One of the most talented poets of the Silver Age, Anna Akhmatova lived a long life full of both bright moments and tragic events. She was married three times, but she did not experience happiness in any marriage. She witnessed two world wars, during each of which she experienced an unprecedented creative upsurge. She had a difficult relationship with her son, who became a political repressant, and until the end of her life, the poetess believed that she preferred creativity to love for him ...
Biography
Anna Andreeva Gorenko (this is the real name of the poetess) was born on June 11 (June 23, old style), 1889 in Odessa. Her father, Andrei Antonovich Gorenko, was a retired captain of the second rank, after graduating maritime service received the rank of collegiate assessor. The mother of the poetess, Inna Stogova, was an intelligent, well-read woman who made friends with representatives of the creative elite of Odessa. However, Akhmatova will not have childhood memories of the “pearl by the sea” - when she was one year old, the Gorenko family moved to Tsarskoe Selo near St. Petersburg.
From childhood, Anna was taught French and secular etiquette, which was familiar to any girl from an intelligent family. Anna received her education at the Tsarskoye Selo Women's Gymnasium, where she met her first husband Nikolai Gumilyov and wrote her first poems. Having met Anna at one of the gala evenings at the gymnasium, Gumilyov was fascinated by her and since then the fragile dark-haired girl has become the constant muse of his work.
Akhmatova composed her first verse at the age of 11 and after that she began to actively improve herself in the art of versification. The poet's father considered this occupation frivolous, therefore he forbade her to sign her creations with the name Gorenko. Then Anna took the maiden name of her great-grandmother - Akhmatova. However, very soon her father completely ceased to influence her work - her parents divorced, and Anna and her mother moved first to Evpatoria, then to Kiev, where from 1908 to 1910 the poetess studied at the Kiev Women's Gymnasium. In 1910 Akhmatova married her longtime admirer Gumilyov. Nikolai Stepanovich, who was already quite famous person in poetic circles, contributed to the publication of his wife's poetic developments.
Akhmatova's first poems began to be published in various publications since 1911, and in 1912 her first full-fledged poetry collection, Evening, was published. In 1912, Anna gave birth to a son, Leo, and in 1914 she became famous - the collection "Rosary" received good feedback critics, Akhmatova began to be considered a fashionable poetess. Gumilyov's patronage by that time ceases to be necessary, and discord sets in in the relationship of the spouses. In 1918, Akhmatova divorced Gumilyov and married the poet and scientist Vladimir Shileiko. However, this marriage was also short-lived - in 1922 the poetess divorced him too, in order to marry six months later with art critic Nikolai Punin. Paradox: subsequently, Punin will be arrested almost at the same time as Akhmatova's son, Lev, but Punin will be released, and Lev will go through the stage. Akhmatova's first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, would already be dead by that time: he would be shot in August 1921.
The last published collection of Anna Andreevna dates back to 1924. After that, her poetry falls into the field of view of the NKVD as "provocative and anti-communist." The poetess is very upset by the inability to publish, she writes a lot "on the table", the motives of her poetry change from romantic to social. After the arrest of her husband and son, Akhmatov began work on the poem "Requiem". The "fuel" for the creative frenzy was the soul-exhausting experiences for the native people. The poetess was well aware that under the current government this creation would never see the light of day, and in order to somehow remind readers of herself, Akhmatova wrote a number of “sterile” poems from the point of view of ideology, which, together with censored old poems, make up the collection “Out of Six books, published in 1940.
Akhmatova spent the entire Second World War in the rear, in Tashkent. Almost immediately after the fall of Berlin, the poetess returned to Moscow. However, there she was no longer considered a "fashionable" poetess: in 1946, her work was criticized at a meeting of the Writers' Union, and soon Akhmatova was expelled from the SSP. Soon another blow falls on Anna Andreevna: the second arrest of Lev Gumilyov. For the second time, the son of the poetess was sentenced to ten years in the camps. All this time, Akhmatova tried to pull him out, scribbled requests to the Politburo, but no one listened to them. Lev Gumilyov himself, not knowing anything about the efforts of his mother, decided that she had not made enough efforts to help him, so after his release he moved away from her.
In 1951, Akhmatova was reinstated in the Union Soviet writers and she gradually returns to active creative work. In 1964 she was awarded the prestigious Italian literary prize"Etna-Torina" and she is allowed to get it, since the times of total repressions have passed, and Akhmatova has ceased to be considered an anti-communist poetess. In 1958, the collection "Poems" was published, in 1965 - "The Run of Time". Then, in 1965, a year before her death, Akhmatova received her doctorate from Oxford University.
The main achievements of Akhmatova
- 1912 - a collection of poems "Evening"
- 1914-1923 - a series of poetry collections "Rosary", consisting of 9 editions.
- 1917 - collection " white flock».
- 1922 - collection "Anno Domini MCMXXI".
- 1935-1940 - writing the poem "Requiem"; first publication - 1963, Tel Aviv.
- 1940 - collection "From six books".
- 1961 - collection of selected poems, 1909-1960.
- 1965 - the last lifetime collection, "The Run of Time".
The main dates of the biography of Akhmatova
- June 11 (23), 1889 - the birth of A.A. Akhmatova.
- 1900-1905 - studying at the Tsarskoye Selo Women's Gymnasium.
- 1906 - moving to Kyiv.
- 1910 - marriage to N. Gumilyov.
- March 1912 - the release of the first collection "Evening".
- September 18, 1913 - the birth of the son of Leo.
- 1914 - the release of the second collection of "Rosary".
- 1918 - divorce from N. Gumilyov, marriage to V. Shileiko.
- 1922 - marriage to N. Punin.
- 1935 - moving to Moscow in connection with the arrest of his son.
- 1940 - publication of the collection "From Six Books".
- October 28, 1941 - evacuation to Tashkent.
- May 1943 - publication of a collection of poems in Tashkent.
- May 15, 1945 - return to Moscow.
- Summer 1945 - moving to Leningrad.
- September 1, 1946 - A.A. Akhmatova from the Union of Writers.
- November 1949 - the second arrest of Lev Gumilyov.
- May 1951 - restoration in the Writers' Union.
- December 1964 - receiving the Etna Torina Prize
- March 5, 1966 - death.
- Throughout her conscious life, Akhmatova kept a diary, excerpts from which were published in 1973. On the eve of her death, going to bed, the poetess wrote that she was sorry that her Bible was not here, in the cardiological sanatorium. Apparently, Anna Andreevna had a premonition that the thread of her earthly life was about to break.
- Akhmatova's "Poem Without a Hero" contains the lines: "clear voice: I'm ready for death." These words sounded in life too: they were spoken by Akhmatova's friend and colleague in the Silver Age, Osip Mandelstam, when they, along with the poetess, walked along Tverskoy Boulevard.
- After the arrest of Lev Gumilyov, Akhmatova, along with hundreds of other mothers, went to the infamous Kresty prison. Once, one of the women, tormented by expectation, saw the poetess and recognized her and asked, “Can you describe THAT?”. Akhmatova answered in the affirmative, and it was after this incident that she began working on Requiem.
- Before her death, Akhmatova nevertheless became close to her son Leo, who long years harbored an undeserved grudge against her. After the death of the poetess, Lev Nikolayevich took part in the construction of the monument together with his students (Lev Gumilyov was a doctor of Leningrad University). There was not enough material, and the gray-haired doctor, along with the students, wandered the streets in search of stones.
One of the brightest, most original and talented poetesses of the Silver Age, Anna Gorenko, better known to her admirers as Akhmatova, lived a long and tragic life. This proud and at the same time fragile woman witnessed two revolutions and two world wars. Her soul was scorched by the repressions and deaths of the closest people. The biography of Anna Akhmatova is worthy of a novel or a film adaptation, which was repeatedly undertaken by both her contemporaries and a later generation of playwrights, directors and writers.
Anna Gorenko was born in the summer of 1889 in the family of a hereditary nobleman and retired naval engineer Andrei Andreevich Gorenko and Inna Erazmovna Stogova, who belonged to the creative elite of Odessa. The girl was born in the southern part of the city, in a house located in the Bolshoi Fountain area. She was the third oldest of six children.
As soon as the baby was a year old, her parents moved to St. Petersburg, where the head of the family received the rank of collegiate assessor and became an official of the State Control for special assignments. The family settled in Tsarskoye Selo, with which all childhood memories of Akhmatova are connected. The nanny took the girl for a walk in Tsarskoye Selo Park and other places that she still remembered. Children were taught secular etiquette. Anya learned to read from the alphabet, and French learned in early childhood, listening to how the teacher teaches it to older children.
The future poetess received her education at the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium. Anna Akhmatova began writing poetry, according to her, at the age of 11. It is noteworthy that poetry for her was opened not by the works of Alexander Pushkin and, whom she fell in love with a little later, but by the majestic odes of Gabriel Derzhavin and the poem "Frost, Red Nose", which her mother recited.
Young Gorenko fell in love with Petersburg forever and considered it the main city of her life. She was very homesick for his streets, parks and the Neva when she had to leave with her mother to Evpatoria, and then to Kyiv. Parents divorced when the girl was 16 years old.
She finished her penultimate class at home, in Evpatoria, and finished the last class at the Kyiv Fundukleevskaya gymnasium. After completing her studies, Gorenko becomes a student of the Higher Women's Courses, choosing the Faculty of Law for herself. But if Latin and the history of law aroused a keen interest in her, then jurisprudence seemed boring to the point of yawning, so the girl continued her education in her beloved St. Petersburg, at N. P. Raev’s historical and literary courses for women.
Poetry
In the Gorenko family, no one was engaged in poetry, "as far as the eye sees around." Only on the line of Inna Stogova's mother was a distant relative Anna Bunina, a translator and poetess, found. The father did not approve of his daughter's passion for poetry and asked not to shame his last name. Therefore, Anna Akhmatova never signed her poems with her real name. In her family tree, she found a Tatar great-grandmother, who allegedly descended from the Horde Khan Akhmat, and thus turned into Akhmatova.
In her early youth, when the girl studied at the Mariinsky Gymnasium, she met a talented young man, later the famous poet Nikolai Gumilyov. Both in Evpatoria and in Kyiv, the girl corresponded with him. In the spring of 1910, they got married in the St. Nicholas Church, which still stands today in the village of Nikolskaya Slobodka near Kiev. At that time, Gumilyov was already an accomplished poet, known in literary circles.
The newlyweds went to celebrate their honeymoon in Paris. This was Akhmatova's first meeting with Europe. Upon his return, the husband introduced his talented wife to the literary and artistic circles of St. Petersburg, and she was immediately noticed. At first, everyone was struck by her unusual, majestic beauty and regal posture. Swarthy, with a distinct hump on her nose, the "Horde" appearance of Anna Akhmatova conquered the literary bohemia.
Anna Akhmatova and Amadeo Modigliani. Artist Natalia Tretyakova Soon, St. Petersburg writers find themselves captivated by the creativity of this original beauty. Anna Akhmatova writes poetry about love, namely this great feeling she sang all her life, during the crisis of symbolism. Young poets try themselves in other trends that have come into fashion - futurism and acmeism. Gumilyova-Akhmatova becomes famous as an acmeist.
1912 becomes the year of a breakthrough in her biography. In this memorable year, not only the only son of the poetess, Lev Gumilyov, was born, but also her first collection entitled “Evening” was published in a small edition. In her declining years, a woman who has gone through all the hardships of the time in which she had to be born and create, will call these first creations "the poor verses of the most empty girl." But then Akhmatova's poems found their first admirers and brought her fame.
After 2 years, the second collection, called "Rosary", is released. And it was already a real triumph. Admirers and critics enthusiastically speak of her work, elevating her to the rank of the most fashionable poetess of her time. Akhmatova no longer needs her husband's protection. Her name sounds even louder than the name of Gumilyov. In the revolutionary 1917, Anna published her third book, The White Flock. It comes out in an impressive circulation of 2,000 copies. The couple parted ways in the turbulent 1918.
And in the summer of 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was shot. Akhmatova was very upset by the death of her son's father and the man who introduced her to the world of poetry.
Anna Akhmatova reads her poems to students Since the mid-1920s, hard times have come for the poetess. She is under the close attention of the NKVD. It is not printed. Akhmatova's poems are written "on the table." Many of them have been lost in transit. The last collection was published in 1924. "Provocative", "decadent", "anti-communist" poems - such a stigma on creativity cost Anna Andreevna dearly.
The new stage of her work is closely connected with soul-exhausting experiences for her loved ones. First of all, for my son Lyovushka. In the late autumn of 1935, the first wake-up call sounded for a woman: her second husband, Nikolai Punin, and son were arrested at the same time. They are released in a few days, but there will be no more peace in the life of the poetess. From that moment on, she will feel the ring of persecution tightening around her.
After 3 years, the son was arrested. He was sentenced to 5 years in labor camps. In the same terrible year, the marriage of Anna Andreevna and Nikolai Punin ended. The emaciated mother carries the transfers to her son in the Crosses. In the same years, the famous "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova was published.
In order to make life easier for her son and pull him out of the camps, the poetess, just before the war, in 1940 publishes the collection “From Six Books”. Here are collected old censored poems and new ones, "correct" from the point of view of the ruling ideology.
Anna Andreevna spent the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in evacuation, in Tashkent. Immediately after the victory, she returned to the liberated and destroyed Leningrad. From there he soon moved to Moscow.
But the clouds that barely parted overhead - the son was released from the camps - are gathering again. In 1946, her work was crushed by next meeting Union of Writers, and in 1949 Lev Gumilyov was arrested again. This time he was sentenced to 10 years. The unfortunate woman is broken. She writes requests and letters of repentance to the Politburo, but no one hears her.
Elderly Anna Akhmatova After leaving another imprisonment, the relationship between mother and son remained tense for many years: Leo believed that his mother put creativity in the first place, which she loved more than him. He moves away from her.
Black clouds over the head of this famous, but deeply unhappy woman disperse only at the end of her life. In 1951, she was reinstated in the Writers' Union. Akhmatova's poems are being published. In the mid-1960s, Anna Andreevna received a prestigious Italian award and released a new collection, The Run of Time. And the well-known poetess Oxford University awards a doctoral degree.
Akhmatova "booth" in Komarovo At the end of years, the world-famous poet and writer finally got his own home. The Leningrad Literary Fund allocated her a modest wooden dacha in Komarovo. It was a tiny house, which consisted of a veranda, a corridor and one room.
All the “furnishings” are a hard bed, where bricks were stacked as legs, a table built from a door, a drawing by Modigliani on the wall and an old icon that once belonged to the first husband.
Personal life
This regal woman had amazing power over men. In her youth, Anna was fantastically flexible. They say that she could easily bend back, reaching the floor with her head. Even the ballerinas of the Mariinsky Theater were amazed by this incredible natural plasticity. She also had amazing eyes that changed color. Some said that Akhmatova's eyes were gray, others claimed that they were green, and still others claimed that they were sky blue.
Nikolai Gumilyov fell in love with Anna Gorenko at first sight. But the girl was crazy about Vladimir Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a student who did not pay any attention to her. The young schoolgirl suffered and even tried to hang herself on a nail. Luckily, he slipped out of the clay wall.
Anna Akhmatova with her husband and son It seems that the daughter inherited her mother's failures. Marriage with none of the three official husbands did not bring happiness to the poetess. The personal life of Anna Akhmatova was chaotic and somewhat disheveled. They cheated on her, she cheated. The first husband carried his love for Anna through all his life. short life, but at the same time he had an illegitimate child, which everyone knew about. In addition, Nikolai Gumilyov did not understand why his beloved wife, in his opinion, was not at all a brilliant poetess, causes such delight and even exaltation among young people. Anna Akhmatova's poems about love seemed to him too long and pompous.
In the end, they parted.
After parting, Anna Andreevna had no end to her fans. Count Valentin Zubov gave her armfuls of expensive roses and trembled at her mere presence, but the beauty gave preference to Nikolai Nedobrovo. However, Boris Anrepa soon replaced him.
The second marriage with Vladimir Shileiko tormented Anna so much that she dropped: “Divorce ... What a pleasant feeling it is!”
A year after the death of her first husband, she parted ways with her second. Six months later, she marries for the third time. Nikolai Punin is an art critic. But personal life Anna Akhmatova did not work out with him either.
Punin, Deputy Commissar of Education Lunacharsky, who sheltered the homeless Akhmatova after a divorce, did not make her happy either. The new wife lived in an apartment with Punin's ex-wife and his daughter, donating money to a common cauldron for food. The son Leo, who came from his grandmother, was placed at night in a cold corridor and felt like an orphan, forever deprived of attention.
Anna Akhmatova's personal life was supposed to change after meeting with the pathologist Garshin, but just before the wedding, he allegedly dreamed of the late mother, who begged not to take the sorceress into the house. The marriage was cancelled.
Death
The death of Anna Akhmatova on March 5, 1966 seems to have shocked everyone. Although she was already 76 years old at that time. Yes, and she was sick for a long time and hard. The poetess died in a sanatorium near Moscow in Domodedovo. On the eve of her death, she asked to bring her New Testament, the texts of which she wanted to compare with the texts of the Qumran manuscripts.
The body of Akhmatova from Moscow hastened to be transported to Leningrad: the authorities did not want dissident unrest. She was buried at the Komarovsky cemetery. Before his death, the son and mother could not reconcile: they did not communicate for several years.
On the grave of his mother, Lev Gumilyov laid out a stone wall with a window, which was supposed to symbolize the wall in the Crosses, where she carried messages to him. At first, a wooden cross stood on the grave, as Anna Andreevna asked for. But in 1969 the cross appeared.
Monument to Anna Akhmatova and Marina Tsvetaeva in Odessa The Anna Akhmatova Museum is located in St. Petersburg on Avtovskaya Street. Another one was opened in the Fountain House, where she lived for 30 years. Later museums, commemorative plaques and bas-reliefs appeared in Moscow, Tashkent, Kyiv, Odessa and many other cities where the muse lived.
Poetry
- 1912 - "Evening"
- 1914 - "Rosary"
- 1922 - The White Pack
- 1921 - "Plantain"
- 1923 - "Anno Domini MCMXXI"
- 1940 - "From six books"
- 1943 - “Anna Akhmatova. Favorites»
- 1958 - Anna Akhmatova. Poems»
- 1963 - "Requiem"
- 1965 - The Run of Time
And not just a simple khan, but Akhmat, the last khan of the Golden Horde, a descendant of Genghis Khan. This popular myth began to be created by the poetess herself back in the late 1900s, when the need arose for a literary pseudonym (Akhmatova's real name was Gorenko). “And only a seventeen-year-old crazy girl could choose a Tatar surname for a Russian poetess ...” Lidia Chukovskaya recalled her words. However, such a move for the era of the Silver Age was not so reckless: time demanded artistic behavior from new writers, vivid biographies and sonorous names. In this sense, the name Anna Akhmatova perfectly met all the criteria (poetic - it created a rhythmic pattern, two-foot dactyl, and had an assonance to "a", and life-creating - it wore a veil of mystery).
As for the legend of the Tatar Khan, it was formed later. The real genealogy did not fit into the poetic legend, so Akhmatova transformed it. Here it is necessary to distinguish the biographical plan and the mythological one. The biographical one is that the Akhmatovs were indeed present in the family of the poetess: Praskovya Fedoseevna Akhmatova was a great-grandmother on her mother's side. In the poems, the line of kinship is a little closer (see the beginning of "Tales of the Black Ring": "I received gifts from my Tatar grandmother / There were rare gifts; / And why I was baptized, / She was bitterly angry"). The legendary plan is associated with the Horde princes. As the researcher Vadim Chernykh showed, Praskovya Akhmatova was not a Tatar princess, but a Russian noblewoman (“Akhmatova is an old noble family, apparently descended from serving Tatars, but Russified a long time ago”). There is no data on the origin of the Akhmatov family from Khan Akhmat or in general from the Khan's Genghisides family.
Myth two: Akhmatova was a recognized beauty
Anna Akhmatova. 1920s RGALI Many memoirs do contain admiring comments about the appearance of the young Akhmatova (“Among the poetesses ... Anna Akhmatova was most vividly remembered. Thin, tall, slender, with a proud turn of her small head, wrapped in a flowery shawl, Akhmatova looked like a gitan ... It was impossible to pass by her, without admiring her,” recalled Ariadna Tyrkova; “She was very beautiful, everyone on the street looked at her,” writes Nadezhda Chulkova).
Nevertheless, the closer people of the poetess assessed her as a woman not fabulously beautiful, but expressive, with memorable features and a particularly attractive charm. “... You can’t call her beautiful, / But all my happiness is in her,” Gumilev wrote about Akhmatova. Critic Georgy Adamovich recalled:
“Now, in the memories of her, she is sometimes called a beauty: no, she was not a beauty. But she was more than a beauty, better than a beauty. I have never seen a woman whose face and whole appearance everywhere, among any beauties, would stand out for its expressiveness, genuine spirituality, something that immediately attracted attention.
Akhmatova herself assessed herself as follows: "All my life I could look at will, from beauty to ugly."
Myth three: Akhmatova brought the fan to suicide, which she later described in verse
This is usually confirmed by a quote from Akhmatov’s poem “The High Vaults of the Church…”: “The high vaults of the church / Bluer than the firmament of heaven… / Forgive me, merry boy, / That I brought you death…”
Vsevolod Knyazev. 1900s poetrysilver.ru All this is true and not true at the same time. As the researcher Natalia Kraineva showed, Akhmatova really had “his own” suicide - Mikhail Lindeberg, who committed suicide because of an unhappy love for the poetess on December 22, 1911. But the poem "The High Vaults of the Church ..." was written in 1913 under the impression of the suicide of another young man, Vsevolod Knyazev, unhappily in love with Akhmatova's girlfriend, dancer Olga Glebova-Sudeikin. This episode will be repeated in other verses, for example, in "". In A Poem without a Hero, Akhmatova will make Knyazev's suicide one of the key episodes of the work. The commonality of the events that happened with her friends in the historiosophical concept of Akhmatova could subsequently be combined into one memory: it is not for nothing that a note with the name of Lindeberg and the date of his death appears on the margins of the autograph of the “ballet libretto” for “Poem”.
Myth four: Akhmatova was pursued by unhappy love
A similar conclusion suggests itself after reading almost any book of poems by the poetess. Along with the lyrical heroine, who leaves her beloved of her own free will, the poems also contain the lyrical mask of a woman suffering from unrequited love (“”, “”, “Today they didn’t bring me letters ...”, “In the evening", the cycle " Confusion", etc. d.). However, the lyrical outline of poetry books does not always reflect the author's biography: beloved poetesses Boris Anrep, Arthur Lurie, Nikolai Punin, Vladimir Garshin and others reciprocated her.
Myth five: Gumilyov is Akhmatova's only love
Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Punin in the courtyard of the Fountain House. Photo by Pavel Luknitsky. Leningrad, 1927 Tverskaya regional library them. A. M. Gorky Marriage of Akhmatova with the poet Nikolai Gumilyov. From 1918 to 1921, she was married to Assyriologist Vladimir Shileiko (they officially divorced in 1926), and from 1922 to 1938 she was in a civil marriage with art critic Nikolai Punin. The third, never formalized marriage, due to the specifics of the time, had its own strangeness: after parting, the spouses continued to live in the same communal apartment (in different rooms) - and moreover: even after Punin's death, while in Leningrad, Akhmatova continued to live with his family.
Gumilyov also remarried in 1918 to Anna Engelhardt. But in the 1950s and 60s, when the "Requiem" gradually reached the readers (in 1963 the poem was published in Munich) and interest in Gumilyov, banned in the USSR, began to awaken, Akhmatova took on the "mission" of the poet's widow (Engelhardt, moreover, time was also no longer alive). A similar role was played by Nadezhda Mandelstam, Elena Bulgakova and other wives of departed writers, keeping their archives and caring for posthumous memory.
Myth six: Gumilyov beat Akhmatova
Nikolai Gumilyov in Tsarskoye Selo. 1911 gumilev.ru Such a conclusion was made more than once not only by later readers, but also by some contemporaries of the poets. No wonder: in almost every third poem, the poetess confessed to the cruelty of her husband or lover: “... My husband is an executioner, and his house is a prison”, “It doesn’t matter that you are arrogant and evil ...”, “I marked with coal on my left side / Place, where to shoot, / To release the bird - my longing / Into the desert night again. / Cute! your hand will not tremble. / And I won’t endure for long ...”, “, / with a double folded belt” and so on.
The poetess Irina Odoevtseva, in her memoirs On the Banks of the Neva, recalls Gumilyov's indignation about this:
“He [the poet Mikhail Lozinsky] told me that students were constantly asking him if it was true that out of envy I prevented Akhmatova from publishing ... Lozinsky, of course, tried to dissuade them.
<…>
<…>Probably you, like all of them, kept repeating: Akhmatova is a martyr, and Gumilyov is a monster.
<…>
Lord, what nonsense!<…>... When I realized how talented she was, I even to the detriment of myself constantly put her in the first place.
<…>
How many years have passed, and I still feel resentment and pain. How unfair and mean! Yes, of course, there were poems that I did not want her to print, and quite a lot. At least here:
Husband whipped me patterned
Double folded belt.
After all, think about it, because of these lines I was known as a sadist. A rumor was spread about me that, having put on a tailcoat (and I didn’t even have a tailcoat then) and a top hat (I did have a top hat, it’s true), I whip with a patterned, double-folded belt not only my wife, Akhmatova, but also my young female fans after stripping them naked.
It is noteworthy that after the divorce from Gumilyov and after the conclusion of the marriage with Shileiko, the “beatings” did not stop: “From your mysterious love, / As if from pain, I scream out loud, / I became yellow and seizure-like, / I barely drag my legs”, “And in the cave the dragon / No mercy, no law. / And a whip hangs on the wall, / So that I don’t sing songs, ”and so on.
Myth seven: Akhmatova was a principled opponent of emigration
This myth was created by the poetess herself and is actively supported by the school canon. In the autumn of 1917, Gumilyov considered the possibility of moving abroad for Akhmatova, about which he informed her from London. Boris Anrep also advised leaving Petrograd. Akhmatova replied to these proposals with a poem known in school curriculum like "I had a voice ...".
Admirers of Akhmatova's work know that this text is actually the second part of the poem, less unambiguous in its content - "When in anguish of suicide ...", where the poetess talks not only about her fundamental choice, but also about the horrors against which a decision is made.
“I think I can not describe how painfully I want to come to you. I beg you - arrange it, prove that you are my friend ...
I am healthy, I miss the countryside very much and think with horror about the winter in Bezhetsk.<…>How strange it is for me to remember that in the winter of 1907 you called me to Paris in every letter, and now I don’t know at all whether you want to see me. But always remember that I remember you very well, I love you very much, and that without you I always somehow feel sad. I look with longing at what is happening in Russia now, the Lord is severely punishing our country.
Accordingly, Gumilyov's autumn letter is not a proposal to go abroad, but a report at her request.
After the impulse to leave, Akhmatova soon decided to stay and did not change her mind, which can be seen in her other poems (for example, “You are an apostate: for the green island ...”, “Your spirit is darkened by arrogance ...”), and in the stories of contemporaries . According to memoirs, in 1922 Akhmatova again had the opportunity to leave the country: Arthur Lurie, having settled in Paris, insistently calls her there, but she refuses (according to the testimony of Akhmatova's confidant Pavel Luknitsky, she had 17 letters with this request in her hands) .
Myth eight: Stalin envied Akhmatova
Akhmatova at a literary evening. 1946 RGALI The poetess herself and many of her contemporaries considered the appearance of the Central Committee resolution of 1946 “On the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad”, where Akhmatova and Zoshchenko were defamated, as a consequence of an event that occurred at one literary evening. “It is I who earn the decree,” Akhmatova said of a photograph taken at one of the evenings that took place in Moscow in the spring of 1946.<…>According to rumors, Stalin was enraged by the ardent reception given to Akhmatova by the audience. According to one version, Stalin asked after some evening: “Who organized the getting up?”, ”recalls Nika Glen. Lydia Chukovskaya adds: “Akhmatova believed that ... Stalin was jealous of her applause ... Standing applause was due, according to Stalin, to him alone - and suddenly the crowd gave an ovation to some poetess.”
As noted, for all the memories associated with this plot, typical reservations (“according to rumors”, “thought”, and so on) are typical, which is a likely sign of conjecture. Stalin's reaction, as well as the "quoted" phrase about "getting up", have no documentary evidence or refutation, so this episode should not be considered as an absolute truth, but as one of the popular, probable, but not fully confirmed versions.
Myth nine: Akhmatova did not love her son
Anna Akhmatova and Lev Gumilev. 1926 Eurasian National University them. L. N. Gumilyova And it's not. There are many nuances in the difficult history of Akhmatova's relationship with Lev Gumilyov. In the early lyrics, the poetess created the image of a negligent mother (“... I am a bad mother”, “... Take away both the child and the friend ...”, “Why, leaving the friend / And the curly-haired child ...”), which was the share of biographism: childhood and Lev Gumilyov spent his youth not with his parents, but with his grandmother, Anna Gumilyova, his mother and father only occasionally came to visit them. But in the late 1920s, Lev moved to the Fountain House, to the family of Akhmatova and Punin.
A serious quarrel occurred after the return of Lev Gumilyov from the camp in 1956. He could not forgive his mother, as it seemed to him, her frivolous behavior in 1946 (see myth eight) and some poetic selfishness. However, it was precisely for his sake that Akhmatova not only “stood for three hundred hours” in prison queues with a transfer and asked every more or less influential acquaintance to help with the release of her son from the camp, but also took a step contrary to any selfishness: stepping over her convictions, for the sake of her son’s freedom Akhmatova wrote and published the cycle “Glory to the World!”, where she glorified the Soviet system When Akhmatova's first book after a significant break was published in 1958, she sealed the pages with poems from this cycle in author's copies..
IN last years Akhmatova spoke to her relatives more than once about her desire to restore her former relationship with her son. Emma Gerstein writes:
“... she told me:“ I would like to make peace with Leva. I replied that he probably wants this too, but he is afraid of excessive excitement both for her and for himself when explaining. “You don’t need to explain yourself,” Anna Andreyevna objected briskly. “I would have come and said: ‘Mom, sew a button for me.’”
Probably, the feelings of a quarrel with her son greatly accelerated the death of the poetess. IN last days her life, near the hospital ward of Akhmatova, a theatrical performance unfolded: relatives decided whether or not to let Lev Nikolaevich to his mother, whether their meeting would bring the death of the poetess closer. Akhmatova died without reconciling with her son.
Myth ten: Akhmatova is a poet, she cannot be called a poetess
Often discussions of Akhmatova's work or other aspects of her biography end in heated terminological disputes - "poet" or "poetess". The disputants reasonably refer to the opinion of Akhmatova herself, who emphatically called herself a poet (which was recorded by many memoirists), and call for the continuation of this particular tradition.
However, it is worth remembering the context of the use of these words a century ago. Poetry written by women was just beginning to appear in Russia and was rarely taken seriously (see the characteristic titles of reviews of books by women poets in the early 1910s: Women's Needlework, Love and Doubt). Therefore, many women writers either chose male pseudonyms for themselves (Sergei Gedroits Pseudonym of Vera Gedroits., Anton Krainy A pseudonym under which Zinaida Gippius published critical articles., Andrey Polyanin Name taken by Sophia Parnok to publish criticism.), or wrote on behalf of a man (Zinaida Gippius, Poliksena Solovyova). The work of Akhmatova (and in many ways Tsvetaeva) completely changed the attitude towards poetry created by women, as an "inferior" direction. Back in 1914, in a review of The Rosary, Gumilyov makes a symbolic gesture. Having called Akhmatova several times a poetess, at the end of the review he gives her the poet's name: "That connection with the world, which I spoke about above and which is the lot of every true poet, Akhmatova has almost been achieved."
In the modern situation, when the merits of poetry created by women no longer need to be proved to anyone, it is customary in literary criticism to call Akhmatova a poetess, in accordance with the generally accepted norms of the Russian language.
It is difficult to imagine the period of the Silver Age in Russian poetry without such a big name as Anna Akhmatova. The biography of this outstanding person is not at all easy. The personality of Akhmatova is shrouded in a halo of mystery. In her personal life there was fame, love, but also great sorrow. About it will be discussed in the article.
Biography of Akhmatova: complete
Anna Akhmatova (Gorenko) was born on June 23 according to the new style of 1889 in a noble family. Her biography began in Odessa. Her father worked as a mechanical engineer, her mother belonged to the creative intelligentsia.
A year later, the Gorenko family moved to St. Petersburg, where his father received a higher position. All the memories of Anna's childhood were connected with this wonderful city on the Neva. The upbringing and education of the girl was, of course, on highest level. She and her nanny often walked in the Tsarskoselsky park, enjoyed the beautiful creations of talented sculptors.
She was taught secular etiquette early on. In addition to Anna, there were five more children in the family. She listened to the governess teach French to the older children and learned the language on her own in this way. The girl also learned to read and write by herself, reading the books of Leo Tolstoy.
When Anna was ten years old, she was sent to the Mariinsky Women's Gymnasium. She was reluctant to study. But loved summer holidays that the family spent near Sevastopol. There, according to her own recollections, the girl shocked the local young ladies, walking without a hat, barefoot, sunbathing to such an extent that her skin began to peel off. Anna from that time fell in love with the sea, once and for all.
Perhaps this love for the beauty of nature gave rise to poetic inspiration in her. Anna wrote her first poem at the age of eleven. The poetry of Pushkin, Lermontov, Derzhavin, Nekrasov served as role models for her.
After Anna's parents divorced, she moved with her mother and other children to Evpatoria, and then to Kyiv. I had to finish my last year of high school there. Then she entered the Higher Women's Courses at the Faculty of Law. But, as it turned out, jurisprudence is not her calling. Therefore, Anna chose the Women's Literary and History Courses in St. Petersburg.
The beginning of the creative path
In the Gorenko family, no one has ever written poetry. The father forbade the young poetess to sign with the name Gorenko, so as not to disgrace their family. He considered her passion for poetry something unacceptable and frivolous. Anna had to come up with a pseudonym.
It turned out that in their family there was once upon a time the Horde Khan Akhmat. The aspiring poetess began to be called his name.
When Anna was still in high school, a young man named Nikolai Gumilyov met her. He also wrote poetry, even published his own magazine Sirius. Young people began to meet, after Anna moved, they corresponded. Nikolai highly appreciated the poetic talent of the girl. He first published her poems in his journal under the signature of Anna G. This was in 1907.
In 1910-1912, Anna Akhmatova traveled around Europe. She was in Paris, Italy. There was a meeting with the Italian impressionist painter Amadeo Modigliani. This acquaintance, which turned into a stormy romance, left a noticeable mark on her creative biography.
But, unfortunately, the lovers could not be together. They separated in 1911 and never met again. Soon the young artist died of tuberculosis. Love for him, the experience of his untimely death was reflected in the work of the young poetess.
Akhmatova's first poems are lyrical. They reflect the personal life of the poetess, her love, experiences. They are passionate and tender, full of feelings, a little naive, as if written in an album. The poetess herself called the poems of that time "the poor verses of the most empty girl." They are a bit similar to the early work of another outstanding poetess of that time - Marina Tsvetaeva.
In 1911, Anna Akhmatova, for the first time in her creative biography, decides to independently send her poems to the judgment of professionals in the then popular Moscow monthly magazine Russkaya Mysl.
She asked if she should have continued writing poetry. The answer was yes. Her poetry has been published.
Then the poetess was published in other well-known magazines: "Apollo", "General Journal" and others.
Popular recognition of the talent of the poetess
Soon Akhmatova becomes famous in literary circles. Many famous writers and the poets of that time notice and appreciate her talent. Also, everyone is struck by the extraordinary beauty of the poetess. Her oriental nose with a pronounced aquiline, half-closed eyes with a large veil, which sometimes had the ability to change color. Some said that her eyes were gray, others said they were green, and still others remembered that they were sky blue.
Also, her sedateness and royal posture spoke for themselves. Despite the fact that Anna was quite tall, she never stooped, she always kept herself very straight. Her manners were exquisite. Mysteriousness and uniqueness reigned in all appearance.
It is said that in her youth, Anna was very flexible. Even ballerinas envied her extraordinary plasticity. Her slender hands, aquiline nose, cloudy eyes were sung by many poets, including, of course, Nikolai Gumilyov.
In 1912, the first book by Anna Akhmatova, entitled "Evening", was published. These were verses exclusively lyrical, touching and melodious. The collection immediately found its admirers. It was a surge of fame in the life of a young poetess. She is invited to perform with her poems, many artists paint her portraits, poets dedicate poems to her, composers write musical works to her.
In bohemian circles, Anna met the poet Alexander Blok. He admired her talent and beauty. And of course, he dedicated his poems to her. Many have already talked about the secret romance of these outstanding people. But whether it was true, no one knows already. She was also friendly with the composer Lurie, critic N. Nedobrovo. With them, too, she had novels, according to the then rumors.
Two years later, the second book of the poetess was published, which was called "Rosary". This was already the verses of the highest professional level compared to her first book. Here you can already feel the established "Akhmatova" style.
In the same year, Anna Akhmatova wrote her first poem "By the Sea". In it, the poetess displayed her impressions of her youth, memories of the sea, love for him.
At the start of World War I, Akhmatova reduced her public performance. Then she fell ill from a terrible disease - tuberculosis.
But in her personal poetic life there was no break. She continued to write her poetry. But more then the poetess was fascinated by the love of reading the classics. And this affected her work of that period.
Came out in 17 A new book poetess "White flock". The book was published in a huge circulation - 2 thousand copies. Her name became louder than the name of Nikolai Gumilyov. By that time, her own style was clearly visible in Akhmatova's poetry, free, individual, whole. Another famous poet Mayakovsky called it "a monolith that cannot break from any blows." And that was the real truth.
More and more philosophy appears in her poems, less and less naive youthful turns. Before us is a wise, adult woman. Her life experience, deep mind and at the same time simplicity are clearly seen in the lines. The theme of faith in God, Orthodoxy is also an integral part of her work. The words: "prayer", "God", "faith" can often be found in her poems. The poetess is not ashamed of her faith, but speaks openly about it.
Terrible years
After the October Revolution in the country scary times not only for Russia, but also for Akhmatova herself. She did not even imagine what kind of torment and suffering she would have to endure. Although in his youth, during a visit to the elder's cell, he predicted a martyr's crown for her and called her "Christ's bride", promising a Heavenly crown for the patience of suffering. Akhmatova wrote about this visit in her poem.
Of course, the new authorities could not like Akhmatova's poems, which were immediately called "anti-proletarian", "bourgeois", etc. In the 1920s, the poetess was under constant supervision of the NKVD. She writes her poems "on the table", forced to give up public speaking.
In 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested for "anti-Soviet propaganda" and sentenced to death. Akhmatova is having a hard time with his death.
Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov
Alexander Blok dies in 1921. She is divorcing her second husband. All this series of tragic events did not break this woman, strong in spirit. She resumes work in literary societies, publishes again and speaks to the public. A new book of her poems "Plantain" is published.
Then, six months later, Akhmatova's fifth book, AnnoDomini MCMXXI, was published. This name is translated from Latin - in the summer of the Lord 1921. After that, it was not published for several years. Many of her poems of that time were lost during the move.
At the height of the repressions in 1935, two people close to her were arrested: her husband (Nikolai Punin) and her son. She wrote to the government about their release. They were released a week later.
But the troubles didn't end there. Three years later, Lev Gumilyov's son is arrested again and sentenced to five years of hard labor in hard labor. The unfortunate mother often visited her son in prison and gave him parcels. All these events and bitter experiences were reflected in her poem "Requiem".
In 1939, Akhmatova was admitted to the Union of Soviet Writers. In 1940 the Requiem was written. Then came the collection "From Six Books".
At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Akhmatova lived in Leningrad. Her health condition deteriorated sharply. On the advice of doctors, she left for Tashkent. There is a new collection of her poems. In 1944, the poetess decided to return to Leningrad.
After the war in 1946, her work was strongly criticized along with the work of M. Zoshchenko in the magazines Zvezda and Leningrad. They were expelled in disgrace from the Writers' Union.
In 1949, Akhmatova's son was again arrested. She asked for her son, wrote to the government, but she was refused. Then the poetess decides on a desperate step. She wrote an ode to Stalin. The cycle of poems was called "Glory to the World!".
In the 51st year, Fadeev proposed to restore the poetess in the Writers' Union, which was done. In 1954, she took part in the second congress of the Writers' Union.
In 1956, her son was released. He was offended by his mother, because, as it seemed to him, she did not seek his release.
In 1958, her new collection of poems was published. In 1964, she received the Italian Etna-Taormina Prize. The following year, in England, the poetess was awarded a doctorate from Oxford University. In 1966, the last collection of her poems was published. On March 5 of the same year, while in a sanatorium, she died.
On March 10, Akhmatova's funeral was held in Leningrad in an Orthodox church. She was buried at the cemetery in Komarovo, Leningrad Region.
Akhmatova's personal life
The personal life of Anna Akhmatova is of interest to many. She was officially married twice.
The first husband was Nikolai Gumilyov. They met for a long time and corresponded. Nikolai was in love with Anna for a long time, made her a marriage proposal many times. But she refused. Then Anya was in love with her classmate. But he didn't pay any attention to her. Anna desperately tried to commit suicide.
Anna's mother, seeing Gumilyov's persistent courtship and endless marriage proposals, called him a saint. Finally, Anna broke down. She agreed to the marriage. Young people got married in 1910. They went to Paris for their honeymoon.
But, since Anna could not reciprocate her husband in any way and agreed to the marriage solely out of pity, very soon the young artist Amadeo Modigliani took a place in her heart. She met an ardent Italian in Paris. Then Anna came to him again.
He painted her portraits, she wrote poetry to him. A stormy, beautiful romance was forced to end in full swing, because it would not lead to anything good.
Soon Anna and Gumilev broke up. The personal life of Anna Akhmatova in the 18th year changed: she married a second time to the scientist Vladimir Shileiko. But she divorced him three years later.
Changes in the personal life of Anna Akhmatova occurred in the 22nd year. She became the civil wife of N. Punin. I broke up with him in the 38th year. Then she was in an intimate relationship with Garshin.
Everyone knows Anna Akhmatova educated people. This is an outstanding Russian poetess of the first half of the twentieth century. However, about how much this truly great woman- few people know.
We bring to your attention short biography of Anna Akhmatova. We will try not only to dwell on the most important stages in the life of the poetess, but also to tell interesting facts from her.
Biography of Akhmatova
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is a famous world-class poetess, writer, translator, literary critic and critic. Born in 1889, Anna Gorenko (this is her real name), spent her childhood in her native city of Odessa.
The future classicist studied in Tsarskoe Selo, and then in Kyiv, at the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium. When she published her first poem in 1911, her father forbade her to use real name, in connection with which Anna took the name of her great-grandmother - Akhmatova. It was with this name that she entered Russian and world history.
There is one associated with this episode. interesting fact which we present at the end of the article.
By the way, above you can see a photo of young Akhmatova, which differs sharply from her subsequent portraits.
Akhmatova's personal life
In total, Anna had three husbands. Was she happy in at least one marriage? Hard to tell. In her works we find a lot of love poetry.
But this is rather some kind of idealistic image of unattainable love, which has passed through the prism of Akhmatova's gift. But whether she had ordinary family happiness is hardly.
Gumilyov
The first husband in her biography was a famous poet, from whom her only son was born - Lev Gumilyov (the author of the theory of ethnogenesis).
After living for 8 years, they divorced, and already in 1921 Nikolai was shot.
Anna Akhmatova with her husband Gumilyov and son Leo It is important to emphasize here that the first husband passionately loved her. She did not reciprocate his feelings, and he knew about it even before the wedding. In a word, their life together was extremely painful and painful from the constant jealousy and internal suffering of both.
Akhmatova was very sorry for Nikolai, but she did not feel feelings for him. Two poets from God could not live under one roof and dispersed. Even their son could not stop their disintegrating marriage.
Shileiko
In this difficult period for the country, the great writer lived very badly.
Having an extremely meager income, she earned money by selling herring, which was given out as a ration, and with the proceeds she bought tea and smoke, without which her husband could not do.
In her notes there is a phrase referring to this time: "I will soon get on all fours myself."
Shileiko was terribly jealous of his brilliant wife for literally everything: men, guests, poems and hobbies.
Punin
Akhmatova's biography developed rapidly. In 1922 she marries again. This time for Nikolai Punin, an art critic, with whom she lived the longest - 16 years. They parted in 1938, when Anna's son Lev Gumilyov was arrested. By the way, Lev spent 10 years in the camps.
Hard years of biography
When he was first imprisoned, Akhmatova spent 17 most difficult months in prison queues, bringing parcels to her son. This period of life forever crashed into her memory.
One day a woman recognized her and asked if she, as a poet, could describe all the horror experienced by the mothers of the innocently convicted. Anna answered in the affirmative and at the same time began work on her most famous poem, Requiem. Here is a small extract from there:
I've been screaming for seventeen months
I'm calling you home.
I threw myself at the feet of the executioner -
You are my son and my horror.Everything is messed up,
And I can't make out
Now who is the beast, who is the man,
And how long to wait for the execution.
During the First World War, Akhmatova completely limited her public life. However, this was incomparable with what happened later in her difficult biography. After all, she was still waiting ahead - the bloodiest in the history of mankind.
In the 1920s, a growing movement of emigration began. All this had a very hard effect on Akhmatova because almost all of her friends went abroad.
One conversation that took place between Anna and G.V. is noteworthy. Ivanov in 1922. Ivanov himself describes it this way:
I'm going abroad the day after tomorrow. I'm going to Akhmatova - to say goodbye.
Akhmatova holds out her hand to me.
- Are you leaving? Bow from me to Paris.
- And you, Anna Andreevna, are not going to leave?
- No. I will not leave Russia.
But it's getting harder and harder to live!
Yes, it's getting harder.
- Can become quite unbearable.
- What to do.
- You won't leave?
- I'm not leaving.
In the same year, she wrote a famous poem that drew a line between Akhmatova and the creative intelligentsia who emigrated:
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.
Since 1925, the NKVD has issued an unspoken ban that no publishing house should publish any of Akhmatova's works because of their "anti-nationality".
IN short biography it is impossible to convey the burden of moral and social oppression that Akhmatova experienced during these years.
Having learned what fame and recognition are, she was forced to drag out a miserable, half-starved existence, in complete oblivion. At the same time, realizing that her friends abroad are regularly published and deny themselves little.
The voluntary decision not to leave, but to suffer with her people - this is the truly amazing fate of Anna Akhmatova. During these years, she was interrupted by random translations of foreign poets and writers and, in general, lived extremely poorly.
Creativity Akhmatova
But let's go back to 1912, when the first collection of poems by the future great poetess was published. It was called "Evening". This was the beginning of the creative biography of the future star in the sky of Russian poetry.
Three years later, a new collection of "Rosary" appears, which was printed in the amount of 1000 pieces.
Actually, from this moment, the nationwide recognition of Akhmatova's great talent begins.
In 1917, the world saw a new book with poems "The White Flock". It was published twice as large in circulation, through the previous collection.
Among the most significant works of Akhmatova, one can mention the "Requiem", written in 1935-1940. Why is this poem considered one of the greatest?
The fact is that she displays all the pain and horror of a woman who lost her loved ones due to human cruelty and repression. And this image was very similar to the fate of Russia itself.
In 1941, Akhmatova wandered hungry around Leningrad. According to some eyewitnesses, she looked so bad that a woman, stopping near her, handed her alms with the words: "Take Christ for the sake of it." One can only imagine what Anna Andreevna felt at that time.
However, before the start of the blockade, she was evacuated to where she met with Marina Tsvetaeva. This was their only meeting.
A short biography of Akhmatova does not allow to show in all details the essence of her amazing poems. They seem to be talking to us alive, conveying and revealing many aspects of the human soul.
It is important to emphasize that she wrote not only about the individual as such, but considered the life of the country and its fate as a biography of a single person, as a kind of living organism with its own virtues and morbid inclinations.
A subtle psychologist and a brilliant connoisseur of the human soul, Akhmatova managed to depict in her poems many facets of fate, its happy and tragic vicissitudes.
Death and memory
On March 5, 1966, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova died in a sanatorium near Moscow. On the fourth day, the coffin with her body was delivered to Leningrad, where a funeral took place at the Komarovsky cemetery.
In honor of the outstanding Russian poetess, many streets in the former republics of the Soviet Union are named. In Italy, in Sicily, a monument was erected to Akhmatova.
In 1982, a minor planet was discovered, which received its name in her honor - Akhmatova.
In the Netherlands, on the wall of one of the houses in the city of Leiden, the poem "Muse" is written in large letters.
Muse
When I wait for her arrival at night,
Life seems to hang by a thread.
What honors, what youth, what freedom
In front of a nice guest with a pipe in her hand.
And so she entered. Throwing back the cover
She looked at me carefully.
I tell her: “Did you dictate to Dante
Pages of Hell? Answers: "Me!".
Interesting facts from the biography of Akhmatova
Being a recognized classic, back in the 1920s, Akhmatova was subject to colossal censorship and silence.
She was not printed at all for decades, which left her without a livelihood.
However, despite this, abroad she was considered one of the greatest poets of our time and was published in different countries even without her knowledge.
When Akhmatova's father found out that his seventeen-year-old daughter began to write poetry, he asked "not to shame his name."
Her first husband Gumilev says that they often quarreled over their son. When Levushka was about 4 years old, he taught him the phrase: "My dad is a poet, and my mom is a hysteric."
When a poetic company had gathered in Tsarskoye Selo, Levushka entered the living room and shouted a memorized phrase in a loud voice.
Nikolai Gumilev was very angry, and Akhmatova was delighted and began to kiss her son, saying: “Clever, Leva, you are right, your mother is hysterical!” At that time, Anna Andreevna did not yet know what kind of life lay ahead of her, and what century was coming to replace the Silver Age.
The poetess kept a diary all her life, which became known only after her death. It is thanks to this that we know many facts from her biography.
Anna Akhmatova in the early 1960s Akhmatova was nominated for Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965, but ultimately it was awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov. Not so long ago it became known that initially the committee considered the option of dividing the prize between them. But then they still stopped at Sholokhov.
Two of Akhmatova's sisters died of tuberculosis, and Anna was sure that the same fate awaited her. However, she was able to overcome weak genetics and lived for 76 years.
Lying down in a sanatorium, Akhmatova felt the approach of death. In her notes, she left a short phrase: "It is a pity that there is no Bible."
We hope that this biography of Akhmatova answered all the questions you had about her life. We strongly recommend that you use the search on the Internet and read at least selected poems by the poetic genius Anna Akhmatova.
Liked the post? Press any button:
