The outstanding poetess Anna Akhmatova had a chance to experience the oppression of Soviet repression beyond measure. She and her family were constantly out of favor with the authorities.
Her first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot without trial or investigation, her son Lev spent many years in the camps, and her second husband, Nikolai Punin, was arrested twice. The apartment in the Fountain House was continuously tapped and monitored. Akhmatova was persecuted and, having been expelled from the Writers' Union, she was practically outlawed. In addition, as it is already known today, the final, physical reprisal was also prepared for the poetess. The report “On the need to arrest the poetess Akhmatova” No. 6826 / A dated June 14, 1950 was handed over to Stalin by the Minister of State Security of the USSR Abakumov. “To Comrade STALIN I.V. I report that the Ministry of State Security of the USSR received intelligence and investigative materials in relation to the poetess A. A. Akhmatova, indicating that she is an active enemy of the Soviet government. AKHMATOVA Anna Andreevna, born in 1892 (in fact, she was born in 1889), Russian, comes from the nobility, non-partisan, lives in Leningrad. Her first husband, the poet-monarchist GUMILEV, as a participant in the White Guard conspiracy in Leningrad in 1921, was shot by the Cheka. Akhmatova is convicted of hostile activities by the testimony of her son GUMILEV L.N., arrested at the end of 1949, who was a senior researcher at the State Ethnographic Museum of the Peoples of the USSR before his arrest, and her ex-husband N.N. PUNIN, professor at Leningrad State University. The arrested PUNIN, during interrogation at the USSR Ministry of State Security, testified that Akhmatova, being from a landowner's family, was hostile to the establishment of Soviet power in the country and until recently carried out enemy work against the Soviet state. As Punin showed, even in the first years after the October Revolution, Akhmatova spoke with her anti-Soviet poems, in which she called the Bolsheviks "enemies that torment the earth" and declared that "she was not on the path with the Soviet regime."
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (real name Gorenko) was born on June 23 (June 11, old style), 1889, near Odessa, in the family of a retired fleet mechanical engineer Andrei Gorenko.
On the part of her mother, Inna Stogova, Anna was distantly related to Anna Bunina, a Russian poetess. Akhmatova considered the legendary Horde Khan Akhmat to be her maternal ancestor, on whose behalf she subsequently formed her pseudonym.
She spent her childhood and youth in Pavlovsk, Tsarskoye Selo, Evpatoria and Kyiv. In May 1907 she graduated from the Kyiv Fundukleev gymnasium.
In 1910, Anna married the poet Nikolai Gumilev (1886-1921), in 1912 her son Lev Gumilev (1912-1992) was born, who later became a famous historian and ethnographer.
The first known poems by Akhmatova date back to 1904, since 1911 she began to publish regularly in Moscow and St. Petersburg publications.
In 1911, she joined the creative group "Workshop of Poets", from which in the spring of 1912 a group of acmeists emerged, preaching a return to the naturalness of the material world, to primordial feelings.
In 1912, her first collection "Evening" was published, the verses of which served as one of the foundations for creating the theory of acmeism. One of the most memorable poems in the collection is "The Gray-Eyed King" (1910).
Separation from a loved one, the happiness of "love torture", the transience of light minutes - the main theme of the subsequent collections of the poetess - "Rosary" (1914) and "White Flock" (1917).
The February Revolution of 1917 by Akhmatov, the October Revolution - as a bloody turmoil and the death of culture.
In August 1918, the poetess's divorce from Gumilyov was formalized; in December, she married the orientalist, poet and translator Vladimir Shileiko (1891-1930).
In 1920, Akhmatova became a member of the Petrograd branch of the All-Russian Union of Poets, since 1921 she was a translator at the World Literature publishing house.
At the end of 1921, when the work of private publishing houses was allowed, three books by Akhmatova were published in Alkonost and Petropolis: the collections Plantain and Anno Domini MCMXXI, the poem By the Sea itself. In 1923, five books of poems were published in three volumes.
In 1924, Akhmatova's poems "And the righteous followed the messenger of God ..." and "And the month, bored in the cloudy haze ..." were published in the first issue of the Russian Contemporary magazine, which served as one of the reasons for closing the magazine. The books of the poetess were withdrawn from mass libraries, her poems almost ceased to be printed. The collections of poems prepared by Akhmatova in 1924-1926 and in the mid-1930s were not published.
In 1929, Akhmatova withdrew from the All-Russian Union of Writers in protest against the persecution of writers Yevgeny Zamyatin and Boris Pilnyak.
In 1934, she did not join the Writers' Union of the USSR and found herself outside the boundaries of official Soviet literature. In the years 1924-1939, when her poems were not published, Akhmatova earned her livelihood by selling her personal archive and translations, and was engaged in the study of the work of Alexander Pushkin. In 1933, in her translation, "Letters" by the artist Peter Paul Rubens were published, her name was named among the participants in the publication of "Manuscripts of A. S. Pushkin" (1939).
In 1935, Lev Gumilyov and Akhmatova's third husband, art historian and art critic Nikolai Punin (1888-1953), were arrested and released shortly after the poet's petition to Joseph Stalin.
In 1938, Lev Gumilyov was again arrested, and in 1939, the Leningrad NKVD opened the "Operative Development Case against Anna Akhmatova", where the political position of the poetess was characterized as "hidden Trotskyism and hostile anti-Soviet sentiments." In the late 1930s, Akhmatova, fearing surveillance and searches, did not write down poetry and led a secluded life. At the same time, the poem "Requiem" was created, which became a monument to the victims of Stalin's repressions and was published only in 1988.
By the end of 1939, the attitude of the state authorities towards Akhmatova changed - she was offered to prepare books for publication for two publishing houses. In January 1940, the poetess was admitted to the Writers' Union, in the same year the magazines Leningrad, Zvezda and Literary Contemporary published her poems, the Soviet Writer publishing house published a collection of her poems "From Six Books", nominated for the Stalin Prize. In September 1940, the book was condemned by a special resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the basis of a memorandum from the head of the Central Committee about the absence of a connection with Soviet reality in the book and the preaching of religion in it. Subsequently, all of Akhmatova's books published in the USSR came out with censorship exceptions and corrections related to religious themes and images.
During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945), Akhmatova was evacuated from the besieged Leningrad to Moscow, then, together with the family of Lydia Chukovskaya, she lived in evacuation in Tashkent (1941-1944), where she wrote many patriotic poems - "Courage", "The enemy's banner ...", "Oath", etc.
In 1943, Akhmatova's book "Selected: Poems" was published in Tashkent. Poems of the poetess were published in the magazines Znamya, Zvezda, Leningrad, Krasnoarmeyets.
In August 1946, the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks adopted a resolution "On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad", directed against Anna Akhmatova. She was accused of the fact that poetry, "impregnated with the spirit of pessimism and decadence", "bourgeois-aristocratic aestheticism" and decadence, harms the cause of educating young people and cannot be tolerated in Soviet literature. Akhmatova's works ceased to be printed, the circulation of her books " Poems (1909-1945)" and "Selected Poems" were destroyed.
In 1949, Lev Gumilyov and Punin were again arrested, with whom Akhmatova broke up before the war. In order to mitigate the fate of loved ones, the poetess wrote several poems in 1949-1952 glorifying Stalin and the Soviet state.
The son was released in 1956, and Punin died in the camp.
Since the early 1950s, she has been working on translations of poems by Rabindranath Tagore, Kosta Khetagurov, Jan Rainis and other poets.
After Stalin's death, Akhmatova's poems began to appear in print. In 1958 and 1961, her books of poetry were published, and in 1965, the collection The Run of Time. The poem "Requiem" (1963) and "Works" in three volumes (1965) were published outside the USSR.
The final work of the poetess was "A Poem without a Hero", published in 1989.
In the 2000s, the name of Anna Akhmatova was given to a passenger ship.
The material was prepared on the basis of information from RIA Novosti and open sources
"Summer of the Lord 1921"
Once Akhmatova was asked if she herself could fully pronounce the name of her collection "Anno Domini MCMXXI". She said that once she could, then she forgot. Boris Pasternak, who was present at the conversation, strained his memory and quite confidently read: "millesimo nongentesimo vicesimo primo." Naturally, in everyday life, even literary criticism, the book is called simply "Anno Domini" - "In the Year of the Lord", but you should not forget what year it is: MCMXXI - 1921.
He was full of shocks for Akhmatova. This year, three people died unexpectedly and prematurely, each of whom was dear to her in his own way: her beloved brother Andrei Gorenko committed suicide, Blok died and Gumilyov was shot.
Gumilyov's death was predicted by him in verse, and from the heights of the future it seems that all his last years were filled with ominous omens. So, Akhmatova recalled their last joint trip to her son in Bezhetsk - in the summer of 1918: “Record the Spirits Day in Bezhetsk 1918. Church bells, a green meadow, a holy fool (“Undress the saint!”) Nikolai Stepanovich said: “I just felt that my death would not be my end. That I will somehow stay ... Maybe "" (Akhmatova. Leaflets from a diary. P. 130).
In 1921, forebodings deepened. Akhmatova saw Gumilyov several times. Once he came to her together with Georgy Ivanov. When the guests left, Akhmatova, escorting them along the dark spiral staircase of the former back door, said: "On such a staircase you can only go to execution." She also recalled the story of writing her poem, which for everyone who is somewhat familiar with her biography, evokes associations with the death of Gumilyov:
You won't be alive
Do not get up from the snow.
twenty-eight bayonets,
Five gunshots.
Bitter new thing
I sewed for another.
Loves, loves blood
Russian land.
This poem was written on August 16, 1921. Gumilyov was shot on the 24th or 25th. Akhmatova still did not know anything about his fate and did not think about him. She was on a commuter train. Suddenly she had an unbearable desire to smoke. The cigarette was found in the purse, but there were no matches. At the next stop, the poetess tried to ask someone for them, but no one had it. Then she saw that the locomotive throws out sparks that go out when they touch the ground. To the delight of the soldiers and sailors standing right there, she deftly lit a cigarette from one such spark. "Well, this one won't go to waste!" someone said approvingly. During this search for an opportunity to smoke, she felt that poems formed in her head. As it turned out - prophetic.
I called death dear,
And they died one by one.
Oh, woe to me! These graves
Foretold by my word...
she wrote in the autumn of that year. There is some truth in this self-reproach. Suffice it to recall her "Prayer" of 1915:
Give me bitter years of sickness
Breathlessness, insomnia, fever,
Take away both the child and the friend,
And the mysterious song gift -
So I pray for Your liturgy
After so many agonizing days
To cloud over dark Russia
Became a cloud in the glory of rays.
The poem has been repeatedly sung by critics and researchers as an example of Akhmatov's patriotism. In fact, she cannot be denied patriotism, but nevertheless it is unforgivable for a wife and mother to put the life of her husband and child at stake - even for the greatness of her native country, and such a prayer can hardly be pleasing to God. As a result, the "negative" part of the petitions of the lyrical heroine in the life of the author was fulfilled almost completely: in the future, Akhmatova was expected to have "bitter years of illness", and anxious insomnia, "the death of the dear ones": the execution of Gumilyov, the death of Nedobrovo, eternal separation from Anrep and her other chosen one - Arthur Lurie, arrests and imprisonment, which her son, Lev Gumilyov, was repeatedly subjected to. Only the "mysterious song gift" did not suffer. And the "cloud in the glory of rays" over Russia was, for the most part, the glory of her new martyrs. Prophecies are prophecies, but calling upon one's own head (and even more so upon the head of loved ones) and trying to "exchange" something from God, even from the highest motives, is a sign of recklessness. However, the poetess was already sufficiently punished by fate to blame this "Prayer" on her.
The collection "Anno Domini" is imbued with a sense of the biblical punishment of God. The events of the post-revolutionary years are considered in it in the context of the entire Russian history - not as a "new era", but as a turmoil known in Rus' for a long time. In this sense, Akhmatova is close to the writers who ended up in exile - Bunin, Shmelev, Zaitsev, and all of them together continue the tradition, rooted in ancient Russian chronicles: the events of our time are evaluated from the standpoint of Christian morality.
worship the Lord
In his holy court.
The holy fool sleeps on the porch,
A star is looking at him.
And, touched by an angel's wing,
The bell spoke
Not with an alarming menacing voice,
And goodbye forever.
And leave the monastery
Giving ancient robes,
Miracle workers and saints,
Leaning on crutches.
Seraphim - in the forests of Sarov
Herd of rural pasture,
Anna - in Kashin, no longer reign,
Len prickly to pull.
Guided by the Mother of God
Son wrapped in a scarf
Dropped by an old beggar woman
At the Lord's Porch.("Lamentation")
Despite the shock caused by the death of her loved ones, in the same 1921, Akhmatova experienced another love - for the one whom she later even once called "the main man of her life" - musician and futurist composer Artur Sergeevich Lurie (1892 - 1966). She had known him for a long time. In the autumn of 1921, having left Shileiko, she settled in his apartment on the Fontanka, where her friend O.A. was already living with him. Glebov-Sudeikin. A kind of love triangle arose, about which, as Lurie himself believed, Akhmatova spoke "in coded form" in "A Poem Without a Hero".
The period of this strange life together was short-lived. The financial situation was still difficult. "When Anna Akhmatova lived with Olga Sudeikina, they were managed by an 80-year-old grandmother<…>– wrote Lydia Ginzburg. - Grandmother was upset that the housewives had no money: “Olga Afanasyevna does not earn at all. Anna Andreevna buzzed before, but now she doesn’t buzz.
Grandmother called first-time poets first-learned, and buzzing meant writing poetry. In fact, Akhmatova wrote down the poems already formed to a certain extent, and before that she walked around the room for a long time and muttered (buzzed) "(Ginzburg L. Several pages of memoirs. - V.S. 137).
Soon Lurie decided to emigrate. He called Akhmatova with him, but she, firm in her decision to remain in Russia at all costs, refused. A O.A. Sudeikina agreed, and she and Lurie went abroad. Akhmatova was left alone again. To those who left, she always treated with hostility, mixed with pity:
I am not with those who left the earth
At the mercy of enemies.
I will not heed their rude flattery,
I won't give them my songs.
But the exile is eternally pitiful to me,
Like a prisoner, like a patient.
Dark is your road, wanderer,
Wormwood smells of someone else's bread ...
The collection "Anno Domini" was Akhmatova's last book to be published on time. Then came the era of prohibitions.
On September 20, 1921, in the House of Arts in Petrograd, K. Chukovsky gave a lecture entitled "Two Russias", which formed the basis of his article "Akhmatova and Mayakovsky". "Akhmatova and Mayakovsky are as hostile to each other as the eras that gave birth to them are hostile. Akhmatova is the thrifty heiress of all the most precious pre-revolutionary riches of Russian verbal culture. She has many ancestors: Pushkin, and Baratynsky, and Annensky. She has that spiritual sophistication and charm that are given to a person by centuries of cultural traditions. He has no ancestors of the revolutionary era, he has her beliefs, screams, failures, ecstasies. He has no ancestors. He himself is an ancestor and if he is strong, then descendants. Behind her is a centuries-old magnificent past. Before him is a centuries-old magnificent future. She has preserved the old Russian faith in God from ancient times. He, as befits a revolutionary bard, is a blasphemer and a blasphemer. For her, the highest shrine is Russia, the motherland, " our land. "He, as befits a revolutionary bard, is an internationalist, a citizen of the whole universe ... She is a solitary silent woman, always in seclusion, in silence ... He is a square, a rally, all in a crowd, he is a crowd" (Chukovsky K. Akhmatova and Mayakovsky. - Anna Akhmatova. Pro et contra. T. 1. C. 235).
Chukovsky treated Akhmatova well, but with this article he did her a disservice. According to critics, the whole country was divided into "Akhmatovs" and "Mayakovskys". The conclusion suggested itself: the Mayakovskys must crush the Akhmatovs. And the bullying began.
“Then in 1925 they completely stopped publishing me,” recalled Akhmatova, “and systematically and consistently began to destroy me in the current press (Lelevich in On Post and Pertsov in Life of Art, Stepanov in Leningradskaya Pravda and many others (the role of Chukovsky’s article“ Two Russias ”). This continued until 1939, when Stalin asked about me at a reception about awarding writers with orders” (Pro domo s ua, p. 195).
There was a pause in Akhmatova's creative activity. It cannot be said that she did not write poetry at all, but she wrote really little, besides, poems were not only not published, but were not even always written down (especially in the 30s) - Akhmatova was afraid to betray a lot of paper and kept in memory or trusted her closest friends who memorized her poems by heart. She herself took this era of silence quite calmly. “Poetry, especially lyrics, should not flow in a continuous stream, like through a water pipe,” she later said. “There are intermissions - there were at Mandelstam, Pasternak” (Glen N. Around old records. - VA. S. 630).
Persecution only highlighted her extraordinary inner strength. Never, under any circumstances, did she lose her self-esteem. “I saw her in old, thin shoes and a shabby dress,” N.G. Chulkova wrote, “and in a luxurious outfit, with a precious shawl on her shoulders (she almost always wore a large shawl), but no matter what she was, no matter what grief tormented her, she always acted calmly and did not bend from insults that humiliate her” (About Anna Akhmatova - VA. S. 40). She always considered her strength to be feminine. She spoke condescendingly about men: "There is no limit to their weakness."
The dispute between the "Mayakovskys" and the "Akhmatovs" was resolved in the fates of the poets themselves: the strong, daring and invincible Mayakovsky soon committed suicide - the "centuries-old magnificent future" turned out to be a dummy, a fiction that cannot be relied upon in a moment of trial; the fragile “silent woman” Akhmatova endured all the hardships to the end - she was given strength by the “centuries-old magnificent past” and faith, because outside the religious consciousness her many years of feat does not make sense.
"Under the famous roof of the Fountain Palace..."
In the spring of 1925, Akhmatova, together with Nadezhda Mandelstam, were treated at a tuberculosis sanatorium in Tsarskoye Selo. Akhmatova was often visited by the historian and art critic, a friend of Arthur Lurie, Nikolai Nikolaevich Punin (1888 - 1953). He was also associated with the circle of futurists, and considered his main talent to be the ability to understand painting. According to the impressions of Nadezhda Mandelstam, he was smart, but rude and unpleasant in communication. Nevertheless, Akhmatova connected her fate with him and lived for 13 years - longer than with anyone else. She moved in with him in 1926.
“Nikolai Nikolayevich Punin looked like Tyutchev,” wrote art critic Vsevolod Petrov. “People around noticed this similarity.<...>The most characteristic feature of Punin, I would call a constant and strong mental tension<…>He always seemed excited. The tension found a way out in a nervous tic, which often twitched his face "(V. Petrov. Fountain House. - VA. S. 219).
Punin lived in an outbuilding of the Fountain Palace, a grandiose building in the first third of the 18th century, which belonged to the Sheremetevs before the revolution. The palace was rebuilt several times. Once, Count Nikolai Petrovich Sheremetev presented it as a wedding gift to his wife, the famous serf actress Praskovya Andreevna Kovaleva-Zhemchugova. The coat of arms of the house bears the inscription: Deus conservat omnia<Бог сохраняет все – лат.>. The historical memory of the very walls of the house weaved new associations into Akhmatova's poetry.
In a new marriage, she did not seem to be looking for happiness, she wrote about her life with Punin:
I hid my heart from you
As if thrown into the Neva ...
Tame and wingless
I live in your house.
Only ... at night I hear squeaks.
What is there - in the twilight of strangers?
Sheremetev limes...
Roll call of brownies…
Cautiously steps up
Like the murmur of water
hot to the ear
Black whisper of trouble -
And mumbles like it's business
She's been messing around here all night:
"You wanted comfort
Do you know where he is - your comfort?
In the same apartment with Punin and Akhmatova, Punin's first wife, Anna Arens, continued to live with her daughter Irina. Naturally, this did not simplify relations, but Akhmatova learned to humble herself, and this self-deprecation was necessary for her spiritual growth.
During these years, she was engaged in translations, and most importantly, she seriously studied Pushkin's work, not only studied, but got used to the poet's life experience, learned to look at the world through his eyes. Obviously, age also contributed to this: having survived the Pushkin years, Akhmatova looked at Pushkin no longer from the bottom up, as a monument on a pedestal, but as a living person, a peer who once found himself in a similar life situation of persecution from the powerful of this world and opposition to public opinion. And just as Pushkin in his mature years came to the idea of the value of the family, so Akhmatova learned to respect his ideal of the mother of the family and "mistress", patriarchy and simplicity.
Translator and poet S.V. Shervinsky, with whose family Akhmatova became close in the 30s. and at whose dacha she sometimes spent the summer months, he recalled her conversation with his wife, who was a little shy in front of a great contemporary: “Elena Vladimirovna decided to frankly admit to her guest that she was bothered: she complained about herself, complained that she could not be interesting for such an interlocutor as Anna Akhmatova,” to which Akhmatova objected: “Honey, what are you? What you give me is the most important thing. The deliberate conversations that usually take place around me are so painful for me "(Shervinsky S. Anna Akhmatova in the perspective of everyday life. - VA. S. 283).
Akhmatova herself tried to be a good wife to Punin and the mother of his daughter, as well as her son Lev, who in 1928 came to her in Leningrad to continue his education. Difficulties arose with admission: after all, he was the son of the executed "enemy of the people." For several years he had to work in unskilled positions before he was finally admitted to the history department of Leningrad University.
Meanwhile, times changed after the relative calm of the late 1920s and early 1930s. an even harsher era was coming. "The atmosphere of trouble, deeply characteristic of the entire era<…>, perhaps nowhere was felt so sharply as in the Fountain House. Menacing clouds roamed over his garden wing and brought misfortunes that fell on the heads of Punin and Akhmatova. Life eventually led them to a difficult break" (V. Petrov. Fountain House. - VA. S. 224 - 225).
On December 1, 1934, Kirov, the first secretary of the Leningrad Regional Party Committee, was assassinated. This assassination sparked a backlash of terror. Thousands of people were arrested, including Nikolai Punin and Lev Gumilyov. The first arrest was short, but in 1939 they were arrested again. In 1937, Akhmatova's longtime friend, Osip Mandelstam, was arrested and soon died in the camp.
The severity of her experiences was reinforced by spiritual loneliness. The home world that she selflessly built for ten years was crumbling. Tests that could rally the family, Akhmatova and Punin were only alienated, showed that internally they remained strangers. During interrogations, Punin did not behave in the best way - he tried to get out, slandering both Akhmatova and her son. She foresaw such a turn already in the 1934 poem "The Last Toast":
I drink to a ruined house
For my evil life
For loneliness together
And I drink for you,
For the lies of the lips that betrayed me,
For the dead cold of the eyes,
For the fact that the world is cruel and rude,
Because God did not save.
Akhmatova broke with Punin in 1939, both of them continued to live in the Fountain House, but no longer existed for each other. However, she nevertheless responded to his death in 1953 with poetry.
In the 30s. Akhmatova created a cycle of poems, which she later combined into a cycle or, one might even say, the poem "Requiem". In 1957, out of three dozen poems written at that time dedicated to the memory of the innocent victims of the Stalinist terror, she singled out 14, added a prose introduction to them, and in 1961 - an epigraph in which she once again confirmed her "credo" of loyalty to Russia:
No, and not under an alien sky,
And not under the protection of alien wings, -
I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.
Until the end of the 80s. in the Soviet Union, only individual poems of this cycle were printed, as a complete work it did not exist.
Most of the poems in "Requiem" are directly dedicated to the present, the suffering of the arrested and convicted, and even more - their wives and mothers. But in some, the action, if not transferred to a different historical era, then correlates with the eternal troubles of Russian history:
They took you away at dawn
Behind you, as if on a takeaway, I walked,
Children were crying in the dark room,
At the goddess, the candle swam.
Icons on your lips are cold.
Death sweat on the brow ... do not forget!
I will be like archery wives,
Howl under the Kremlin towers.
The suffering of the innocently condemned is compared with the agony of Christ:
Easy weeks fly
What happened, I don't understand.
How do you, son, go to jail
White nights looked
How do they look again?
With a hawk's hot eye,
About your high cross
And they talk about death.
There is also one purely "biblical" poem:
The choir of angels glorified the great hour,
And the heavens went up in flames.
He said to his father: "Why did you leave me?"
And Mothers: "Oh, don't cry for me..."
The remembrance of the passions of Christ is a necessary semantic link in the cycle. The correlation of a specific historical era in which the lyrical heroine lives and suffers with the history of ancient Russian and biblical raises the whole work to a completely different level. "Requiem" is not a political pamphlet, an expression of protest against the Stalinist regime (this kind of literature delighted the opposition-minded intelligentsia in the 60s-80s, but quickly became outdated with the change of state system). "Requiem" is a story about the redemptive sufferings of those who follow Christ, are crucified with Him and, therefore, are resurrected.
Poet and "manager".
For the 20th century in Russia, the textbook confrontation “poet and mob”, “piit and crowd” is irrelevant. Even the poets locked in an ivory tower expressed, if not the opinion of the people, then their suffering. Especially if the ivory tower is called "The Booth" in Komarovo. Especially if the suffering is associated with the Gulag. Especially if the poet's name is Anna Akhmatova, whose 120th birthday is celebrated by the Russian public. For the Russian poet in the 20th century, another confrontation is relevant: the poet and the “effective manager”, as Stalin is now considered to be.
All the great four Russian poets of the 20th century, in one way or another, repelled Stalin, opposed him, coexisted alongside him. The death in the camp of Osip Mandelstam, the suicide of Marina Tsvetaeva, the persecution of Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova - all this is a list of crimes of the Soviet government. Stalin, if he did not know the exact price of the four geniuses, then in any case he guessed about their scale. "Is he a master? Master?" - almost with mystical horror, the leader asked Pasternak about Mandelstam in their famous telephone conversation. Stalin called Pasternak "a celestial", he and his henchmen treated Akhmatova as a decadent who did not keep up with the times, at the same time a "harlot" and a "nun". The secretary of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, Andrei Zhdanov, in his famous report on the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad, read shortly after the adoption of the relevant resolution, called her "a furious lady", "rushing between the boudoir and the prayer room." In general, there was something poignantly erotic in the attitude of the satraps towards Akhmatova, and the one who wrote the report to Zhdanov, or Andrei Alexandrovich himself, obviously secretly loved Anna Andreevna's poetry. In the final text of the report, the lines are tastefully quoted: “But I swear to you by the angelic garden, / I swear by the miraculous icon / And of our nights by the fiery child ...”
The fiery revolutionaries imprisoned in their icy Kafkaesque castles clearly wanted the same fiery offspring. And with what an ardent feeling - envious, almost nostalgic, in what detail Zhdanov described the world of Akhmatova: "Land estates of Catherine's times with centuries-old linden alleys, fountains, statues and stone arches, greenhouses, love pavilions and dilapidated coats of arms on the gates."
But Zhdanov described the world of the early Akhmatova. Fortunately, he did not suspect the existence of the poem "Requiem". As for the dilapidated coat of arms on the gate, one such one passed through Akhmatova's life. Coat of arms of the Sheremetevs - it was located on the Fountain House, where she lived for many years in Leningrad. The motto of the coat of arms Deus conservat omnia - “God saves everything”, which is also the epigraph to “A Poem without a Hero”, twenty years ago, on the 100th anniversary of Anna Akhmatova, Joseph Brodsky remembered: “God saves everything; especially - words of forgiveness and love, like your own voice. From this poem, a line that exhaustively defines the meaning of Akhmatova for Russia: "... In your native land, thanks to you, who have found speech, a gift in a deaf-mute universe."
Where my people are
Akhmatova would not agree with Joseph Brodsky, who said in his Nobel lecture: “It is better to be the last loser in a democracy than a martyr or master of thoughts in a despotism.” She just took on the burden of the second role - starting with the long-standing "I had a voice ... Leave Russia forever" and ending with the epigraph to "Requiem": "No, and not under an alien firmament, / And not under the protection of alien wings, - / I was then with my people, / Where my people, unfortunately, were."
Here is what Protopresbyter Alexander Schmemann said about this at a meeting in memory of Akhmatova in New York shortly after her death: “For Akhmatova, there was no such choice (to leave Russia or stay. - The New Times) because she does not “belong” to Russia, but is, as it were, Russia itself, as a mother does not “belong” to the family, but there is the family itself. Despite the external pathos of this definition, it incredibly accurately explains the patriotic position of Akhmatova, a completely non-Soviet person, a refined and educated woman who dreamed of seeing Europe again, as in her youth. Shortly before his death, in 1964-1965, everything was like a late award: an Oxford robe, and the Etna-Taormina award with a trip to this town in Sicily, from where, according to Goethe, the most beautiful view in the world opens. But this is only a modest compensation for the suffering suffered at home.
1946. Anna Akhmatova about Boris Pasternak: "He was rewarded with some kind of eternal childhood."
Boris Pasternak about Anna Akhmatova: “She reminds me of my sister”
Receiving the Nobel Prize, Brodsky, the main character from the "magic choir" of the favorites of the Komarovo recluse, *
*
Anatoly Naiman, Evgeny Rein, Dmitry Bobyshev, Joseph Brodsky. qualified himself as "the sum of the shadows". And he named the names of five poets, without whom he "would not be standing here": Frost, Auden, Mandelstam, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova. He left the country that Akhmatova did not want to leave, and in a sense received the Nobel Prize for it. In dialogues with Solomon Volkov, Brodsky stated: “Akhmatova, with just a tone of voice or a turn of her head, turned you into homo sapiens. Nothing like this happened to me before, and, I think, subsequently did not happen. Having experienced with Russia everything that could be experienced in her: the execution of her husband, defamation and harassment, the landing of her son, war and evacuation, Akhmatova in return received the right to consider herself the voice of the country: "I am your voice, the heat of your breath, / I am the reflection of your face." The contradiction "the poet and the people" was thereby removed.
art for art
By and large, Akhmatova was apolitical. But, as Marxism teaches, it is impossible to live in society and be free from society. Even before the war, critic G. Lelevich accused Akhmatova of "mystical nationalism." But they were innocent flowers. After the war, when many had hopes that there would be more freedom, a demonstrative tightening of the screws began. The resolution of the Orgburo of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks on the magazines "Zvezda" and "Leningrad" dated August 14, 1946, of course, had an educational, didactic value - so that others would be discouraged. Well, about how the Khodorkovsky trial is now.
Here is the specific lesson taught by the example of Akhmatova: The Zvezda magazine in every possible way also popularizes the works of the writer Akhmatova, whose literary and socio-political physiognomy has long been known to the Soviet public. Akhmatova is a typical representative of empty, unprincipled poetry, alien to our people. Her poems, imbued with the spirit of pessimism and decadence, expressing the tastes of the old salon poetry, frozen in the positions of bourgeois-aristocratic aestheticism and decadence, “art for art’s sake”, which does not want to keep pace with its people, harm the cause of educating our youth and cannot be tolerated in Soviet literature..
Not only Mikhail Zoshchenko and Anna Akhmatova suffered - they were the main instructive examples due to the scale of their talent. Among the accused were well-known playwrights A. Stein and G. Jagdfeldt, little-known poets I. Sadofiev and M. Komissarova, editors of magazines, Leningrad party leaders, and even Yuri German, the author of a "suspiciously laudatory" review of Zoshchenko's works.
I will dream of you as a black sheep
On unsteady, dry feet,
I’ll come, I’ll bleat, I’ll howl:
“Did you have a sweet supper, padishah?
You hold the universe like a bead
By the bright will of Allah we keep ...
And did my son come to taste
And you and your children?
Anna Akhmatova.
"Imitation of the Armenian"
1964. Lydia Chukovskaya: “Her words and actions, her head, shoulders and hand movements possessed
completeness, which usually belongs in this world only to the great
works of art"
Much later, Berlin wrote that Akhmatova told him in Oxford in 1965: “... Stalin himself was personally outraged that she, an apolitical, almost unpublished writer, owed her safety ... to the fact that she had managed to live relatively unnoticed in the early years of the revolution ... dared to commit a terrible crime, consisting in a private meeting with a foreigner not authorized by the authorities." *
*
There is another version of why Akhmatova fell out of favor. In 1945, at the evening of poets in the Hall of Columns, Anna Andreevna was greeted with a long standing ovation. The whole room stood up. When Stalin found out about this, he allegedly asked: “Who organized the rising?” - and did not forgive her this moment of glory.
Stylistic disagreements
Akhmatova, of course, was aware that she was in a Kafkaesque country. One of her poems is called "The Imitation of Kafka". And the whole life of the poet in the USSR was an imitation of Kafka, with senseless arrests and "Trials", communication - by correspondence - with the main inhabitant of the "Castle". Once Stalin - after Akhmatova's letter to him - released her husband Nikolai Punin and son Lev Gumilyov. It was in 1935. Which did not prevent Gumilyov from being arrested a second time in 1938. The coryphaeus of all sciences meticulously followed the life and work of Akhmatova from a distance and never left her with his attention. After the ruling of 1946, she wrote loyal, excruciatingly bad poems. Which may have saved her and her son.
By the way, the then editor-in-chief, poet and literary dignitary Alexei Surkov, the addressee of Simonovsky's "Do you remember, Alyosha, the roads of the Smolensk region ...", assisted in the publication of Akhmatova's poems in Ogonyok. Surkov obviously sincerely admired Akhmatova, called himself "the last acmeist", obtained translation work for her during the period of disgrace, wrote a preface to Akhmatova's translations of Korean poetry. I patronized during my last trips to Europe. Wrote a preface to Akhmatova's publication in the Poet's Library. But he went down in history thanks to his participation in the persecution of Pasternak ...
Of course, Akhmatova had nothing to do with the regime and an "effective manager". But apart from everything else, she had the same, according to Andrei Sinyavsky, stylistic disagreements with the Soviet authorities. When she returned from Italy, the Chekists came to her and began to ask about who she talked with, if she came across Russian emigrants. “She replied,” wrote Isaiah Berlin, “that Rome is for her a city where paganism is still at war with Christianity. “What kind of war? she was asked. Was it about the USA? The authorities fundamentally could not understand the poet. And vice versa. In 1976, under the editorship of Academician V.M. Zhirmunsky published the most complete collection of Akhmatova's poems - in the very famous Soviet "blue" series, in which Pasternak came out in 1965, and in 1973 - Mandelstam. It was, in fact, the rehabilitation of Anna Andreevna. But before the official publication of the "Requiem" in the homeland, eleven years remained.
From a letter from Anna Akhmatova to I. Stalin dated November 1, 1935
I live in S.S.R. since the beginning of the Revolution, I have never wanted to leave the country with which I am connected in mind and heart. Despite the fact that my poems are not published and the reviews of critics give me many bitter moments, I did not lose heart; in very difficult moral and material conditions, I continued to work and have already published one work on Pushkin, the second is being printed.
In Leningrad, I live very secluded and often get sick for a long time. The arrest of the only two people close to me deals me such a blow that I can no longer survive.
I ask you, Iosif Vissarionovich, to return my husband and son to me, confident that no one will ever regret this.The poem "Requiem" was transferred by Akhmatova to the editors of the "New World" in 1962. At that time, she already went to samizdat. The Requiem was published as a separate book in Munich in 1963. The first publication in the USSR took place in the October magazine in 1987.
Anna Akhmatova. North Star
... She was called the "Northern Star", although she was born on the Black Sea. She lived a long and very eventful life, in which there were wars, revolutions, losses and very little simple happiness. All of Russia knew her, but there were times when even her name was forbidden to be mentioned. The great poet with a Russian soul and a Tatar surname is Anna Akhmatova.
Natan Isaevich Altman
Olga Ludvigovna Della-Vos-Kardovskay
The one whom all of Russia later recognizes under the name of Anna Akhmatova was born on June 11 (24), 1889 in the suburbs of Odessa, Bolshoi Fontan. Her father, Andrei Antonovich Gorenko, was a marine engineer, her mother, Inna Erazmovna, devoted herself to her children, of whom there were six in the family: Andrei, Inna, Anna, Iya, Irina (Rika) and Victor. Rika died of tuberculosis when Anya was five years old. Rika lived with her aunt, and her death was kept secret from the rest of the children. Nevertheless, Anya felt what happened - and as she later said, this death lay like a shadow through her entire childhood.
Gorenko family. I. E. Gorenko, A.A. Gorenko, Rika (in her arms), Inna, Anna, Andrey. Around 1894
When Anya was eleven months old, the family moved north: first to Pavlovsk, then to Tsarskoye Selo. But every summer was invariably spent on the Black Sea coast. Anya was an excellent swimmer - according to her brother, she swam like a bird.
Anya grew up in an atmosphere rather unusual for a future poet: there were almost no books in the house, except for the thick volume of Nekrasov, which Anya was allowed to read during the holidays. Mother had a taste for poetry: she recited poems by Nekrasov and Derzhavin to children by heart, she knew a lot of them. But for some reason, everyone was sure that Anya would become a poetess - even before she wrote the first line of poetry.
Anna Gorenko with her younger brother Viktor
Anya began to speak French quite early - she learned by watching the classes of older children. At the age of ten she entered the gymnasium in Tsarskoye Selo. A few months later, Anya fell seriously ill: she lay unconscious for a week; thought she would not survive. When she came to, she remained deaf for some time. Later, one of the doctors suggested that this was smallpox - which, however, left no visible traces. The trace remained in the soul: it was from then that Anya began to write poetry.
Anya Gorenko. 1900 Sevastopol.
Anya's closest friend in Tsarskoe Selo was Valeria Tyulpanova (married Sreznevskaya), whose family lived in the same house as Gorenko.
Valeria Sergeevna Sreznevskaya (Tyulpanova).
On Christmas Eve 1903, Anya and Valya met Sergey's acquaintances, Valya's brother, Mitya and Kolya Gumilev, who shared a music teacher with Sergey. The Gumilyovs took the girls home, and if this meeting did not make any impression on Valya and Anya, then for Nikolai Gumilyov that day began his very first - and most passionate, deep and long feeling. He fell in love with Anya at first sight.
Anna Gorenko is a high school student. 1904 Tsarskoye Selo.
Anya Gorenko with the gymnasium class 1904-1905 (second from the left in the second row). Photo from the family archive of E. Khalezova (Moscow).
She struck him not only with her extraordinary appearance - but Anya was beautiful with a very unusual, mysterious, bewitching beauty that immediately attracted attention: tall, slender, with long thick black hair, beautiful white hands, with radiant gray eyes on an almost white face, her profile resembled antique cameos. Anya stunned him with her complete dissimilarity to everything that surrounded them in Tsarskoye Selo. For ten whole years, she occupied the main place in the life of Gumilyov and in his work.
N. Gumilyov 1906 (pass to Tsarskoye Selo). Photo courtesy of the New York Public Library.
Kolya Gumilyov, only three years older than Anya, already then realized himself as a poet, was an ardent admirer of the French Symbolists. He hid self-doubt behind arrogance, tried to compensate for external ugliness with mystery, did not like to yield to anyone in anything. Gumilyov asserted himself, consciously building his life according to a certain pattern, and fatal, unrequited love for an extraordinary, impregnable beauty was one of the necessary attributes of his chosen life scenario.
He bombarded Anya with poems, tried to strike her imagination with various spectacular follies - for example, on her birthday he brought her a bouquet of flowers plucked under the windows of the imperial palace. On Easter 1905, he tried to commit suicide - and Anya was so shocked and frightened by this that she stopped seeing him.
Anna Gorenko
In the same year, Anya's parents broke up. The father, having retired, settled in St. Petersburg, and the mother and children left for Evpatoria. Anya had to urgently prepare for admission to the last class of the gymnasium - due to moving, she was far behind. Classes were brightened up by the fact that a romance broke out between her and the tutor - the first in her life, passionate, tragic - as soon as everything became known, the teachers immediately calculated - and far from the last.
Inna Erazmovna Gorenko (ur. Stogov)
In the spring of 1906, Anya entered the Kyiv gymnasium. For the summer, she returned to Evpatoria, where Gumilev called on her - on the way to Paris. They reconciled and corresponded all winter while Anya was studying in Kyiv.
Anna Akhmatova 1906
In Paris, Gumilyov took part in the publication of a small literary almanac "Sirius", where he published one poem by Anya.
Her father, having learned about his daughter's poetic experiences, asked not to shame his name. “I don’t need your name,” she replied and took the name of her great-grandmother, Praskovya Fedoseevna, whose family descended from the Tatar Khan Akhmat. So the name of Anna Akhmatova appeared in Russian literature.
Seberbyakov Portrait of A. A. Akhmatova.
Gumilyov constantly came from Paris to visit her, and in the summer, when Anya and her mother lived in Sevastopol, he settled in a neighboring house in order to be closer to them.
Returning to Paris, Gumilyov first goes to Normandy - he was even arrested for vagrancy, and in December he again tries to commit suicide. A day later, he was found unconscious in the Bois de Boulogne...
Nikolai Stepanovich Gumilyov
In the autumn of 1907, Anna entered the law faculty of the Higher Women's Courses in Kyiv - she was attracted by the history of law and Latin. In April of the following year, Gumilev, having stopped in Kyiv on his way from Paris, again unsuccessfully makes her an offer. The next meeting was in the summer of 1908, when Anya arrived in Tsarskoe Selo, and then - when Gumilyov, on his way to Egypt, stopped in Kyiv. In Cairo, in the garden of Ezbekiye, he made one more, last, suicide attempt. After this incident, the thought of suicide became hateful to him.
Nikolai Gumilyov. , M. V. Farmakovsky (1873-1946)
In May 1909, Gumilyov came to Anya in Lustdorf, where she then lived, caring for her sick mother, and was again refused. But in November, she suddenly - unexpectedly - gave in to his persuasion. They met in Kyiv at the artistic evening "Island of Arts". Until the end of the evening, Gumilyov did not leave Ani for a single step - and she finally agreed to become his wife.
Nikolai Gumilyov, Olga Lyudvigovna Della-Vos-Kardovskaya, 1909
They got married on April 25, 1910 in Nikolskaya Slobodka near Kiev. Akhmatova's relatives considered the marriage obviously doomed to failure - and none of them came to the wedding, which deeply offended her.
Church in Nikolskaya Sloboda near Kiev, where N. Gumilyov and A. Gorenko got married.
Gorenko family. 1909
From left to right: Anna, Andrey (brother), Inna Erazmovna (mother), Victor (brother), Iya (sister).
After the wedding, the Gumilevs left for Paris. Here she meets Amedeo Modigliani, then an unknown artist who makes many portraits of her. Only one of them survived - the rest died in the blockade. Something similar to an affair even begins between them - but as Akhmatova herself recalls, they had too little time for anything serious to happen.
Portrait of Modigliani
Akhmatova and Modigliani. At the unfinished portrait, Natalia Tretyakova
At the end of June 1910, the Gumilyovs returned to Russia and settled in Tsarskoye Selo. Gumilyov introduced Anna to his poet friends. As one of them recalls, when it became known about Gumilev's marriage, at first no one knew who the bride was. Then they found out: an ordinary woman ... That is, not a black woman, not an Arab, not even a Frenchwoman, as one might expect, knowing Gumilyov's exotic preferences. Having met Anna, we realized - an extraordinary ...
Anna Akhmatova. 1910s
No matter how strong the feelings were, no matter how stubborn the courtship was, but soon after the wedding, Gumilyov began to be burdened by family ties. On September 25, he again leaves for Abyssinia. Akhmatova, left to herself, plunged headlong into poetry. When Gumilyov returned to Russia at the end of March 1911, he asked his wife, who met him at the station: "Did you write?" she nodded. "Then read!" - and Anya showed him what she had written. He said, "Good." And since that time began to treat her work with great respect.
N.S. Gumilyov. Portrait by M. Farmakovsky
In the spring of 1911, the Gumilyovs again went to Paris, then spent the summer at the estate of Gumilyov's mother, Slepnevo, near Bezhetsk in the Tver province.
Manor house of the Gumilyovs in Slepnev
Memorial Akhmatov's room in the Slepnev house, opened in June 1987. (Transferred to the village of Gradishchi in 1935)
1911 A. Akhmatova (second from right) in Slepnev.
In the autumn, when the couple returned to Tsarskoe Selo, Gumilyov and his comrades decided to organize an association of young poets, calling it the "Poets' Workshop". Soon Gumilyov, on the basis of the Workshop, founded the movement of acmeism, opposed to symbolism. There were six followers of acmeism: Gumilyov, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Gorodetsky, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zenkevich and Vladimir Narbut.
Gumilyov and Akhmatova in 1913 at a literary evening (in the top row 4th and 5th from the left)
(From the archive of O. E. Kestner, provided by K. Finkelstein, USA)
The term "acmeism" comes from the Greek "acme" - the peak, the highest degree of perfection. But many noted the consonance of the name of the new movement with the name of Akhmatova.
Akhmatova and Gumilyov in Tsarskoye Selo
In the spring of 1912, the first collection of Akhmatova's "Evening" was published, with a circulation of only 300 copies. Criticism met him very favorably. Many of the poems in this collection were written during Gumilyov's travels in Africa. The young poetess became very famous. Glory literally fell upon her. They tried to imitate her - many poetesses appeared who wrote poems "under Akhmatova" - they began to be called "podakhmatovki".
Anna Akhmatova with a friend in Italy 1912
In a short time, Akhmatova from a simple, eccentric, laughing girl became that majestic, proud, regal Akhmatova, who was remembered by everyone who knew her. And after her portraits began to be published in magazines - and they painted her a lot, and many - they began to imitate her appearance: the famous bangs and the "false-classic" shawl appeared in every second woman.
C.A. Sorin. 1914
In the spring of 1912, when the Gumilyovs went on a trip to Italy and Switzerland, Anna was already pregnant. She spends the summer with her mother, and Gumilev - in Slepnev.
The son of Akhmatova and Gumilyov, Lev, was born on October 1, 1912. Almost immediately, Nikolai's mother, Anna Ivanovna, took him to her place, and Anya did not resist too much. As a result, Leva lived with his grandmother for almost sixteen years, seeing his parents only occasionally ...
N.S. Gumilyov, Lev Gumilyov, A.A. Akhmatova. Tsarskoye Selo.
Lev Gumilyov with his mother Anna Akhmatova and grandmother
Already a few months after the birth of his son, in the early spring of 1913, Gumilyov set off on his last trip to Africa - as head of an expedition organized by the Academy of Sciences.
In his absence, Anna leads an active social life. A recognized beauty, an adored poet, she literally bathes in glory. Artists draw her, comrades in the poetic workshop dedicate poems to her, fans overcome her ...
At the beginning of 1914, the second collection of Akhmatova's Rosary was published. Although critics took it somewhat cool - Akhmatova was blamed for the fact that she repeats herself - the collection was a resounding success. Even despite the wartime, it was reprinted four times.
Akhmatova was universally recognized as one of the greatest poets of that time. She was constantly surrounded by crowds of admirers. Gumilyov even told her: "Anya, more than five is indecent!" She was worshiped for her talent, and for her mind, and for her beauty.
Anna Akhmatova / Tatyana Krasovskaya / drawing
She was friends with Blok, an affair with which she was stubbornly attributed (the reason for this was the exchange of poems that were published), with Mandelstam (who was not only one of her closest friends, but in those years tried to court her - however, unsuccessfully), Pasternak (according to her, Pasternak proposed to her seven times, although he was not truly in love).
Alexander Blok Osip Mandelstam
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
One of the people closest to her then was Nikolai Nedobrovo, who wrote an article about her work in 1915, which Akhmatova herself considered the best of what had been written about her in her entire life. Nedobrovo was desperately in love with Akhmatova.
In 1914, Nedobrovo introduced Akhmatova to his best friend, poet and artist Boris Anrep. Anrep, who lived and studied in Europe, returned to his homeland to participate in the war. A stormy romance began between them, and soon Boris ousted Nedobrovo both from her heart and from her poems. Nedobrovo took this very hard and broke up with Anrep forever. Although Anna and Boris rarely managed to meet, this love was one of the strongest in Akhmatova's life. Before the final departure to the front, Boris presented her with a throne cross, which he found in a destroyed church in Galicia.
Anrep Boris Vasilyevich (Boris von Anrep)
Gumilyov also left for the front. In the spring of 1915, he was wounded, and Akhmatova constantly visited him in the hospital. She spent the summer, as usual, in Slepnev - there she wrote most of the poems for the next collection. Her father died in August. By this time, she herself was seriously ill - tuberculosis.
Doctors advised her to immediately leave for the south. She lives in Sevastopol for some time, visits Nedobrovo in Bakhchisarai - as it turned out, this was their last meeting; in 1919 he died. In December, doctors allowed Akhmatova to return to St. Petersburg, where she again continues to meet with Anrep. Meetings were rare, but Anna in love waited all the more for them.
In 1916, Boris left for England - he was going for a month and a half, stayed for a year and a half. Before leaving, he visited Nedobrovo with his wife, who then had Akhmatova. They said goodbye and he left. In parting, they exchanged rings. He returned on the eve of the February Revolution. A month later, Boris, at the risk of his life, under bullets, crossed the Neva ice - to tell Anna that he was leaving for England forever.
Over the following years, she received only a few letters from him. In England, Anrep became known as a mosaic artist. On one of his mosaics, he depicted Anna - he chose her as a model for the figure of compassion. The next time - and the last - they saw each other only in 1965, in Paris.
Saint Anna. Mullingar, Ireland
Most of the poems from the collection The White Flock, published in 1917, are dedicated to Boris Anrep.
Meanwhile, Gumilyov, although he is at the front - for his valor he was awarded the St. George Cross - leads an active literary life. He publishes a lot, constantly delivers critical articles. In the summer of the 17th, he ended up in London, and then in Paris. Gumilyov returned to Russia in April 1918.
The next day, Akhmatova asked him for a divorce, saying that she was marrying Vladimir Shileiko.
Vladimir Kazimirovich Shileiko
Vladimir Kazimirovich Shileiko was a well-known assyrologist, as well as a poet. The fact that Akhmatova would marry this ugly, completely unsuitable for life, insanely jealous person was a complete surprise to everyone who knew her. As she later said, she was attracted by the opportunity to be useful to a great man, as well as the fact that there would be no rivalry with Shileiko that she had with Gumilyov. Akhmatova, having moved to him in the Fountain House, completely subordinated herself to his will: for hours she wrote his translations of Assyrian texts under his dictation, cooked for him, chopped firewood, made translations for him. He literally kept her under lock and key, not allowing her to go anywhere, forced her to burn all the letters received unopened, and did not allow her to write poetry.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova.
Her friend, composer Arthur Lurie, with whom she became friends back in 1914, helped her. Under his leadership, Shileiko, as if to treat sciatica, was taken to the hospital, where they were kept for a month. During this time, Akhmatova entered the service in the library of the Agronomic Institute - they gave firewood and a government apartment. When Shileiko was released from the hospital, Akhmatova invited him to move in with her. There, Akhmatova herself was already the mistress, and Shileiko calmed down. They finally parted in the summer of 1921.
Then one funny circumstance was discovered: when Akhmatova moved in with him, Shileiko promised to formalize their marriage himself - good, then you just had to make an entry in the house book. And when they got divorced, Lurie, at the request of Akhmatova, went to the house committee to cancel the record - and it turned out that she never happened.
Many years later, she laughingly explained the reasons for this absurd union: "It's all Gumilyov and Lozinsky, they repeated in one voice - an Assyrian, an Egyptian! Well, I agreed."
From Shileiko Akhmatova moved to her old friend, dancer Olga Glebova-Sudeikina - the ex-wife of the artist Sergei Sudeikin, one of the founders of the famous Stray Dog, whose star was the beautiful Olga. Lurie, whom Akhmatova resigned for being frivolous, became friends with Olga, and soon they left for Paris.
Anna Akhmatova and Olga Glebova-Sudeikina
In August 1921, Alexander Blok died. At his funeral, Akhmatova learned terrible news - Gumilyov was arrested in the so-called Tagantsev case. Two weeks later he was shot. His only fault was that he knew about the impending conspiracy, but did not inform.
In the same August, Anna's brother Andrei Gorenko committed suicide in Greece.
Andrey Gorenko (older brother of Akhmatova)
Impressions from these deaths resulted in Akhmatova's collection of poems "Plantain", which then, supplemented, became known as "Anno Domini MCMXXI".
After this collection, Akhmatova did not release collections for many years, only individual poems. The new regime did not favor her work - for intimacy, apoliticality and "noble roots". Even the opinion of Alexandra Kollontai - in one of her articles she said that Akhmatova's poetry is attractive to young workers in that it truthfully depicts how badly a man treats a woman - did not save Akhmatova from critical persecution. A series of articles branded Akhmatova's poetry as harmful because she writes nothing about work, the team and the struggle for a brighter future.
At this time, she was left practically alone - all her friends either died or emigrated. Akhmatova herself considered emigration completely unacceptable for herself.
Printing became more and more difficult. In 1925, an unofficial ban was placed on her name. It has not been published for 15 years.
In the early spring of 1925, Akhmatova again had an exacerbation of tuberculosis.
L.N. Gumilyov and A.A. Akhmatova in the Marble Palace (1926)
When she was in a sanatorium in Tsarskoye Selo - together with Mandelstam's wife Nadezhda Yakovlevna - Nikolai Nikolaevich Punin, a historian and art critic, constantly visited her. About a year later, Akhmatova agreed to move in with him at the Fountain House.
"Fountain House"
Punin was very handsome - everyone said that he looked like a young Tyutchev. He worked in the Hermitage, was engaged in modern graphics. He loved Akhmatova very much - although in his own way.
Anna Akhmatova and N.N. Punin. Leningrad. Fountain House. 1927. Photo by P. Luknitsky
Punin officially remained married. He shared an apartment with his ex-wife Anna Arens and their daughter Irina. Although Punin and Akhmatova had a separate room, they all dined together, and when Arens left for work, Akhmatova looked after Irina. The situation was extremely tense.
Anna Akhmatova Anna Akhmatova in the Sphinx pose Anna Akhmatova
Unable to print poetry, Akhmatova delved into scientific work. She took up the study of Pushkin, became interested in the architecture and history of St. Petersburg. She helped Punin a lot in his research, translating French, English and Italian scientific works for him. In the summer of 1928, her son Leva moved to Akhmatova, who by that time was already 16 years old. The circumstances of his father's death prevented him from continuing his studies. It was hardly possible to attach him to a school where Nikolai Punin's brother Alexander was the director. Then Leo entered the Faculty of History of Leningrad University.
Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov
In 1930, Akhmatova tried to leave Punin, but he managed to convince her to stay by threatening suicide. Akhmatova stayed in
Fountain house, only briefly leaving it.
By this time, the extreme poverty of Akhmatova's life and clothes were already so conspicuous that they could not go unnoticed. Many found Akhmatova's special elegance in this. In any weather, she wore an old felt hat and a light coat. Only when one of her old friends died did Akhmatova put on the old fur coat bequeathed to her by the deceased and did not take it off until the war itself. Very thin, still with the same famous bangs, she knew how to impress, no matter how poor her clothes were, and walked around the house in bright red pajamas in a time when it was not yet accustomed to see a woman in trousers.
Everyone who knew her noted her unsuitability for everyday life. She didn't know how to cook and never cleaned up after herself. Money, things, even gifts from friends never stayed with her - almost immediately she distributed everything to those who, in her opinion, needed them more. She herself managed the bare minimum for many years - but even in poverty she remained a queen.
Yu.Annenkov. 1921-3
In 1934, Osip Mandelstam was arrested - Akhmatova at that moment was visiting him. A year later, after the murder of Kirov, Lev Gumilyov and Nikolai Punin were arrested. Akhmatova rushed to Moscow to work, she managed to send a letter to the Kremlin. They were soon released, but that was only the beginning.
Punin began to be clearly weary of his marriage to Akhmatova, who now, as it turned out, was also dangerous for him. He showed her his infidelity in every possible way, said that he was bored with her - and yet he did not let her leave. In addition, there was nowhere to go - Akhmatova did not have her own house ...
Summer 1936 in the Shervinsky estate. In the middle A.D. Shervinsky, to the right A.A. Akhmatova and S.V. Shervinsky
In March 1938, Lev Gumilyov was again arrested, and this time he spent seventeen months under investigation and was sentenced to death. But at this time, his judges were themselves repressed, and his sentence was replaced with exile.
In November of the same year, Akhmatova finally managed to break with Punin - but Akhmatova only moved to another room in the same apartment. She lived in extreme poverty, often making do with only tea and black bread. Every day she stood in endless queues to give her son a package. It was then, in line, that she began writing the Requiem cycle. The poems of the cycle were not written down for a very long time - they were kept in the memory of Akhmatova herself and several of her closest friends.
Anna Akhmatova, Petrov-Vodkin
Quite unexpectedly, in 1940, Akhmatova was allowed to publish. First, several separate poems were published, then he allowed the release of a whole collection of "From Six Books", which, however, mainly included selected poems from previous collections. Nevertheless, the book caused a stir: it was swept away from the shelves for several hours, people fought for the right to read it.
However, after a few months, the publication of the book was considered a mistake, it began to be withdrawn from libraries.
Anna Akhmatova at the Fountain House. 1940
When the war began, Akhmatova felt a new surge of strength. In September, during the heaviest bombings, she speaks on the radio with an appeal to the women of Leningrad. Together with everyone, she is on duty on the roofs, digging trenches around the city. At the end of September, by decision of the city party committee, she was evacuated from Leningrad by plane - ironically, now she was recognized as an important enough person to save ... Through Moscow, Kazan and Chistopol, Akhmatova ended up in Tashkent.
A.A. Osmerkin. 1939-1940
In Tashkent, she settled with Nadezhda Mandelstam, constantly communicated with Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya, made friends with Faina Ranevskaya, who lived nearby - they carried this friendship through their whole lives. Almost all Tashkent poems were about Leningrad - Akhmatova was very worried about her city, for everyone who stayed there. It was especially hard for her without her friend, Vladimir Georgievich Garshin.
Garshin, Vladimir Georgievich
After parting with Punin, he began to play a big role in the life of Akhmatova. By profession, a pathologist, Garshin was very concerned about her health, which Akhmatova, according to him, criminally neglected. Garshin was also married, his wife, a seriously ill woman, demanded his constant attention. But he was a very intelligent, educated, interesting interlocutor, and Akhmatova became very attached to him. In Tashkent, she received a letter from Garshin about the death of his wife. In another letter, Garshin asked her to marry him, and she accepted his offer. She even agreed to take his last name.
Diaz Silva Paola
In early 1944, Akhmatova left Tashkent. First, she came to Moscow, where she performed at an evening arranged in the hall of the Polytechnic Museum. The reception was so stormy that she was even frightened. When she appeared, the hall stood up. They say that when Stalin found out about this, he asked: "Who organized the uprising?"
Anna Akhmatova, N.A. Tyrsa. Anna Akhmatova
She told all her friends that she was going to Leningrad to her husband, she dreamed of how she would live with him ... And the more terrible was the blow that awaited her there.
Garshin, who met her on the platform, asked: "And where to take you?" Akhmatova was dumbfounded. As it turned out, he, without saying a word to anyone, married a nurse. Garshin destroyed all her hopes of finding a home that she had not had for a long time. She never forgave him for this.
Subsequently, Akhmatova said that, apparently, Garshin went crazy from hunger and the horrors of the blockade.
Garshin died in 1956. On the day of his death, the brooch that he once presented to Akhmatova split in half ...
This was the tragedy of Akhmatova: next to her, a strong woman, there were almost always weak men who tried to shift their problems onto her, and there was never a person who could help her cope with her own troubles ...
Anna Akhmatova, V Mikhailov
After returning from Tashkent, her demeanor changed - it became simpler, calmer, and at the same time more distant. Akhmatova abandoned her famous bangs, after suffering typhus in Tashkent, she began to gain weight. It seemed that Akhmatova was reborn from the ashes for a new life. In addition, it was again recognized by the authorities. For her patriotic poems, she was awarded the medal "For the Defense of Leningrad". Her research on Pushkin, a large selection of poems, were being prepared for publication. In 1945, to the great joy of Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov returned. From the exile, which he had been serving since 1939, he managed to get to the front. Mother and son lived together. It seemed that life was getting better.
Berlin was the last of those who left a mark on Akhmatova's heart. When Berlin himself was asked if they had something with Akhmatova, he said: “I can’t decide how best to answer ...”
On August 14, 1946, the resolution of the Central Committee of the CPSU "On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad" was issued. The magazines were stigmatized for lending their pages to two ideologically harmful writers, Zoshchenko and Akhmatova. Less than a month later, Akhmatova was expelled from the Writers' Union, deprived of ration cards, her book, which was in print, was destroyed.
According to Akhmatova, many writers who wanted to return to Russia after the war changed their minds after the decision. Thus, she considered this decision the beginning of the Cold War. She was as absolutely convinced of this as that the Cold War itself was caused by her meeting with Isaiah Berlin, which she found fatal, of cosmic significance. She was firmly convinced that all further troubles were caused by her.
In 1956, when he was again in Russia, she refused to meet with him - she did not want to again incur the wrath of the authorities ...
Anna Akhmatova and Olga Berggolts. Leningrad, 1947
In 1949, Nikolai Punin was again arrested, and then Lev Gumilyov. Lev, whose only crime was that he was the son of his parents, was to spend seven years in the camp, and Punin was destined to die there.
In 1950, Akhmatova, breaking herself, in the name of saving her son, wrote a cycle of poems "Glory to the World", glorifying Stalin. However, Leo returned only in 1956 - and then, it took a long time to get his release ... He left the camp with the conviction that his mother did nothing to alleviate his plight - after all, she, so famous, could not have been refused! While they lived together, their relationship was very strained, then, when Leo began to live separately, they almost completely stopped.
He became a famous orientalist. He became interested in the history of the East while in exile in those parts. His works are still considered among the most important in historical science. Akhmatova was very proud of her son.
Anna Akhmatova with her son Lev Gumilyov
Since 1949, Akhmatova began to translate - Korean poets, Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore, Rubens' letters ... Previously, she refused to do translations, believing that they take time from her own poems. Now I had to - it gave both earnings and a relatively official status.
In 1954, Akhmatova accidentally earned herself forgiveness. The delegation from Oxford wished to meet the disgraced Zoshchenko and Akhmatova. She was asked what she thought about the decision - and she, sincerely believing that it was not the business of foreigners who did not understand the true state of affairs to ask such questions, answered simply that she agreed with the decision. No more questions were asked of her. Zoshchenko, on the other hand, began to explain something at length - and by this he hurt himself even more.
Ardov B. V. Portrait of A. A. Akhmatova. Early 1960-
The ban on the name of Akhmatova was again lifted. She was even allocated from the Writers' Union - although Akhmatova was expelled from it, as a translator she could be considered a "writer" - a summer house in the writers' village of Komarovo near Leningrad; she called this house the Booth. And in 1956 - largely due to the efforts of Alexander Fadeev - Lev Gumilyov was released.
Anna Akhmatova in Komarovo
The last ten years of Akhmatova's life were completely different from previous years. Her son was free, she finally got the opportunity to publish. She continued to write - and wrote a lot, as if in a hurry to express everything that she was not allowed to say before. Now only illnesses interfered: there were serious problems with the heart, because of her fullness it was difficult for her to walk. Until her last years, Akhmatova was regal and majestic, wrote love poems and warned young people who came to her: “Just don’t fall in love with me! I don’t need it anymore
