this collection lyrical images reflect emotional states, the battle of love, the battle of war:
“But there, where a few scraggly birches
Cling to the windows and rustle dryly--
A dark read wreath of roses twines"
Here's a whole poem:
In Memoriam, July 19, 1914
but this time translated by Stephen Edgar
We aged a hundred years and this descended
In just one hour, as at a stroke.
The summer had been brief and now was ended;
The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.
The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring
Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.
And so I covered up my face, imploring
God to destroy me before battle fell.
And from my memory the shadows vanished
Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need.
The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished—
A book of portents terrible to read.
And the thrilling fever of the insomniac,
And the blue fire of my eyes,
And my poems, that white flock.”
I am in the process of reading The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, whose work spanned much of the twentieth century, creating both an intimate portrait of her own life and loves and a kind of anguished history of her beloved Russia, where she remains herself beloved. Her work ranges from a kind of formal lyrical approach in her love poetry and in contrast, more direct emotional poetry about the great world wars that were in part fought on Russian soil, and the reign of Stalinist terror.
“Let me bestow upon the world
Something more imperishable than love.”
The poems in this, her third volume, both precede and encompass her experiences with the first World War. During this time she was married to poet Nikolay Gumilyov, divorcing in 1917, and so poems in the collection feature the separations and demise and divorce from him, and also her love of other men--Nikolay Nedoboro, Boris Anrep-- as Gumilyov was often gone from Russia, though he was also unfaithful to her.
“Memory of love, you are painful!”
“Those unkissed lips, unsmiling eyes
Will never return to me.”
“Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you.”
But the anguish here in this still popular volume is not just about lost love but also captures the dread and gloom of the early days of the war and what it did to her and the Russian people.
On August 1, 1914, Russia was at war, and:
“We aged a hundred years
And this happened in a single hour.”
“Warm red liquid sprinkled the trampled fields.”
“I no longer smile.
A freezing wind chills my lips,
One less hope becomes one more song.”
“The sunless, gloomy gardens
And barely audible, the Muse’s voice.”
She prays that “the stormcloud over darkened Russia
Might become a cloud of glorious rays.”
In this collection lyrical images reflect emotional states, the battle of love, the battle of war:
“But there, where a few scraggly birches
Cling to the windows and rustle dryly--
A dark read wreath of roses twines"
Here's a whole poem:
In Memoriam, July 19, 1914
but this time translated by Stephen Edgar
We aged a hundred years and this descended
In just one hour, as at a stroke.
The summer had been brief and now was ended;
The body of the ploughed plains lay in smoke.
The hushed road burst in colors then, a soaring
Lament rose, ringing silver like a bell.
And so I covered up my face, imploring
God to destroy me before battle fell.
And from my memory the shadows vanished
Of songs and passions—burdens I'd not need.
The Almighty bade it be—with all else banished—
A book of portents terrible to read.
March 7, 2017
A volume of brief poems, written just before or during the First World War. It is noticeable that the tone of much of the book is darker than earlier work by this author. Death creeps into the usual themes of love, longing and loss.
A solid 3/5
My favourite poems below.
The sweet smell of juniper flies
From the evergreen woods burning down
Soldier boys are bemoaned by their wives
And the cries of the widows resound
Not for nothing the prayers were said
Arid earth was thirsty for rain
And the warm red liquid was spread
All throughout the trampled plain
The empty sky only grows heavier
And the prayer is hushed and composed
“They have wounded your body, Saviour
And they’re casting lots for your clothes”
_________________________________
You won’t hear from him any longer
No more letters to save
In the fire-embraced, doleful Poland
You won’t find his grave
Let your soul grow calm and composed
No more loss in this war
He’s a warrior now in God’s host
Don’t despair any more
Know, its sinful to mourn him today
In the comfort of home
He’s a patron to whom you can pray
And he’s one of your own
_________________________________
Your spirit by your arrogance obscured
Won’t let you see the sunlight in the world
You say our faith is but a dream’s allure
This capital – a mere mirage of old
You say – my country’s sinful, all the same
And I say your country’s simply godless
And even though we still share in the blame
It’s all fixable and redeemable regardless
There’s water and there’s flowers all around you
Why knock upon the sinful beggar’s door?
I know which heavy sickness always hounds you
You long for death, but fear it all the more
______________________________
Its funny how you never knew what my name was,
Our only contact was a form for the election.
These days I find that you don't listen,
These days I find that we're out of touch,
These days I find that I'm too busy,
So why the attention now you want my assistance -
What have you done for me.
You've gone and got yourself in trouble,
Now you want me to help you out.
These days I find that I can't be bothered,
These days I find that its all too much,
To pick up a gun and shoot a stranger,
But I've got no choice so here I come - war games.
I'm up on the hills, playing little boy soldiers,
Reconnaissance duty up at 5:30.
Shoot shoot shoot and kill the natives,
You're one of us and we love you for that.
Think of honour, Queen and country,
You're a blessed son of the British Empire,
God's on our side and so is Washington.
Come out on the hills with the little boy soldiers.
Come on outside - I'll sing you a lullaby,
Or tell a tale of how goodness prevailed.
We ruled the world - we killed and robbed,
The fucking lot - but we don't feel bad.
It was done beneath the flag of democracy,
You'll believe and I do - yes I do - yes I do -
yes I do -
These days I find that I can't be bothered,
To argue with them well what's the point,
Better to take your shots and drop down dead,
then they send you home in a pine overcoat
With a letter to your mum
Saying find enclosed one son - one medal and a note -
to say he won.
A solid 3/5
My favourite poems below.
The sweet smell of juniper flies
From the evergreen woods burning down
Soldier boys are bemoaned by their wives
And the cries of the widows resound
Not for nothing the prayers were said
Arid earth was thirsty for rain
And the warm red liquid was spread
All throughout the trampled plain
The empty sky only grows heavier
And the prayer is hushed and composed
“They have wounded your body, Saviour
And they’re casting lots for your clothes”
_________________________________
You won’t hear from him any longer
No more letters to save
In the fire-embraced, doleful Poland
You won’t find his grave
Let your soul grow calm and composed
No more loss in this war
He’s a warrior now in God’s host
Don’t despair any more
Know, its sinful to mourn him today
In the comfort of home
He’s a patron to whom you can pray
And he’s one of your own
_________________________________
Your spirit by your arrogance obscured
Won’t let you see the sunlight in the world
You say our faith is but a dream’s allure
This capital – a mere mirage of old
You say – my country’s sinful, all the same
And I say your country’s simply godless
And even though we still share in the blame
It’s all fixable and redeemable regardless
There’s water and there’s flowers all around you
Why knock upon the sinful beggar’s door?
I know which heavy sickness always hounds you
You long for death, but fear it all the more
______________________________
Its funny how you never knew what my name was,
Our only contact was a form for the election.
These days I find that you don't listen,
These days I find that we're out of touch,
These days I find that I'm too busy,
So why the attention now you want my assistance -
What have you done for me.
You've gone and got yourself in trouble,
Now you want me to help you out.
These days I find that I can't be bothered,
These days I find that its all too much,
To pick up a gun and shoot a stranger,
But I've got no choice so here I come - war games.
I'm up on the hills, playing little boy soldiers,
Reconnaissance duty up at 5:30.
Shoot shoot shoot and kill the natives,
You're one of us and we love you for that.
Think of honour, Queen and country,
You're a blessed son of the British Empire,
God's on our side and so is Washington.
Come out on the hills with the little boy soldiers.
Come on outside - I'll sing you a lullaby,
Or tell a tale of how goodness prevailed.
We ruled the world - we killed and robbed,
The fucking lot - but we don't feel bad.
It was done beneath the flag of democracy,
You'll believe and I do - yes I do - yes I do -
yes I do -
These days I find that I can't be bothered,
To argue with them well what's the point,
Better to take your shots and drop down dead,
then they send you home in a pine overcoat
With a letter to your mum
Saying find enclosed one son - one medal and a note -
to say he won.
September 1, 2016
You touched my chest and then withdrew,
Like poets touched the lyre once,
To hear a gentle meek response
To the demanding “I love you!”
You have no need for eyes of mine,
Prophetic and devoutly fixed.
But you catch poems, line by line,
The prayer of my haughty lips.
Like poets touched the lyre once,
To hear a gentle meek response
To the demanding “I love you!”
You have no need for eyes of mine,
Prophetic and devoutly fixed.
But you catch poems, line by line,
The prayer of my haughty lips.
April 7, 2017
Ah, Russian literature. I think you might just be my favorite. I've been brooding over Akhmatova for months now, ever since I read "You will hear thunder and remember me / And think: she wanted storms." I bought this collection on a whim. It's her third and my first.
If I could throw White Flock at them, I would. (I'm looking at you, Pierce Brown. This is what I want from you! I know you can do it!)
I like dystopian fiction, and this collection would check all the boxes of what I want if only it weren't painfully, depressingly real. The oft-quoted critique of Akhmatova is that her work is "controlled terror." This isn't the poetry that she wrote during the Stalin regime. I can only imagine how dark that poetry will be. I shivered while reading this collection.
However, the Cyrillic on the facing pages kept pulling my attention, like a mystery. I've never wanted to read a language so badly in my life. What secrets are still there? What did Kneller miss?
Footnotes or an introduction to just White Flock would have been welcome.
I tried and begged her to braveI often lament that authors today don't do enough to evoke a distinct atmosphere. They don't consistently provide fitting imagery. They don't immerse me in their world.
The winter and not to leave.
She only replied: "It's a grave.
How can you even breathe?"
(23)
If I could throw White Flock at them, I would. (I'm looking at you, Pierce Brown. This is what I want from you! I know you can do it!)
I like dystopian fiction, and this collection would check all the boxes of what I want if only it weren't painfully, depressingly real. The oft-quoted critique of Akhmatova is that her work is "controlled terror." This isn't the poetry that she wrote during the Stalin regime. I can only imagine how dark that poetry will be. I shivered while reading this collection.
I only sow. The othersNot being fluent in Russian and not being able to read Cyrillic, I'm sure Andrey Kneller, the translator, did an excellent job. He writes, "[Translations] must retain as much semblance to the original as possible." I respect that.
Will come to reap.
(9)
However, the Cyrillic on the facing pages kept pulling my attention, like a mystery. I've never wanted to read a language so badly in my life. What secrets are still there? What did Kneller miss?
Footnotes or an introduction to just White Flock would have been welcome.
It had to be some idler who contrived
The happy fantasy that love exists.
(173)
June 4, 2017
Reading Akhmatova is a beautiful, tragic experience.
Her poetry bruises you, lightly, and it mends you with an equally mild zest.
You don't look for hidden deeper meanings in her poetry. Or maybe you do, I don't know. I didn't. It's simple, it rhymes and sounds great in translation (Thank you, Andrey Kneller). It portrays in rhythm the horror of the war but it also gives you glimpses of hope, the hope that people everywhere had clung to at that time, that which they had to derive from the smallest of things.
.
"And I recall the garden, autumnal, calm and gentle, The crying cranes, and fields, all black against the blue…
The world was so delightful, when I was still with you"
.
I hope to continue reading this legendary woman; the desolate face of hope in the time of utmost hardship.
This collection, called 'White Flock' was published in 1917. The poems it contains have been written over a span of 5 years, from 1913-17.
Her poetry bruises you, lightly, and it mends you with an equally mild zest.
You don't look for hidden deeper meanings in her poetry. Or maybe you do, I don't know. I didn't. It's simple, it rhymes and sounds great in translation (Thank you, Andrey Kneller). It portrays in rhythm the horror of the war but it also gives you glimpses of hope, the hope that people everywhere had clung to at that time, that which they had to derive from the smallest of things.
.
"And I recall the garden, autumnal, calm and gentle, The crying cranes, and fields, all black against the blue…
The world was so delightful, when I was still with you"
.
I hope to continue reading this legendary woman; the desolate face of hope in the time of utmost hardship.
This collection, called 'White Flock' was published in 1917. The poems it contains have been written over a span of 5 years, from 1913-17.
February 1, 2016
The -2 or -1 stars are more for the translation which I definitely think is a difficult job, but still...
I found the poems from section IV to be the best.
A particular one from there...
The evening sky is gold and vast.
I’m soothed by April’s cool caress.
You’re late. Too many years have passed, -
I’m glad to see you, nonetheless.
Come closer, sit here by my side,
Be gentle with me, treat me kind:
This old blue notebook – look inside –
I wrote these poems as a child.
Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you.
I found the poems from section IV to be the best.
A particular one from there...
The evening sky is gold and vast.
I’m soothed by April’s cool caress.
You’re late. Too many years have passed, -
I’m glad to see you, nonetheless.
Come closer, sit here by my side,
Be gentle with me, treat me kind:
This old blue notebook – look inside –
I wrote these poems as a child.
Forgive me that I felt forsaken,
That grief and angst was all I knew.
Forgive me that I kept mistaking
Too many other men for you.
January 28, 2016
To make these wondrous sorrows last forever.
You’ve turned into this memory of mine.
You’ve turned into this memory of mine.
September 18, 2014
(This book was given to me by the translator, Andrey Kneller, in exchange for a review of my thoughts)
Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is intimidating to review. Her work has such gravity that any attempted encapsulation would fail. White Flock is one of her early collections, published in 1917 and so tightly focused on themes of love and the Muse that at first glance it feels removed from the enormous tragedy of the First World War. Only on first glance. There is in fact a strong somberness at work here that enjoins you to read between the lines and find evidence of a world gone wrong, while as the collection progresses, references to the war become more regular.
May Snow
A see-through shroud now disperses
And melts unnoticed on the sod.
The spring, so very cold and merciless,
Is killing off each swelling bud.
So frightful of the early death,
That I can’t look at God’s creation.
I feel the grief King David left, -
Millenniums of desolation.
1916
Andrey Kneller is an independent translator and he self-published this bilingual edition of Akhmatova in 2013. It’s a little bit hard for me to comment on his role in White Flock without familiarizing myself with earlier translations (I have only read the Kunitz/Hayward selections prior to this) but he clearly cares a great deal for the text and I found it pleasing to read, though not as impressive as her later works. A large number of the poems (one of the challenges inherent in this review is in her near-complete dispensing with titles – I can’t refer to poems but can only quote them) speak from the vantage point of a woman within whom love has ceased to be requited. An unassailable personage. "Without love, I’m more at ease, I’m sure/The sky is high, the mountain wind is sweeping/And all my thoughts are innocent and pure."
We’re immediately in the ostensibly personal but icily aloof landscapes similarly mapped out by Polish poet Anna Swir, but where Swir’s retreat from the world seemed savage and ironic, Akhmatova projects a deep-seated calm, reserved in the midst of guilts and regrets. In one poem she gives forgiveness to a sick man and he concludes by saying “It’s good that you forgave,/You were not always so nice.” She makes no effort in her writing to seem “nice” – whether affectionate or austere, she stands strong and fortified. It does make it hard for the reader to get close to her… and in real life, her husband Nikolai Gumilev went to the front in 1914 and four years later their strained and dissolving marriage ended in divorce, adding another layer of conflicts and reservations to the poems written here.
Throughout White Flock Akhmatova displays a warm attachment to architecture and landscape. She grew up in Tsarskoye Selo (the town where Pushkin studied at the Lyceum) and viewed poetry almost as an inheritance. Mixing all her themes together, of love, landscape and the Muse, the result has the immediate flavour of 'standard' poetry. Understandably, the Kunitz/Hayward selection drew few of its poems from this and her early work. If you want the Akhmatova legend, you have to read her writings from the 20s, 30s and after. However, the elements that went towards her great works began to appear in this volume. Kneller’s decision to use Joseph Brodsky as the back cover blurb was very smart, grounding the book in a critical evolution: “The mechanism designed to keep in check emotions of a romantic nature proved to be as effective when applied to mortal terrors. The latter was increasingly intertwined with the former until they resulted in emotional tautology…”
Of course, this means that White Flock intrigues more within her oeuvre than it does standing alone – though it is peaceful reading, at times with a somber beauty. Her rhymes as translated are sometimes too sing-song for my taste but contain a lilting musicality at other stations:
He was jealous, and anxious, and tender.
And I was like God’s sun to him.
To stop her from singing of the days she remembered,
He killed my white bird on a whim.
Combining so delicate and childlike a rhythm with inexplicable cruelty makes this three-stanza poem one of the most genuinely haunting of the set. The best poems in White Flock resonate with a disciplined, survivalist serenity in the face of growing shadows. "Like sorrow or song in me brooding/in the winter before the war." Love and war become metaphors mirroring one another and her heartfelt pleas present themselves more strongly when the text as a whole is so often reserved.
Prayer
Give me sickness without an end,
Suffocation and fevers prolonged,
Take away both my child and friend,
My mysterious gift of the song -
After mass, thus I’m praying, impassioned,
After so many tormented days,
Let the menacing cloud over Russia
Shimmer brightly in glorious rays.
1915
As for the physical qualities of the book, no problems there. It’s well-bound, reasonably heavy and there’s no question of the cover being ugly or wrongfooted (as often happens in the self-published sphere). A couple of grammatical errors (but no more or less than I’ve found in the NYRB Classic I’m currently reading) and some irrelevant commas are the only things I questioned. Bilingualism is always an appreciated feature where poetry in translation is concerned, so what I most miss in White Flock is a helpful essay (a biographical piece on Akhamatova’s early life and marriage, perhaps) but there is a brief and useful note on translation: "Readers should be wary of [bad translations] as art collectors are wary of forged paintings." That I am so keen for detail on Akhmatova’s life is mostly an indication that I need to buy a biography of this woman.
Pseudo-Intellectual Reviews
Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) is intimidating to review. Her work has such gravity that any attempted encapsulation would fail. White Flock is one of her early collections, published in 1917 and so tightly focused on themes of love and the Muse that at first glance it feels removed from the enormous tragedy of the First World War. Only on first glance. There is in fact a strong somberness at work here that enjoins you to read between the lines and find evidence of a world gone wrong, while as the collection progresses, references to the war become more regular.
May Snow
A see-through shroud now disperses
And melts unnoticed on the sod.
The spring, so very cold and merciless,
Is killing off each swelling bud.
So frightful of the early death,
That I can’t look at God’s creation.
I feel the grief King David left, -
Millenniums of desolation.
1916
Andrey Kneller is an independent translator and he self-published this bilingual edition of Akhmatova in 2013. It’s a little bit hard for me to comment on his role in White Flock without familiarizing myself with earlier translations (I have only read the Kunitz/Hayward selections prior to this) but he clearly cares a great deal for the text and I found it pleasing to read, though not as impressive as her later works. A large number of the poems (one of the challenges inherent in this review is in her near-complete dispensing with titles – I can’t refer to poems but can only quote them) speak from the vantage point of a woman within whom love has ceased to be requited. An unassailable personage. "Without love, I’m more at ease, I’m sure/The sky is high, the mountain wind is sweeping/And all my thoughts are innocent and pure."
We’re immediately in the ostensibly personal but icily aloof landscapes similarly mapped out by Polish poet Anna Swir, but where Swir’s retreat from the world seemed savage and ironic, Akhmatova projects a deep-seated calm, reserved in the midst of guilts and regrets. In one poem she gives forgiveness to a sick man and he concludes by saying “It’s good that you forgave,/You were not always so nice.” She makes no effort in her writing to seem “nice” – whether affectionate or austere, she stands strong and fortified. It does make it hard for the reader to get close to her… and in real life, her husband Nikolai Gumilev went to the front in 1914 and four years later their strained and dissolving marriage ended in divorce, adding another layer of conflicts and reservations to the poems written here.
Throughout White Flock Akhmatova displays a warm attachment to architecture and landscape. She grew up in Tsarskoye Selo (the town where Pushkin studied at the Lyceum) and viewed poetry almost as an inheritance. Mixing all her themes together, of love, landscape and the Muse, the result has the immediate flavour of 'standard' poetry. Understandably, the Kunitz/Hayward selection drew few of its poems from this and her early work. If you want the Akhmatova legend, you have to read her writings from the 20s, 30s and after. However, the elements that went towards her great works began to appear in this volume. Kneller’s decision to use Joseph Brodsky as the back cover blurb was very smart, grounding the book in a critical evolution: “The mechanism designed to keep in check emotions of a romantic nature proved to be as effective when applied to mortal terrors. The latter was increasingly intertwined with the former until they resulted in emotional tautology…”
Of course, this means that White Flock intrigues more within her oeuvre than it does standing alone – though it is peaceful reading, at times with a somber beauty. Her rhymes as translated are sometimes too sing-song for my taste but contain a lilting musicality at other stations:
He was jealous, and anxious, and tender.
And I was like God’s sun to him.
To stop her from singing of the days she remembered,
He killed my white bird on a whim.
Combining so delicate and childlike a rhythm with inexplicable cruelty makes this three-stanza poem one of the most genuinely haunting of the set. The best poems in White Flock resonate with a disciplined, survivalist serenity in the face of growing shadows. "Like sorrow or song in me brooding/in the winter before the war." Love and war become metaphors mirroring one another and her heartfelt pleas present themselves more strongly when the text as a whole is so often reserved.
Prayer
Give me sickness without an end,
Suffocation and fevers prolonged,
Take away both my child and friend,
My mysterious gift of the song -
After mass, thus I’m praying, impassioned,
After so many tormented days,
Let the menacing cloud over Russia
Shimmer brightly in glorious rays.
1915
As for the physical qualities of the book, no problems there. It’s well-bound, reasonably heavy and there’s no question of the cover being ugly or wrongfooted (as often happens in the self-published sphere). A couple of grammatical errors (but no more or less than I’ve found in the NYRB Classic I’m currently reading) and some irrelevant commas are the only things I questioned. Bilingualism is always an appreciated feature where poetry in translation is concerned, so what I most miss in White Flock is a helpful essay (a biographical piece on Akhamatova’s early life and marriage, perhaps) but there is a brief and useful note on translation: "Readers should be wary of [bad translations] as art collectors are wary of forged paintings." That I am so keen for detail on Akhmatova’s life is mostly an indication that I need to buy a biography of this woman.
Pseudo-Intellectual Reviews
February 23, 2021
"I know which heavy sickness always hounds you, You long for death, but fear it all the more."
July 12, 2016
Beautiful
I'm not overly familiar with Russian poetry. That being said, this collection is one of the most beautiful selection of poems that I've ever read. I look forward to reading more in the future.
I'm not overly familiar with Russian poetry. That being said, this collection is one of the most beautiful selection of poems that I've ever read. I look forward to reading more in the future.
May 25, 2017
My first reading of Akhmatova and it won't be the last. Love and war are recurrent themes.
April 22, 2021
4.5 stars. Incredibly impressed by the caliber of translation and writing in this novel, I had an excellent reading experience and I've saved many of the poems to my phone.
February 12, 2025
This is the second collection by Akhmatova I’ve read and I think I just need to admit that her style and the Acmeism movement just isn’t for me. The rigour of the rhyme scheme purports to portray ‘raw and direct emotion’ but it reads as arbitrary and unimaginative. The majority of the poems felt superficial and swiftly cliched rather than symbolic of deeper meanings and movements. This said, I appreciate why Akhmatova is considered one of the best Russian poets of the Silver Age. She suffered tremendously under Stalin’s regime and used her words to fight and document this. Some of the poems towards the end of this collection begin to lean this way, and those I appreciated and enjoyed.
September 22, 2020
Beautiful poetry in translation. As always, I wish I could read and understand it in its original language (Russian).
August 18, 2025
I've been on a giant reading slump, feels good to finish something.
August 31, 2017
I’ve heard about gods who would endeavor
To turn men into objects with a mind,
To make these wondrous sorrows last forever.
You’ve turned into this memory of mine.
To turn men into objects with a mind,
To make these wondrous sorrows last forever.
You’ve turned into this memory of mine.
May 15, 2020
"Mi sei accanto da un anno intero
e come prima sei giovane e ridente!
Possibile che non ti stanchi
il canto inquieto delle corde smosse?
Quelle corde che tese vibravano
ed ora gemono leggere,
mentre la mia mano esile di cera
le tormenta senza scopo?
Davvero occorre poco per la gioia
a chi ama d'amore tenero e luminoso,
poiché non gli toccano la bella fronte
gelosia, collera e risentimento.
Egli sta silenzioso e non chiede carezze,
lungamente mi guarda estasiato
e con sorriso beato sopporta del mio deliquio
il terribile vaneggiamento."
Credo sia una delle poesie che parlano d'amore più belle che io abbia mai letto.
Un giorno lessi per caso alcuni eventi della vita di Anna Achmatova. Ricordo che rimasi molto colpita dalle tante difficoltà e sofferenze che dovette affrontare, e che mi sentii incredibilmente attratta dalla sua opera. Poco dopo in una bancarella trovai questo libro e lo acquistai immediatamente. Trovo questa edizione molto fine ed elegante, e il fatto che riporti anche il testo russo è ovviamente un quid in più, dato che ho un po' iniziato a studiare questa lingua.
Leggendolo, comunque, ne sono rimasta innamorata. Per questo l'ho centellinato, leggendo una poesia ogni tanto per gustarla appieno.
Trovo che queste poesie siano allo stesso tempo molto semplici e molto complesse. In alcuni testi l'autrice parla in prima persona delle sue emozioni. In altri ci presenta un'immagine, o anche solo un oggetto, descritto attraverso pochi particolari. Un aspetto caratteristico è che di solito è presente anche un riferimento a un certo colore. In questa immagine, o negli elementi che la compongono, lei si rispecchia, o magari il suo stato d'animo è contrastante con essa. Gli oggetti comunicano con lei, le riportano alla mente ricordi che sembrano venire da molto lontano, da un'altra vita. Si ha l'impressione di una persona con una vita interiore molto attiva, che anziché agire nella realtà la guarda da fuori, come dalla finestra, e la racconta. E ricorda, magari, di quando in quel mondo viveva veramente anche lei.
e come prima sei giovane e ridente!
Possibile che non ti stanchi
il canto inquieto delle corde smosse?
Quelle corde che tese vibravano
ed ora gemono leggere,
mentre la mia mano esile di cera
le tormenta senza scopo?
Davvero occorre poco per la gioia
a chi ama d'amore tenero e luminoso,
poiché non gli toccano la bella fronte
gelosia, collera e risentimento.
Egli sta silenzioso e non chiede carezze,
lungamente mi guarda estasiato
e con sorriso beato sopporta del mio deliquio
il terribile vaneggiamento."
Credo sia una delle poesie che parlano d'amore più belle che io abbia mai letto.
Un giorno lessi per caso alcuni eventi della vita di Anna Achmatova. Ricordo che rimasi molto colpita dalle tante difficoltà e sofferenze che dovette affrontare, e che mi sentii incredibilmente attratta dalla sua opera. Poco dopo in una bancarella trovai questo libro e lo acquistai immediatamente. Trovo questa edizione molto fine ed elegante, e il fatto che riporti anche il testo russo è ovviamente un quid in più, dato che ho un po' iniziato a studiare questa lingua.
Leggendolo, comunque, ne sono rimasta innamorata. Per questo l'ho centellinato, leggendo una poesia ogni tanto per gustarla appieno.
Trovo che queste poesie siano allo stesso tempo molto semplici e molto complesse. In alcuni testi l'autrice parla in prima persona delle sue emozioni. In altri ci presenta un'immagine, o anche solo un oggetto, descritto attraverso pochi particolari. Un aspetto caratteristico è che di solito è presente anche un riferimento a un certo colore. In questa immagine, o negli elementi che la compongono, lei si rispecchia, o magari il suo stato d'animo è contrastante con essa. Gli oggetti comunicano con lei, le riportano alla mente ricordi che sembrano venire da molto lontano, da un'altra vita. Si ha l'impressione di una persona con una vita interiore molto attiva, che anziché agire nella realtà la guarda da fuori, come dalla finestra, e la racconta. E ricorda, magari, di quando in quel mondo viveva veramente anche lei.
March 13, 2020
C’è in me un ricordo come un sasso
che biancheggia nel fondo del pozzo.
Né più voglio e non posso lottare:
quel sasso è il dolore,
quel sasso è l’amore.
Se guardi da vicino i miei occhi
subito lo scorgi: ti fai grave e pensoso
come per un triste racconto.
Sento che gli dei han mutato
gli uomini in cose, senza uccidere
la loro imprevidenza, affinché vivano
eterni stupendi dolori. Tu sei diventato
il mio ricordo.
che biancheggia nel fondo del pozzo.
Né più voglio e non posso lottare:
quel sasso è il dolore,
quel sasso è l’amore.
Se guardi da vicino i miei occhi
subito lo scorgi: ti fai grave e pensoso
come per un triste racconto.
Sento che gli dei han mutato
gli uomini in cose, senza uccidere
la loro imprevidenza, affinché vivano
eterni stupendi dolori. Tu sei diventato
il mio ricordo.
June 6, 2015
We aged a hundred years, and this
happened in a single hour.
happened in a single hour.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews