Requiem by Anna Akhmatova

First published:Rekviem, 1963 (English translation, 1964)

Type of work: Poetry

The Work:

Anna Akhmatova was a prominent voice in Russian poetry for more than fifty years. When she died in 1966, she was hailed as one of the eminent poets of Russia, ranked with Aleksandr Blok, Boris Pasternak, and Osip Mandelstam. Her several collections attest the high quality of her craft. She drew attention to her poetry at the very start of her career, participating in a short-lived but eclectic group of poets called the Acmeists in the second decade of the twentieth century. She then struck her own path and, although she was frequently regarded with suspicion by Soviet authorities, she managed to retain the aura of brilliance and integrity until her last days.

It is generally agreed that her highest achievements are two cyclical poems, Poema bez geroya (1960; A Poem Without a Hero, 1973) and Requiem. Both are Akhmatova’s poetic answers to the vicissitudes of life in Russia under communism and, because of that, their publication was delayed; Requiem first appeared abroad and was not published in Russia until many years later.

Requiem was written between 1935 and 1943, with a brief prose foreword added in 1957. Since its publication in Germany in 1963, it has been symbolic of both the suffering and silent defiance of the Russian people during the reign of terror perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and his henchmen. The poem is more than a protest against tyranny; it reflects the poet’s personal tragedy. Her only son, Lev Gumilev, a prominent young scholar, was arrested on trumped-up charges and exiled to hard labor. Released during World War II, he was arrested again and released only in 1956. During his imprisonment, Akhmatova stood waiting in lines in front of the prison off and on for seventeen months, trying to learn the fate of her son and secure his release. Although Requiem is basically autobiographical, it should not be read purely as such, but primarily as any mother’s grief. The poem itself is not as much a direct accusation of the inhumane treatment of the Soviet citizen, but a deeply felt outcry against the injustice done to all the children of Russia. Through her outcry, Akhmatova expresses a great love of and loyalty to Russia, and it is in this manner that one mother’s grief and tragedy become a symbol of all of Russia, expressed in a perfect fusion of content and form.

Requiem opens with the brief prose introduction written in 1957, which places the poem in the fearful years of the secret police. She relates that, as she stood in line before the prison walls, an unknown woman asked, “Can you describe this?” “Yes, I can,” Akhmatova replied. The first lines of the motto explain why she chose not to become an émigré: “No, not under a foreign heavenly dome,/ Not under the shield of foreign wings—/ I was with my people in those hours,/ There where, unhappily, my people were.” These four lines are the best example of the style that follows—direct, precise, brief, and simple. They represent the full power of emotion that characterizes the entire poem.

In the opening poem, Akhmatova dedicates Requiem to all who suffered during the purges of the 1930’s, those who waited before prison gates, wept upon hearing the sentences, and lived in the relentless fear of the powerless. Although the wind is still refreshing and the sunset beautiful, that beauty is lost on those in the vigil. The poet combines brief, contrasting sketches of the prison and Leningrad with the mood of the frightened, yet still hopeful, participants of the vigils. Recalling her friends from the two-year ordeal in 1940, she sends them her greetings, wherever they may be.

The spirit of the dedication is preserved in the introduction to the entire poem. Here she weeps for the “ranks of the condemned” and for the “innocent Rus’” (a poetic, endearing term for Russia) that “contorts under bloody boots and the tires of Black Marias” (black-painted prison vans). In these first two poems, Akhmatova is able to surmount personal grief and become a speaker for all who suffered with her, indeed for all victims of the country and perhaps all of humankind. In the following poems, she concentrates on her own grief as she observes the “stars of death” shining over her. In poem 1 (1935) she recalls how her son was taken away at dawn, the cold of icons on his lips and deadly sweat on his forehead. She likens herself to the wives who followed their husbands, army officers exiled to Siberia in the previous centuries. She deftly evokes the images of the Russian past, thus universalizing her personal misfortune.

In the next two poems, she feels the heavy burden of her situation, speaking in tones of self-pity. She evokes the stillness of the “quiet Don,” an apparent sarcastic allusion to the novel And Quiet Flows the Don (1928) by Mikhail Sholokhov, a staunch supporter of Communist Party rule. She is ill and alone, with a husband (Nikolay Gumilev, who was killed by the Bolsheviks during the revolution) in his grave and their only son in prison. She pleads with them to pray for her, instead of the other way around. In poem 3, she even utters a denial of her plight, wishing that the nightmare would go away and the dark curtains cover the windows of her lightless room.

In poem 4, Akhmatova juxtaposes the past and the present. Addressing her own merry past, when she was loved and admired by her many friends, she sees herself now as only one of the three hundred standing in the vigil, her bitter tears hot enough to melt the winter ice, and under the crosses—a symbolic reference to their tragedy—while innocent lives are being snuffed out behind the prison walls.

The pervasive uncertainty of the times carries over into the next poem. The mother does not know what is to become of her son, or “who is a man and who is a beast,” or how long the agony will last. In a funereal image of flowers and incense, there is again an allusion to death. In the dedication poem, it was first associated with stars, while now “a huge star/ threatens an impending death,” a reference to the Communist emblem as well as to any natural phenomenon, for Akhmatova uses nature in conjunction with the certainty of death throughout the cycle. From poem 5 on, death becomes the most frequent image. Again there is a natural reference to white nights that speak of physical death in alluding to Akhmatova’s son. More important and more moving is the depiction of mental death or madness and the need to kill memory (“One should again learn how to live”). Even in the middle of a bright summer day, the poet declares that she had foreboded a deserted house.

Poem 6, “To Death” (1939), expresses the poet’s resignation to the inevitable and her death wish. She awaits death with indifference, not knowing only in what form it will come. There is a certain sense of deliverance: “I dimmed the light and open the door/ To you, so simple and beautiful.” For the first time, she refers forebodingly to her son’s exile to Siberia and to the horrible parting without saying goodbye: “The Yenisei is swirling,/ The Pole Star glittering. And the blue eyes/ I love are closing in the final horror.”

The grief brings the mother close to madness in poem 9 (1940). In a reference to death, the “black valley” beckons, bereft of any memories of her son and allowing no consolation. Juxtaposing the images of nature with those of her son, she admits that the oncoming madness will not allow her to experience anything any more, “Not the dear coolness of his hands;/ Nor the waving shadows of lime-trees,/ Nor the distant whispering sound/ Of his parting words of consolation.”

Perhaps the most dramatic poem of the cycle is “Crucifixion” (1940-1943). Written during the war years, it underscores tersely the tragedy of Russia. By quoting Christ’s biblical words to his mother, “Do not weep for Me, who am in the grave,” the poet seems to liken her own grief, and by transference that of all Russian mothers, to that of the Mother of God. It is as if she searches for some meaning in her son’s sacrifice, something such as the redemption of humankind, as in Christ’s case. If so, the poem expresses some hope. There is also an afterthought of doubt that the sacrifice of her son would have any lasting meaning, hinted at in the closing lines: “And there where Mother stood silently/ no one even dared to look at her.”

A two-part epilogue echoes the prose foreword in poetic form. Its main message is contained in a plea not to forget the ordeals she and her people have endured. As if sensing that she, too, may be guilty of this sin, she asks that, should a monument ever be erected to her, it should be there where she stood three hundred hours and where no door was opened for her. She sees herself as “the tortured mouth through which hundred million people cry.” She reiterates that it was out of love and loyalty that she chose not to emigrate but rather to commemorate in some way these years and her people: “And I am praying not only for myself,/ But for all those who stood there with me/ In bitter cold, and in July heat,/ Under that blinding-red prison wall.”

The contents of Requiem command most of the reader’s attention, yet the poem displays stylistic excellence as well. In its combination of conventional and innovative verses, it is typical of the author’s poetic craft. Brief personal sketches are spelled by contemplative verses, with skillful transitions from words of emotion to words of description, from the soul to nature, from feeling to fact. Through such mixture of facts and feeling, Requiem adds a human touch to history, serving as a steady reminder that a painful past should never be forgotten.

When Akhmatova was asked in an interview taken shortly before her death whether Requiem would ever be published in the Soviet Union, she replied, “What does it matter? Hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom had never even heard of me, have read it in transcript or handwritten copies.” The events in Russia of the late 1980’s and early 1990’s proved Akhmatova right.

Bibliography

Feinstein, Elaine. Anna of All the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova. New York: Knopf, 2006. Feinstein’s biography discusses Akhmatova’s important poems, publishing some in new translations. A chapter is devoted to Requiem.

Haight, Amanda. Anna Akhmatova: A Poetic Pilgrimage. 1976. New ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. An excellent study of Akhmatova’s poems by one of the best authorities on her works. Part of the Oxford Lives series.

Harrington, Alexandra. The Poetry of Anna Akhmatova: Living in Different Mirrors. London: Anthem Press, 2006. An analysis of Akhmatova’s poetry in its totality, tracing her development from a modernist to a postmodernist.

Hayward, Max. “Anna Akhmatova.” In Writers in Russia, 1917-1978. San Diego, Calif.: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1983. A fine biographical sketch of Akhmatova and discussion of the conditions under which she wrote her poems, including Requiem.

Leiter, Sharon. “The Terror and the War.” In Akhmatova’s Petersburg. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983. A review of Akhmatova’s life in her beloved St. Petersburg and of political circumstances that provided the material for and led to the writing of Requiem.

Reeder, Roberta. Anna Akhmatova: Poet and Prophet. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. One of the most extensive books in English on Akhmatova, with scholarly discussion of all facets of her life and works. Discusses Requiem in detail, focusing on its artistic quality and the fascinating genesis of the poem created in the middle of the terror under which Akhmatova lived. A long, useful bibliography.

Rylkova, Galina. The Archaeology of Anxiety: The Russian Silver Age and Its Legacy. Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2007. Rylkova analyzes the work of Akhmatova and other writers, demonstrating how this literature reflects the social, political, and cultural anxiety that accompanied the Russian Revolution, civil war, and Joseph Stalin’s terrorist government.

Thomas, D. M. Introduction to Anna Akhmatova: “Requiem” and “Poem Without a Hero.” Translated by D. M. Thomas. London: Paul Elek, 1976. A brief but useful introduction to Akhmatova and her poems. Includes a cursory comparison with other translations of Requiem.