Akhmatova’s Life in Russia
The
history of 20th Century Russia is not only one of multiple political
crises, but also of an unprecedented cultural catastrophe. Between 1917 and
1937, the Bolsheviks destroyed not just the Russian political system, but an entire
civilisation, everything from its manners and its habits to its
stamp-collecting clubs and its fashion designers. A generation of cultural and
social leaders died or emigrated. Most of those who stayed were imprisoned,
impoverished, or otherwise silenced. As a result, the books people read and
wrote before 1917, the pictures they painted and the ideas they thought
differed from what Russians read, wrote, painted or thought in the years
afterwards.
There
were, however, a tiny number of exceptions, a small group of creative people
who were neither destroyed by the revolution nor completely transformed by it. One of these, and famously so even in her lifetime, was the poet
Anna Akhmatova. Born in 1889, Akhmatova had already won fame for her
verse even before the revolution. Her early poetry dealt almost entirely with
concrete matters of male-female relations, often describing, as this poem does,
the atmosphere in the cafés and artistic salons she then frequented:
We
are all boozers here, and sleep around.
Together
we make up a desolate crowd.
Even
the painted birds and flowers on the walls
Seem
to be longing for the clouds.
Born
Anna Andreevna Gorenko, Akhmatova’s parents were neither especially distinguished
nor artistic. Fearing that her poetry would embarrass him, her father, a
provincial naval engineer, insisted that she write under another name. Although
her Tatar pseudonym was borrowed from one of her mother’s ancestors, it was
also alliterative (‘Anna Andreeva Akhmatova’) and
exotic to the Russian ear. Joseph Brodsky, to whom Akhmatova served as a mentor
late in her life, called that choice of name ‘her first poem’.
But
what was most extraordinary about this act of self-creation was how utterly
impossible it would have been to carry it out a few years later. After all,
almost none of the personal qualities valued by Akhmatova’s
But
although many assumed she was dead, Akhmatova did not disappear along with her
reputation. After Gumilyov was shot by the Bolsheviks
in 1921, she began to live an extraordinarily itinerant, homeless existence,
sleeping on sofas and floors around
Above
all, Akhmatova suffered from the arrest of her son, Lev Gumilyov,
who was later to blame her directly for his fate. He
believed it was her fame which had led to his imprisonment for more than a
decade in the Gulag. At the same time, he believed she had failed to use her
connections to get him released, and accused her of relying on his misfortunes
to inspire her poetry. At one point, he told her that ‘for you it would have
been even better if I had died in the camps’, meaning it would have been better
for her poetry. Although Lev’s fate and his terrible resentment brought
Akhmatova pain, there is some strength to the argument that Lev’s attacks hurt
his mother precisely because there was some truth to them.
But
through all of her personal and political troubles Akhmatova maintained contact
with other ‘relics’, such as the poet Osip Mandelstam
and his wife Nadezhda, and kept writing. As before,
she preferred to describe everyday experiences and emotions, staying away from
lofty metaphysics. But because everyday reality had changed, so did the tone of
her poetry. No longer the ‘mocker, delight of your friends, hearts’ thief’, as
she bitterly referred to herself in one later poem, she wrote instead about her
experiences of war, Stalinism, and disappointment. Probably her best known
work, Requiem, was indeed inspired by Lev’s arrest. It begins with a famous
passage, entitled ‘Instead of a Preface’:
‘In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror I spent 17 months waiting in line outside the
prison in
As
a result of this poem and many others, Akhmatova’s
reputation began to come back, with a vengeance. Although she never did achieve
financial stability - indeed she went on living with Punin’s
wife and daughter even after his death - by the time of her own death Akhmatova
was one of the best known literary figures in Russia and her poetry was and
still is loved and admired across Russia, precisely because it springs from a
pre-revolutionary, deeply individual sensibility.
Anne
Applebaum
The
Spectator – July 2nd 2005