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Selected Poems
Brings together all D.M. Thomas' acclaimed translations of Akhmatova's poems. This volume includes "Requiem", her poem of the Stalinist Terror and "Poem Without a Hero".
160 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1969
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About the author
Anna Akhmatova
425 books942 followersalso known as: Анна Ахматова
Personal themes characterize lyrical beauty of noted work of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko; the Soviet government banned her books between 1946 and 1958.
People credit this modernist of the most acclaimed writers in the canon.
Her writing ranges from short lyrics to universalized, ingeniously structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935-40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her work addresses a variety of themes including time and memory, the fate of creative women, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism. She has been widely translated into many languages, and is one of the best-known Russian poets of 20th century.
In 1910, she married the poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian.
Nikolay Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for activities considered anti-Soviet; Akhmatova then married a prominent Assyriologist Vladimir Shilejko, and then an art scholar, Nikolay Punin, who died in the Stalinist Gulag camps. After that, she spurned several proposals from the married poet, Boris Pasternak.
After 1922, Akhmatova was condemned as a bourgeois element, and from 1925 to 1940, her poetry was banned from publication. She earned her living by translating Leopardi and publishing essays, including some brilliant essays on Pushkin, in scholarly periodicals. All of her friends either emigrated or were repressed.
Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however. Akhmatova died at the age of 76 in St. Peterburg. She was interred at Komarovo Cemetery.
There is a museum devoted to Akhmatova at the apartment where she lived with Nikolai Punin at the garden wing of the Fountain House (more properly known as the Sheremetev Palace) on the Fontanka Embankment, where Akhmatova lived from the mid 1920s until 1952.
Personal themes characterize lyrical beauty of noted work of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova, pseudonym of Anna Andreevna Gorenko; the Soviet government banned her books between 1946 and 1958.
People credit this modernist of the most acclaimed writers in the canon.
Her writing ranges from short lyrics to universalized, ingeniously structured cycles, such as Requiem (1935-40), her tragic masterpiece about the Stalinist terror. Her work addresses a variety of themes including time and memory, the fate of creative women, and the difficulties of living and writing in the shadow of Stalinism. She has been widely translated into many languages, and is one of the best-known Russian poets of 20th century.
In 1910, she married the poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for lion hunting in Africa, the battlefields of World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband did not take her poems seriously, and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his. Their son, Lev, born in 1912, was to become a famous Neo-Eurasianist historian.
Nikolay Gumilyov was executed in 1921 for activities considered anti-Soviet; Akhmatova then married a prominent Assyriologist Vladimir Shilejko, and then an art scholar, Nikolay Punin, who died in the Stalinist Gulag camps. After that, she spurned several proposals from the married poet, Boris Pasternak.
After 1922, Akhmatova was condemned as a bourgeois element, and from 1925 to 1940, her poetry was banned from publication. She earned her living by translating Leopardi and publishing essays, including some brilliant essays on Pushkin, in scholarly periodicals. All of her friends either emigrated or were repressed.
Her son spent his youth in Stalinist gulags, and she even resorted to publishing several poems in praise of Stalin to secure his release. Their relations remained strained, however. Akhmatova died at the age of 76 in St. Peterburg. She was interred at Komarovo Cemetery.
There is a museum devoted to Akhmatova at the apartment where she lived with Nikolai Punin at the garden wing of the Fountain House (more properly known as the Sheremetev Palace) on the Fontanka Embankment, where Akhmatova lived from the mid 1920s until 1952.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 180 reviews
February 18, 2024
A poet a like, which is quite rare. She was a Russian poet who was banned between 1946 and 1958 because was condemned as a bourgeois element. She had an interesting life and it is was a good idea to read as bit abut her when savouring her poems.
Wild Honey has the scent of freedom,
dust- of ray of sun
a girl's mouth- of a violet,
and golf - has no perfume
Watery-the mignonette
and like an apple-love
but we found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.
it is not with the lyre of someone in love
that I go seducing people
The rattle of the leper
is what sings in my hands
Wild Honey has the scent of freedom,
dust- of ray of sun
a girl's mouth- of a violet,
and golf - has no perfume
Watery-the mignonette
and like an apple-love
but we found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.
it is not with the lyre of someone in love
that I go seducing people
The rattle of the leper
is what sings in my hands
May 2, 2018
Akhmatova’s poetry swept me off my feet. Without using her verses only as a response to the dramatic historical and personal circumstances of her time, she projected life and its vicissitudes with a tune akin to symphonic music.
Poetry as means rather than the result of a certain state of mind or the reaction to a traumatic situation, poetry that is firm for its structural, classic rigor, but overflowing with musical passion and the voice of reason.
There is an endless struggle between love and guilt in the complex tapestry of the different selves that shine through Akhmatova’s stanzas. Wife, mother, poet and chronicler converge in the two sides of Akhmatova’s nature, blending Christianity with Paganism that provide historical dimension to her poetry.
Two revolutions, two world wars, a civil war, deaths of beloved ones and the terror of Stalin’s regime framed Akhmatova’s life, but her poetry raises above such appalling context.
The voices heard in “Requiem” become a timeless, universal lament of women who lost their loved ones to the monster of repression. Akhmatova’s verses are serene, contemplative even, devoid of excessive dramatism amidst the tragedy of massive death and disintegration of her beloved country.
“Northern Elegies” show the more introspective facet of the poet, where she ponders about memory, fate and the passage of time.
But I was most shaken by the fragility of her first poems in which the creative struggle is most overt, and so is the debate between her yearning and loneliness. The popular symbolism and more avant-garde style of her latest and most known poems like "Poem without a hero" is impressive, but it didn’t make my heart sing like the little odes she composed in her youth:
“And how many poems I have not written,
Whose secret chorus swirls around in my head
And possible one day
Will stifle me…”
Suffering and wonder coexist in Akhmatova’s verses, her soul might be split in two, but she remains whole and forever faithful to her love for Russia and its people.
The undying force of a voice that can’t be silenced is what I take with me. That, and the tenacity of a woman whom I admire for her genius and her boundless humanity.
“Lying in me, as though it were a white
Stone in the depths of a well, is one
Memory that I cannot, will not, fight:
It is happiness, and it is pain.”
Poetry as means rather than the result of a certain state of mind or the reaction to a traumatic situation, poetry that is firm for its structural, classic rigor, but overflowing with musical passion and the voice of reason.
There is an endless struggle between love and guilt in the complex tapestry of the different selves that shine through Akhmatova’s stanzas. Wife, mother, poet and chronicler converge in the two sides of Akhmatova’s nature, blending Christianity with Paganism that provide historical dimension to her poetry.
Two revolutions, two world wars, a civil war, deaths of beloved ones and the terror of Stalin’s regime framed Akhmatova’s life, but her poetry raises above such appalling context.
The voices heard in “Requiem” become a timeless, universal lament of women who lost their loved ones to the monster of repression. Akhmatova’s verses are serene, contemplative even, devoid of excessive dramatism amidst the tragedy of massive death and disintegration of her beloved country.
“Northern Elegies” show the more introspective facet of the poet, where she ponders about memory, fate and the passage of time.
But I was most shaken by the fragility of her first poems in which the creative struggle is most overt, and so is the debate between her yearning and loneliness. The popular symbolism and more avant-garde style of her latest and most known poems like "Poem without a hero" is impressive, but it didn’t make my heart sing like the little odes she composed in her youth:
“And how many poems I have not written,
Whose secret chorus swirls around in my head
And possible one day
Will stifle me…”
Suffering and wonder coexist in Akhmatova’s verses, her soul might be split in two, but she remains whole and forever faithful to her love for Russia and its people.
The undying force of a voice that can’t be silenced is what I take with me. That, and the tenacity of a woman whom I admire for her genius and her boundless humanity.
“Lying in me, as though it were a white
Stone in the depths of a well, is one
Memory that I cannot, will not, fight:
It is happiness, and it is pain.”
June 23, 2019
'Who can refuse to live his own life?'
Anna Akhmatova once remarked in answer to some expression of sympathy. Her refusal not to live her life made of her one of those few people who have given dignity and meaning to our terrible century, and through whom and for whom it will be remembered. She is regarded as one of the greatest Russian poets. Her incorruptibility as a person is closely linked to her most fundamental characteristic as a poet: fidelity to things as they are, to 'the clear, familiar, material world.'
Her work has such gravity that any attempted encapsulation would fail.At 160 pages, Selected Poems are only a fragment of Akhmatova’s creation. The reality of translation weakens the force of the Russian as it is changed into practicable English. Any English reader of a Russian writer is at a slight disadvantage from the start in this respect, as the two languages are largely incongruous. Knowing this, and appreciating nonetheless the effort of D.M. Thomas’ translation, the reader of Selected Poems may glimpse the essence of Akhmatova’s style. As a woman, in her personal life she suffered because her gifts, her independent poetic sensibility itself, made ordinary family life hugely difficult; others’ attempts to make her give up poetry (and her own attempts as well) made life intolerable. As a poet in the Stalinist state, she suffered simply because she wrote. Poetry had marked her out, and as one of her biographers has written, she seemed “to have been chosen by fate to test all the intuitive and inherited values of her contemporaries.” Among those values was a belief in the power of the true word, which for a lyric poet comes only from a fidelity to a true self, not one mandated by theory or ideology. With the Russian Revolution and the repression, terror, and war that followed after, fate seemed to raise the stakes: Once poetry had been for her a source of both inner pain and inner strength; now, for four decades of her life, it would be the regime’s excuse for harassment and persecution—and her own chief means of spiritual survival. In these poems, Akhmatova addresses many themes, including religion, the desperation and hopelessness of war, censorship and silencing, grief, and whether it is possible to maintain hope in the midst of darkness. "Requiem" is Akhmatova's best known work, considered by many to be her magnum opus, or masterpiece.
Memories and reflections on love, loneliness, and regret are expressed in combination with the use of color and nature in order to expertly convey the moment and circumstance under which each poem is devised. For Akhmatova, scenes in nature, seasons changing, and light versus dark imagery bring to mind her constant thoughts about death, pain, spirituality, and fate. Akhmatova's peculiar gift was to combine two diametrically opposed styles in the same poet: she is at once understated and passionate, classical and romantic, matter-of-fact and radiant. Her verse denotes a radical break with the intellectual, fancy style and the otherworldly portrayal of affection so run of the mill of writers like Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Her verses are made out of short pieces of straightforward discourse that don't frame a consistent sound example. Rather, they mirror the way we really think, the connections between the pictures are passionate, and straightforward ordinary articles are accused of mental affiliations.
Akhmatova's poetry could be said as a constant conflict between affection and guilt in not so common form. Some portion of what makes the authors so awesome and their work so convincing to peruse is that while all individuals have recollections and encounters of profound individual esteem and importance, most can't impart them. A writer like Akhmatova recounts her own particular story, as well as those of others too. There are examples while perusing this gathering when a peruser may go over a piece that appears to flawlessly clarify their most personal considerations.
White Flock is one of her early collections, so compactly focused on themes of love and the Muse that at first glance it feels removed from the enormous tragedy of the First World War. There is in certainty a solid seriousness at work here that charges you to find some hidden meaning and discover confirmation of a world turned out badly, while as the gathering advances, references to the war turn out to be more consistent.
from White Flock
Loneliness
So many stones are thrown at me,
They no longer scare.
Fine, now, is the snare,
Among high towers a high tower.
I thank its builders:may
They never need a friend.
Here I can see the sun rise earlier
And see the glory of the day's end.
And often into the window of my room
Fly the winds of a northern sea,
A dove eats wheat from my hands...
Divinely light and calm
Finishes the unfinished page.
Flight
I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?
All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.
In telling us about one woman, standing in the endless queue outside a Leningrad prison, month after month, hoping to hand in a parcel or hear some news of her son, Akhmatova speaks for all Russia. She achieves universality, through an exquisiteness of style that is at the same time anonymous and transparent- the voice of 'the orphans, the widows', in Chukovsky's prophetic phrase of 1921. Requiem honours poetry, as well as the dead.
To death
You will come in any case, so why not now?
Life is very hard: I'm waiting for you.
I have turned off the lights and thrown the door wide open
For you, so simple and so marvellous.
Take on any form you like.
Why not burst in like a poisoned shell,
Or steal in like a bandit with his kunckleduster,
Or like a typhus-germ?
Or like fairy-tale of your own invention-
Stolen from you and loathsomely repeated,
Where I can see, behind you in the doorway,
The police-cap and the white-faced concierge?
I don't care how. The Yenisei is swirling,
The Pole Star glittering. And eyes
I love are closing on the final horror.
On the other hand, Poem without a Hero, in contrast, is sustained, polyphonic, symphonic. It is a fairly long poem; nevertheless Akhmatova's preoccupation with it so many years is astonishing. A poem which describes possession, it possessed her. The poem is complex, but less so; its depths are almost limitless, if one goes on exploring them, yet its surface is clear, real, ordered and beautiful, no more and no less mysterious than the view from your window.
Poem without a Hero
'The hero's on stage!' Ah
Yes, here he comes, displacing
Of holy vengeance he sings.
-But why have you all fled, as
Though to a communal wedding,
Leaving me in the gloom
Face to face with a frame' s blackness
Out of which stares that hour
Which became most bitter drama
Never sufficiently wept.
Akhmatova sees beyond the endless road to lowest paradigms of humanity has to touch during those 'inhumane' times. Those tragic moments of revelation and reality exceeds all that art can do; and through her art she shares it all with us- agony, recognition, catharsis. She presents to the world- a portrait of a woman who, besides her genius, had gifts of life-enriching gaiety and loyalty, and a moral strength which suffering only made stronger.
Excerpts:-
from Evening
Memory of sun seeps from the heart
Grass grows yellower.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakes
Hover, hover.
Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.
Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk's torn off.
may be it's better I did not become
Your wife.
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is it? - Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night.
from Rosary
-You've come to put me in the grave.
Where is your shovel and your spade?
You're carrying just a flute.
I'm not going to blame you,
Sadly a long time ago
My voice fell mute.
from Anno Domini
Everything is looted, spoiled, despoiled,
Death flickering his black wing,
Anguish, hunger- then why this
Lightness overlaying everything?
Anna Akhmatova once remarked in answer to some expression of sympathy. Her refusal not to live her life made of her one of those few people who have given dignity and meaning to our terrible century, and through whom and for whom it will be remembered. She is regarded as one of the greatest Russian poets. Her incorruptibility as a person is closely linked to her most fundamental characteristic as a poet: fidelity to things as they are, to 'the clear, familiar, material world.'
Her work has such gravity that any attempted encapsulation would fail.At 160 pages, Selected Poems are only a fragment of Akhmatova’s creation. The reality of translation weakens the force of the Russian as it is changed into practicable English. Any English reader of a Russian writer is at a slight disadvantage from the start in this respect, as the two languages are largely incongruous. Knowing this, and appreciating nonetheless the effort of D.M. Thomas’ translation, the reader of Selected Poems may glimpse the essence of Akhmatova’s style. As a woman, in her personal life she suffered because her gifts, her independent poetic sensibility itself, made ordinary family life hugely difficult; others’ attempts to make her give up poetry (and her own attempts as well) made life intolerable. As a poet in the Stalinist state, she suffered simply because she wrote. Poetry had marked her out, and as one of her biographers has written, she seemed “to have been chosen by fate to test all the intuitive and inherited values of her contemporaries.” Among those values was a belief in the power of the true word, which for a lyric poet comes only from a fidelity to a true self, not one mandated by theory or ideology. With the Russian Revolution and the repression, terror, and war that followed after, fate seemed to raise the stakes: Once poetry had been for her a source of both inner pain and inner strength; now, for four decades of her life, it would be the regime’s excuse for harassment and persecution—and her own chief means of spiritual survival. In these poems, Akhmatova addresses many themes, including religion, the desperation and hopelessness of war, censorship and silencing, grief, and whether it is possible to maintain hope in the midst of darkness. "Requiem" is Akhmatova's best known work, considered by many to be her magnum opus, or masterpiece.
Memories and reflections on love, loneliness, and regret are expressed in combination with the use of color and nature in order to expertly convey the moment and circumstance under which each poem is devised. For Akhmatova, scenes in nature, seasons changing, and light versus dark imagery bring to mind her constant thoughts about death, pain, spirituality, and fate. Akhmatova's peculiar gift was to combine two diametrically opposed styles in the same poet: she is at once understated and passionate, classical and romantic, matter-of-fact and radiant. Her verse denotes a radical break with the intellectual, fancy style and the otherworldly portrayal of affection so run of the mill of writers like Alexander Blok and Andrey Bely. Her verses are made out of short pieces of straightforward discourse that don't frame a consistent sound example. Rather, they mirror the way we really think, the connections between the pictures are passionate, and straightforward ordinary articles are accused of mental affiliations.
Akhmatova's poetry could be said as a constant conflict between affection and guilt in not so common form. Some portion of what makes the authors so awesome and their work so convincing to peruse is that while all individuals have recollections and encounters of profound individual esteem and importance, most can't impart them. A writer like Akhmatova recounts her own particular story, as well as those of others too. There are examples while perusing this gathering when a peruser may go over a piece that appears to flawlessly clarify their most personal considerations.
White Flock is one of her early collections, so compactly focused on themes of love and the Muse that at first glance it feels removed from the enormous tragedy of the First World War. There is in certainty a solid seriousness at work here that charges you to find some hidden meaning and discover confirmation of a world turned out badly, while as the gathering advances, references to the war turn out to be more consistent.
from White Flock
Loneliness
So many stones are thrown at me,
They no longer scare.
Fine, now, is the snare,
Among high towers a high tower.
I thank its builders:may
They never need a friend.
Here I can see the sun rise earlier
And see the glory of the day's end.
And often into the window of my room
Fly the winds of a northern sea,
A dove eats wheat from my hands...
Divinely light and calm
Finishes the unfinished page.
Flight
I don't know if you're alive or dead.
Can you on earth be sought,
Or only when the sunsets fade
Be mourned serenely in my thought?
All is for you: the daily prayer,
The sleepless heat at night
And of my verses, the white
Flock, and of my eyes, the blue fire.
In telling us about one woman, standing in the endless queue outside a Leningrad prison, month after month, hoping to hand in a parcel or hear some news of her son, Akhmatova speaks for all Russia. She achieves universality, through an exquisiteness of style that is at the same time anonymous and transparent- the voice of 'the orphans, the widows', in Chukovsky's prophetic phrase of 1921. Requiem honours poetry, as well as the dead.
To death
You will come in any case, so why not now?
Life is very hard: I'm waiting for you.
I have turned off the lights and thrown the door wide open
For you, so simple and so marvellous.
Take on any form you like.
Why not burst in like a poisoned shell,
Or steal in like a bandit with his kunckleduster,
Or like a typhus-germ?
Or like fairy-tale of your own invention-
Stolen from you and loathsomely repeated,
Where I can see, behind you in the doorway,
The police-cap and the white-faced concierge?
I don't care how. The Yenisei is swirling,
The Pole Star glittering. And eyes
I love are closing on the final horror.
On the other hand, Poem without a Hero, in contrast, is sustained, polyphonic, symphonic. It is a fairly long poem; nevertheless Akhmatova's preoccupation with it so many years is astonishing. A poem which describes possession, it possessed her. The poem is complex, but less so; its depths are almost limitless, if one goes on exploring them, yet its surface is clear, real, ordered and beautiful, no more and no less mysterious than the view from your window.
Poem without a Hero
'The hero's on stage!' Ah
Yes, here he comes, displacing
Of holy vengeance he sings.
-But why have you all fled, as
Though to a communal wedding,
Leaving me in the gloom
Face to face with a frame' s blackness
Out of which stares that hour
Which became most bitter drama
Never sufficiently wept.
Akhmatova sees beyond the endless road to lowest paradigms of humanity has to touch during those 'inhumane' times. Those tragic moments of revelation and reality exceeds all that art can do; and through her art she shares it all with us- agony, recognition, catharsis. She presents to the world- a portrait of a woman who, besides her genius, had gifts of life-enriching gaiety and loyalty, and a moral strength which suffering only made stronger.
Excerpts:-
from Evening
Memory of sun seeps from the heart
Grass grows yellower.
Faintly if at all the early snowflakes
Hover, hover.
Water becoming ice is slowing in
The narrow channels.
Nothing at all will happen here again,
Will ever happen.
Against the sky the willow spreads a fan
The silk's torn off.
may be it's better I did not become
Your wife.
Memory of sun seeps from the heart.
What is it? - Dark?
Perhaps! Winter will have occupied us
In the night.
from Rosary
-You've come to put me in the grave.
Where is your shovel and your spade?
You're carrying just a flute.
I'm not going to blame you,
Sadly a long time ago
My voice fell mute.
from Anno Domini
Everything is looted, spoiled, despoiled,
Death flickering his black wing,
Anguish, hunger- then why this
Lightness overlaying everything?
September 15, 2015
I wouldn't have been able to write this, had they been successful in silencing her art, for in order to censor these conscientious lines, Anna Akhmatova was called a "nun and a whore" by Stalin's "cultural hack." She was "the conscience of Russia," and this frightened them. She didn't escape after the Revolution; she chose to stay and face the censorship of her work, the verbal attacks to her character, and the agents who followed her every move.
She hated being called a poetess, and yet, the introductory remarks to this collection insists upon referring to her as one: "If we call her by that name [poetess], it is in no condescending sense…" I don't see a poetess, only a poet in a love affair with verse (I've tried to remember a moment when I've even used the word poetess and I can't recall).
When I read Akhmatova, I'm transported to a world of artistic repression, where the whispers of poetic lines seem to tell the individual stories of love, oppression, imprisonment, and death; where freedom of expression finds nuance in verse; where voices unheard rise with melody and beat through stanza.
from "Evening Room"
I have written down the words
I have long not dared to speak
Dully the heart beats,
This body is not my own (17-20).
Akhmatova was married to the poet Nikolai Gumilev in 1910, and he was executed in 1921, as an alleged counter-revolutionary. Although they'd been divorced for three years at the time he was arrested, they never forgot that she'd been associated with him. The poems from Evening Room were written during the breakdown in their marriage, when her husband left her for a long trip to Africa. Those poems seem to embody themes of a lover abandoned.
She knows how to capture the feelings of displacement and loneliness, of a traumatized and tortured soul. Some of my favorite poems I found in White Flock :
Under an empty dwelling's frozen roof,
Dead days. Here no living comes.
I read the Acts of the Apostles
And the Psalms.
But the stars are blue, the hoar-frost downy,
And each meeting more wonderful,
And in the Bible a red maple leaf
Marks the pages of the Song of Songs.
(1915)
Simplicity in Iamb Meter I found;
History in abstact poetry I devoured.
Within her words, I viewed my own consciousness, in her truth I sought answers from ill-gotten global catastrophes that leave imprints upon survivors' mental pathways. Hers is the closest art wherein I've come to view myself clearly (almost like after reading Vera).
from Dante
He did not return, even after his death, to
That ancient city he was rooted in.
Going away, he did not pause for breath
Nor look back. My song is for him.
In Anno Domini, I saw her disdain of war, in Reed , I applauded her tribute to artists like Boris Pasternak and Dante, and in Northern Elegies , I shed tears for the aftermath of destruction, and for melancholic nostalgia. However, when I read "Requiem", I sensed fear, sadness, courage, and pain, all wrapped within exquisite lyricism.
During the Yezhov Terror, Akhmatova spent seventeen months in Leningrad's prisons. One day, a woman in prison asked her if she could "describe" those conditions. She answered, "yes." Requiem is the result. I write this as I include her work in my private collection of notable war literature to research and study, literature that showcases humanity in crisis. I write this and I wonder why suffering is such a topic of avoidance, when most of the world knows pain. I write this to leave you with the prologue to Requiem:
Prologue
In those years only the dead smiled,
Glad to be at rest:
And Leningrad city swayed like
A needless appendix to its prisons.
It was then that the railway-yards
Were asylums of the mad;
Short were the locomotives'
Farewell songs.
Stars of death stood
Above us, and innocent Russia
Writhed under bloodstained boots, and
Under the tires of Black Marias.
She hated being called a poetess, and yet, the introductory remarks to this collection insists upon referring to her as one: "If we call her by that name [poetess], it is in no condescending sense…" I don't see a poetess, only a poet in a love affair with verse (I've tried to remember a moment when I've even used the word poetess and I can't recall).
When I read Akhmatova, I'm transported to a world of artistic repression, where the whispers of poetic lines seem to tell the individual stories of love, oppression, imprisonment, and death; where freedom of expression finds nuance in verse; where voices unheard rise with melody and beat through stanza.
from "Evening Room"
I have written down the words
I have long not dared to speak
Dully the heart beats,
This body is not my own (17-20).
Akhmatova was married to the poet Nikolai Gumilev in 1910, and he was executed in 1921, as an alleged counter-revolutionary. Although they'd been divorced for three years at the time he was arrested, they never forgot that she'd been associated with him. The poems from Evening Room were written during the breakdown in their marriage, when her husband left her for a long trip to Africa. Those poems seem to embody themes of a lover abandoned.
She knows how to capture the feelings of displacement and loneliness, of a traumatized and tortured soul. Some of my favorite poems I found in White Flock :
Under an empty dwelling's frozen roof,
Dead days. Here no living comes.
I read the Acts of the Apostles
And the Psalms.
But the stars are blue, the hoar-frost downy,
And each meeting more wonderful,
And in the Bible a red maple leaf
Marks the pages of the Song of Songs.
(1915)
Simplicity in Iamb Meter I found;
History in abstact poetry I devoured.
Within her words, I viewed my own consciousness, in her truth I sought answers from ill-gotten global catastrophes that leave imprints upon survivors' mental pathways. Hers is the closest art wherein I've come to view myself clearly (almost like after reading Vera).
from Dante
He did not return, even after his death, to
That ancient city he was rooted in.
Going away, he did not pause for breath
Nor look back. My song is for him.
In Anno Domini, I saw her disdain of war, in Reed , I applauded her tribute to artists like Boris Pasternak and Dante, and in Northern Elegies , I shed tears for the aftermath of destruction, and for melancholic nostalgia. However, when I read "Requiem", I sensed fear, sadness, courage, and pain, all wrapped within exquisite lyricism.
During the Yezhov Terror, Akhmatova spent seventeen months in Leningrad's prisons. One day, a woman in prison asked her if she could "describe" those conditions. She answered, "yes." Requiem is the result. I write this as I include her work in my private collection of notable war literature to research and study, literature that showcases humanity in crisis. I write this and I wonder why suffering is such a topic of avoidance, when most of the world knows pain. I write this to leave you with the prologue to Requiem:
Prologue
In those years only the dead smiled,
Glad to be at rest:
And Leningrad city swayed like
A needless appendix to its prisons.
It was then that the railway-yards
Were asylums of the mad;
Short were the locomotives'
Farewell songs.
Stars of death stood
Above us, and innocent Russia
Writhed under bloodstained boots, and
Under the tires of Black Marias.
November 29, 2019
"You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
When, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you"
January 21, 2016
Willow
In the young century’s cool nursery,
In its checkered silence, I was born.
Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind’s voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
And, grateful for my love, it lived
All its life with me, and with its weeping
Branches fanned my insomnia with dreams. But
–Surprisingly enough!– I have outlived
It. Now, a stump’s out there. Under these skies,
Under these skies of ours, are other
Willows, and their alien voices rise.
And I am silent … As though I’d lost a brother.
(1940; translated from the Russian by D. M. Thomas)
These were, I think, the first translations of her I read back in the late 90s, so have a soft spot for them. As with all great poets not writing in English, it certainly helps to get more than one translation, so that the "poem" can exist in some hovering space between them.
Akhmatova is certainly one of the great poets of the 20thc, and Requiem in particular remains one of the key literary works of the century. Whether or not one likes her younger "romantic" poems is a matter of taste. As a love-struck 18 year old wandering around Eastern Europe in the summer before University, I was pretty much their perfect audience...
She belongs on your shelf, along with Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam.
In the young century’s cool nursery,
In its checkered silence, I was born.
Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind’s voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
And, grateful for my love, it lived
All its life with me, and with its weeping
Branches fanned my insomnia with dreams. But
–Surprisingly enough!– I have outlived
It. Now, a stump’s out there. Under these skies,
Under these skies of ours, are other
Willows, and their alien voices rise.
And I am silent … As though I’d lost a brother.
(1940; translated from the Russian by D. M. Thomas)
These were, I think, the first translations of her I read back in the late 90s, so have a soft spot for them. As with all great poets not writing in English, it certainly helps to get more than one translation, so that the "poem" can exist in some hovering space between them.
Akhmatova is certainly one of the great poets of the 20thc, and Requiem in particular remains one of the key literary works of the century. Whether or not one likes her younger "romantic" poems is a matter of taste. As a love-struck 18 year old wandering around Eastern Europe in the summer before University, I was pretty much their perfect audience...
She belongs on your shelf, along with Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam.
April 1, 2020
There's nothing to be sad about.
Sadness is a crime, a prison.
A strange impression, I have risen
From the grey canvas like a sheet.
Up-flying arms, with a bad break,
Tormented smile—I and the sitter
Had to become thus through the bitter
Hours of profligate give and take.
He willed it that it should be so,
With words that were sinister and dead.
Fear drove into my lips the red,
And into my cheeks it piled the snow.
No sin in him. I was his fee.
He went, and arranged other limbs,
And other draperies. Void of dreams,
I lie in mortal lethargy.
June 8, 2022
You and I are a mountain of grief
you and I will never meet.
Only try at midnight to send me
a greeting through the stars.
This is a collection of lyric poems by one of the exceptional Russian poets of the 20th century, revolving around the themes of separation, loss, loneliness, despondency and suffering.
Her style of writing is influenced by witnessing the terrible events which were happening in the Stanilist Russia.
I heard a voice. It called me consolingly,
'Come here, leave
your god-forsaken country,
abandon Russia forever.
I'll wash the blood from your hands,
and rip black shame from your heart,
and give you a new name to cover
the pain of defeat and humiliation.'
But I quite calmly
put my hands over my cars,
that my grieving soul
should not be defiled by these shameful words.
you and I will never meet.
Only try at midnight to send me
a greeting through the stars.
This is a collection of lyric poems by one of the exceptional Russian poets of the 20th century, revolving around the themes of separation, loss, loneliness, despondency and suffering.
Her style of writing is influenced by witnessing the terrible events which were happening in the Stanilist Russia.
I heard a voice. It called me consolingly,
'Come here, leave
your god-forsaken country,
abandon Russia forever.
I'll wash the blood from your hands,
and rip black shame from your heart,
and give you a new name to cover
the pain of defeat and humiliation.'
But I quite calmly
put my hands over my cars,
that my grieving soul
should not be defiled by these shameful words.
October 31, 2024
A Gift of Akhmatova
I received this lovely Folio Society edition of the Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova as a gift and was moved deeply. It was the first reading I had done of the works of this Russian poet. This edition has a history that is worth mentioning. In 1985, Ohio University Press published the Selected Poems with translations by D.M. Thomas under the title "You Will Hear Thunder." Vintage republished the book in 2009, and it remains available in an inexpensive paperback. The Folio Society published its edition in 2016. It consists of the Thomas translation and notes on the poems together with a new introduction by Elimear McBride. The book comes in a slipcase, is a joy to read and hold, and includes seven illustrations and photographs. It is expensive but a wonderful book to own and to receive as a gift.
The book includes a selection of Akhmatova's (1889 -- 1966) poetry from 1909 through the early 1960s. Her work is both intimate, expressivist, and personal and also gives a deeply poetical response to the wars and terrors of the first half of the Twentieth Century, including both World Wars, the Russian Revolution, and the terrors and purges of Communism. Akhmatova lived and suffered through them.
The Selected Poems includes works from seven collections; "Evening", "Rosary", "White Flock", "Plantain", "Anno Domini", "Reed" and "The Seventh Book" together with two great long works, "Requiem" and the "Poem Without a Hero." In her earlier works, Akhmatova became recognized as a major figure in the "Silver Age" of Russian literature in the years just before the Revolution. Her poems from this period tend to be short. They focus on her unhappy relationship with her first husband, killed by the communists in 1921 and with her lovers. The poems describe places in Old Russia, tend to be concentrated, and are full of lyricism and passion.
Following the Russian Revolution, the passion continues. Akhmatova, her former husband, and her son, suffered continued pressure and persecution from the new regime. Her poems continue to describe her life and her love affairs and also assume a political tone of the sufferings engendered by wars and by communism. For many years, Akhmatova was forbidden to publish and her poems were recited and preserved by memory.
The long poem "Requiem" depicts the experience of the poet and of countless others during the Soviet purges of 1937 -- 1938. In her introduction, Akhmatova writes:
"In the fearful years of the Yezov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day somebody 'identified me. Besides me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She had, of course, never heard of me; but she suddenly come out of that trance so common to us all and whispered in my ear (everybody spoke in whispers there): 'Can you describe this?' And I said 'Yes, I can.' And then something like the shadow of a smile crossed what had once been her face."
This long poem is moving and accessible. Akhmatova did indeed describe the scene, as she told her fell0w-prisoner she could.
The long "Poem without a Hero", while also moving and deeply personal, is modernist and often opaque. It includes many literary allusions and allusions to the poet's own life. The details and the individual sections of the work frequently are spare and taut. The poem describes the Siege of Leningrad. In the process, Ahkmatova reflects on her own life, on earlier history, and on the tragedies of the Twentieth Century. She wrote: "I frequently hear of certain absurd interpretations of 'Poem without a Hero'. And I have been advised to make it clearer. This I decline to do. It contains no third, seventh, or twenty-ninth thoughts. I shall neither explain nor change anything. What is written is written." The poem shows, among other things, the influence of the poetry of T.S. Elliott.
In additional to the personal poems and the historical meditations, many of Akhmatova's poems describe figures such as Sophocles, Dante, Beatrice, Rachel, Lot's Wife, and Cleopatra. Here is a late poem, "Last Rose", written in 1962 that Akhmatova read to Robert Frost during his visit to the Soviet Union.
"Bowing down to the ground with Morozova,
Dancing with the head of a lover,
Flying from Dido's Pyre in smoke
To burn with Joan at the stake --
Lord! can't you see I'm weary
Of this rising and dying and living.
Take it all, but once more bring me close
To sense the freshness of this crimson rose,"
I was glad to get to know something of Akhmatova through the thoughtful gift of this Folio Society book. Readers without the good fortune of the gift, may make the poet's acquaintance in the earlier Vintage paperback edition of her selected poems.
Robin Friedman
I received this lovely Folio Society edition of the Selected Poems of Anna Akhmatova as a gift and was moved deeply. It was the first reading I had done of the works of this Russian poet. This edition has a history that is worth mentioning. In 1985, Ohio University Press published the Selected Poems with translations by D.M. Thomas under the title "You Will Hear Thunder." Vintage republished the book in 2009, and it remains available in an inexpensive paperback. The Folio Society published its edition in 2016. It consists of the Thomas translation and notes on the poems together with a new introduction by Elimear McBride. The book comes in a slipcase, is a joy to read and hold, and includes seven illustrations and photographs. It is expensive but a wonderful book to own and to receive as a gift.
The book includes a selection of Akhmatova's (1889 -- 1966) poetry from 1909 through the early 1960s. Her work is both intimate, expressivist, and personal and also gives a deeply poetical response to the wars and terrors of the first half of the Twentieth Century, including both World Wars, the Russian Revolution, and the terrors and purges of Communism. Akhmatova lived and suffered through them.
The Selected Poems includes works from seven collections; "Evening", "Rosary", "White Flock", "Plantain", "Anno Domini", "Reed" and "The Seventh Book" together with two great long works, "Requiem" and the "Poem Without a Hero." In her earlier works, Akhmatova became recognized as a major figure in the "Silver Age" of Russian literature in the years just before the Revolution. Her poems from this period tend to be short. They focus on her unhappy relationship with her first husband, killed by the communists in 1921 and with her lovers. The poems describe places in Old Russia, tend to be concentrated, and are full of lyricism and passion.
Following the Russian Revolution, the passion continues. Akhmatova, her former husband, and her son, suffered continued pressure and persecution from the new regime. Her poems continue to describe her life and her love affairs and also assume a political tone of the sufferings engendered by wars and by communism. For many years, Akhmatova was forbidden to publish and her poems were recited and preserved by memory.
The long poem "Requiem" depicts the experience of the poet and of countless others during the Soviet purges of 1937 -- 1938. In her introduction, Akhmatova writes:
"In the fearful years of the Yezov terror I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. One day somebody 'identified me. Besides me, in the queue, there was a woman with blue lips. She had, of course, never heard of me; but she suddenly come out of that trance so common to us all and whispered in my ear (everybody spoke in whispers there): 'Can you describe this?' And I said 'Yes, I can.' And then something like the shadow of a smile crossed what had once been her face."
This long poem is moving and accessible. Akhmatova did indeed describe the scene, as she told her fell0w-prisoner she could.
The long "Poem without a Hero", while also moving and deeply personal, is modernist and often opaque. It includes many literary allusions and allusions to the poet's own life. The details and the individual sections of the work frequently are spare and taut. The poem describes the Siege of Leningrad. In the process, Ahkmatova reflects on her own life, on earlier history, and on the tragedies of the Twentieth Century. She wrote: "I frequently hear of certain absurd interpretations of 'Poem without a Hero'. And I have been advised to make it clearer. This I decline to do. It contains no third, seventh, or twenty-ninth thoughts. I shall neither explain nor change anything. What is written is written." The poem shows, among other things, the influence of the poetry of T.S. Elliott.
In additional to the personal poems and the historical meditations, many of Akhmatova's poems describe figures such as Sophocles, Dante, Beatrice, Rachel, Lot's Wife, and Cleopatra. Here is a late poem, "Last Rose", written in 1962 that Akhmatova read to Robert Frost during his visit to the Soviet Union.
"Bowing down to the ground with Morozova,
Dancing with the head of a lover,
Flying from Dido's Pyre in smoke
To burn with Joan at the stake --
Lord! can't you see I'm weary
Of this rising and dying and living.
Take it all, but once more bring me close
To sense the freshness of this crimson rose,"
I was glad to get to know something of Akhmatova through the thoughtful gift of this Folio Society book. Readers without the good fortune of the gift, may make the poet's acquaintance in the earlier Vintage paperback edition of her selected poems.
Robin Friedman
June 10, 2019
It must be dreams that makes us different, must be
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.
It was scintillating combination. a necessary sequence. Out driving in the rain for Sunday foodstuffs. I popped in Half Price and saw that this Ardis edition had finally been marked down from $9 to $2. I appreciate the wide breadth of authors published but find the paper employed cheap. Back at home listening to Bill Evans I read across the stormy afternoon. There's such a density phrase to phrase.
I myself command no aura. I am only too ready to supplicate to my own memory. Yesterday saw me reflecting so fondly of recent conversations abroad. An incessant ping acknowledges that people closer by have lives and are ready to share.
Oh Anna! You wave an eternal banner but for a faction of devotees and the stateless. A five year plan of dreams and memory.
private cells inside a common skull.
One has the other's look and has another memory.
It was scintillating combination. a necessary sequence. Out driving in the rain for Sunday foodstuffs. I popped in Half Price and saw that this Ardis edition had finally been marked down from $9 to $2. I appreciate the wide breadth of authors published but find the paper employed cheap. Back at home listening to Bill Evans I read across the stormy afternoon. There's such a density phrase to phrase.
I myself command no aura. I am only too ready to supplicate to my own memory. Yesterday saw me reflecting so fondly of recent conversations abroad. An incessant ping acknowledges that people closer by have lives and are ready to share.
Oh Anna! You wave an eternal banner but for a faction of devotees and the stateless. A five year plan of dreams and memory.
April 11, 2018
A collection of poems on tragic love (love expressed as tragedy, tragedy embedded in love); And a funeral elegy for the Russian people, the living and the dead (we cannot tell them apart).
"Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
She who gave up her life to steal one glance." --Lot's Wife
"In the young century's cool nursery,
In its checkered silence, I was born.
Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
And, grateful for my love, it lived
All its life with me, and with its weeping
Branches fanned my insomnia with dreams. But
-Surprisingly enough !-I have outlived
It. Now, a stump's out there. Under these skies,
Under these skies of ours, are other
Willows, and their alien voices rise.
And I am silent . . . As though I'd lost a brother." --Willow
"Through which a hundred million of my people cry,
Let them remember me also . . . .
And if ever in this country they should want
To build me a monument
I consent to that honour,
But only on condition that they
Erect it not on the sea-shore where I was born :
My last links there were broken long ago,
Nor by the stump in the Royal Gardens,
Where an inconsolable young shade is seeking me,
But here, where I stood for three hundred hours
And where they never, never opened the doors for me.
Lest in blessed death I should forget
The grinding scream of the Black Marias,
The hideous clanging gate, the old
Woman wailing like a wounded beast.
And may the melting snow drop like tears
From my motionless bronze eyelids,
And the prison pigeons coo above me
And the ships sail slowly down the Neva." --Requiem
"Who mourns one woman in a holocaust?
Surely her death has no significance?
Yet in my heart she never will be lost,
She who gave up her life to steal one glance." --Lot's Wife
"In the young century's cool nursery,
In its checkered silence, I was born.
Sweet to me was not the voice of man,
But the wind's voice was understood by me.
The burdocks and the nettles fed my soul,
But I loved the silver willow best of all.
And, grateful for my love, it lived
All its life with me, and with its weeping
Branches fanned my insomnia with dreams. But
-Surprisingly enough !-I have outlived
It. Now, a stump's out there. Under these skies,
Under these skies of ours, are other
Willows, and their alien voices rise.
And I am silent . . . As though I'd lost a brother." --Willow
"Through which a hundred million of my people cry,
Let them remember me also . . . .
And if ever in this country they should want
To build me a monument
I consent to that honour,
But only on condition that they
Erect it not on the sea-shore where I was born :
My last links there were broken long ago,
Nor by the stump in the Royal Gardens,
Where an inconsolable young shade is seeking me,
But here, where I stood for three hundred hours
And where they never, never opened the doors for me.
Lest in blessed death I should forget
The grinding scream of the Black Marias,
The hideous clanging gate, the old
Woman wailing like a wounded beast.
And may the melting snow drop like tears
From my motionless bronze eyelids,
And the prison pigeons coo above me
And the ships sail slowly down the Neva." --Requiem
May 31, 2015
by Nathan AltmanThe poems here: http://www.poemhunter.com/anna-akhmat...
Silent flows the river Don
A yellow moon looks quietly on
Swanking about, with cap askew
It sees through the window a shadow of you
Gravely ill, all alone
The moon sees a woman lying at home
Her son is in jail, her husband is dead
Say a prayer for her instead.
- from 'Requiem'
Huang Xiang
December 16, 2018
Já tinha lido o "Requiem" que é o seu principal poema, aquando da minha visita a casa onde morou mais tempo: a Fountain House em S. Petersburgo. Na altura fiquei bastante impressionado, e deixei algumas notas no blog. Mas só agora li o seu maior poema, "Poem Without a Hero" e foi como se tivesse viajado de volta, mentalmente, até à Fountain House, até aos seus objetos das décadas de 20, 30 e 40 do século XX.
Muita dor, sofrimento, frio e pouca paz na alma. Recomenda-se a leitura, mas com calma, e de sobreaviso que daqui não se sai indiferente.
"And now, with the cold fear of death
With minds fixed on the time of revenge
With dry eyes turned to the ground
With tight and nervous hands
Ahead of me, out of a country turned to dust
All Russia walked, toward the East."
1942
Sobre Anna Akhmatova podem saber mais no meu post da visita à casa-museu:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
Muita dor, sofrimento, frio e pouca paz na alma. Recomenda-se a leitura, mas com calma, e de sobreaviso que daqui não se sai indiferente.
"And now, with the cold fear of death
With minds fixed on the time of revenge
With dry eyes turned to the ground
With tight and nervous hands
Ahead of me, out of a country turned to dust
All Russia walked, toward the East."
1942
Sobre Anna Akhmatova podem saber mais no meu post da visita à casa-museu:
https://virtual-illusion.blogspot.com...
Read
March 21, 2022How do you go about your life after you've read "Requiem," I ask you. All other poems need not apply.
August 30, 2015
" My breast grew cold and numb,
But my feet were light.
On to my right hand I fumbled
The glove to my left hand.
It seemed that there were many steps —
I knew there were only three.
An autumn whisper between the maples
Kept urging: ‘Die with me.'
Change has made me weary,
Fate has cheated me of everything.
I answered: ‘My dear, my dear!'
' I’ll die with you I too am suffering.’
It was a song of the last meeting.
Only bedroom-candles burnt
When I looked into the dark house,
And they were yellow and indifferent. "
----
" I, like a river,
Have been turned aside by this harsh age.
I am a substitute.
My life has flowed Into another channel
And I do not recognize my shore. "
But my feet were light.
On to my right hand I fumbled
The glove to my left hand.
It seemed that there were many steps —
I knew there were only three.
An autumn whisper between the maples
Kept urging: ‘Die with me.'
Change has made me weary,
Fate has cheated me of everything.
I answered: ‘My dear, my dear!'
' I’ll die with you I too am suffering.’
It was a song of the last meeting.
Only bedroom-candles burnt
When I looked into the dark house,
And they were yellow and indifferent. "
----
" I, like a river,
Have been turned aside by this harsh age.
I am a substitute.
My life has flowed Into another channel
And I do not recognize my shore. "
September 14, 2016
آنا أخماتوفا ..
أميرة شعراء روسيا في القرن العشرين ..
جميلتي الروسية المفضلة في الشعر الروسي..
كم من الأحجار رُميت عليّ!
كثيرة حدّ أنّي ما عدتُ أخافها
كثيرة حدّ أنّ حفرتي أصبحت برجا متينا،
شاهقا بين أبراج شاهقة.
أشكر الرماة البنّائين
عساهم يتجنبون الهموم والأحزان
فمن هنا سوف أرى شروق الشمس قبل سواي
ومن هنا سوف يزداد شعاع الشمس الأخير ألقاً.
ومن نوافذ غرفتي ..
غالبا ما سوف تتغلغل النسمات الشمالية
ومن يدي سوف يأكل الحمام حبوب القمح.
أما صفحتي غير المنتهية
فيد الإلهام السمراء
ذات الهدوء والرقّة
هي التي سوف
من هنا
تنهيها.
صديقات لن يطرقن بابي ذات مساء :
أنا صوتكم يا عشّاقي الكاذبين،
وحرارةُ لهاثكم
وانعكاسُ وجوهكم في المرآة
والخفقان الباطل لأجنحتكم الباطلة...
لا يهمّ من أنا،
فحتى اللحظة الأخيرة سأرافقكم.
لهذا تدّعون حبّي بجشعٍ
رغم ذنوبي وشروري
ولهذا تعهدون إليّ بخيرة أبنائكم.
لهذا لا تسألون عنه قط
وتلفّون منزلي الخالي على الدوام
بمدائحكم الدخانية.
لهذا تقولون: لا يمكن اثنين أن يلتحما أكثر منّا،
وتقولون: لا يمكن أحدا ان يحبّ امرأة بجنون أشدّ.
مثلما يتوق الظل الى الانفساخ عن الجسد
مثلما يتوق الجسد الى الانفصال عن الروح
هكذا أنا اليوم
أتوق يا عشّاقي الكاذبين
إلى أن تنسوني
هكذا أنا أتذكرك جميلتي ..
ولكن للأسف لولا إنني قرأت لك من قبل بترجمة مختلفة لكان هذا الكتاب ظلمك في ترجمته لأشعارك .. فروحك مختلفة تماما عما قٌدم في الكتاب ..
للأسف الترجمة ظلمت أشعارك .. وابتعدت تماما عن روحك التي قرأت لها وقرأت عنها من قبل في ترجمات مختلفة ..
وما اقتبسته هنا هو من الترجمة التي أحببتها وقرأتها من قبل .. وليس مما ورد في الكتاب المُترجم ..
August 6, 2024
وقتی داشتم یه تصویر کوچیک از آخماتووا کنار شعری که ازش یادداشت کرده بودم میکشیدم با هر خط یا سایه یاد دریای طوفانی، رنج و دوست میافتادم. چیزهایی که یادآور شعرهاش برای منه.
"Who said that heart is stone?
I know: it is made of fire
I never understand: were you close
To me, or simply loved me?"
"It seemed there were many steps
I knew _ there were only three
Autumn, whispering in the maples
Kept urging: "Die with me!
I'm cheated by joylessness
Changed by a destiny untrue."
"هفتههای بیوزن
پروازکنان میگذرند
آنچه را روی داده است هرگز درنخواهم یافت."
"Who said that heart is stone?
I know: it is made of fire
I never understand: were you close
To me, or simply loved me?"
"It seemed there were many steps
I knew _ there were only three
Autumn, whispering in the maples
Kept urging: "Die with me!
I'm cheated by joylessness
Changed by a destiny untrue."
"هفتههای بیوزن
پروازکنان میگذرند
آنچه را روی داده است هرگز درنخواهم یافت."
August 16, 2023
30 Books in 30 Days / Book #14
WiT 2023 / Book #4
WiT 2023 / Book #4
March 17, 2021
I love this woman. I love her madness and her grief.
Fragment
And it seems to me that there were fires
Flying till dawn without number,
And I never found out things - those
Strange eyes of his - what colour were they?
You will hear Thunder
You will hear thunder and remember me
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of crimson
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
Fragment
And it seems to me that there were fires
Flying till dawn without number,
And I never found out things - those
Strange eyes of his - what colour were they?
You will hear Thunder
You will hear thunder and remember me
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of crimson
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
June 1, 2022
“What’s war? What’s plague? We know that they will pass, Judgement is passed, we see an end to them. But which of us can cope with this fear, this— The terror that is named the flight of time?”
July 31, 2018
Akhmatova is nearly always astonishing and powerful, but it's interesting to see the progression in her work, from early poems of emotional expression repressed by ice and stoicism, to the intervention of Russian history which transforms her into an existential and spiritual minded oracle. The line which names the collection is apt; she is not the one who throws lightning bolts, but one whose power comes in clear headed portents. She speaks from a position of wisdom, but that doesn't preclude her from a deep emotional understanding as well. Requiem is her classic, mourning her country as Mary mourns her son, but I found myself impressed with how consistent everything else is. The book is a representative selection of course, but well chosen in any case. And if any translation is worthy, it's this one. Strong recommendation.
June 8, 2008
There are many translations of Akhmatova, but, of those I've tried, these by Richard McKane, in a large Bloodaxe anthology, are my favourites. Because he doesn't rhyme, he doesn't have to force the sense. As I can't read a word of Russian, I don't know how true the translations are to the originals, but they seem to be wonderful poems in their own right.
February 3, 2013
You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
Anna Akhmatova
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
Anna Akhmatova
abandoned
November 20, 2022This is a selection of poetry from several of Akhmatova's collections, translated by D. M .Thomas. I picked out a few poems from this to read, and very much enjoyed them.
The only reason for abandoning this book was that I could not cope with the small print size. However, I have have reviewed the first two collections of Akhmatova's poetry, "Evening " and "Rosary", separately.
The only reason for abandoning this book was that I could not cope with the small print size. However, I have have reviewed the first two collections of Akhmatova's poetry, "Evening " and "Rosary", separately.
August 25, 2019
You Will Hear Thunder
You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
You will hear thunder and remember me,
And think: she wanted storms. The rim
Of the sky will be the colour of hard crimson,
And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.
That day in Moscow, it will all come true,
when, for the last time, I take my leave,
And hasten to the heights that I have longed for,
Leaving my shadow still to be with you.
January 1, 2025
There are Four of Us
I have turned aside from everything,
From the whole earthly store.
The spirit and guardian of this place
Is an old tree-stump in water.
We are brief guests of the earth, as it were,
And life is a habit we put on.
On paths of air I seem to overhear
Two friendly voices, talking in turn.
Did I say two? . . . There
By the east wall’s tangle of raspberry,
Is a branch of elder, dark and fresh.
Why? it’s a letter from Marina.
- November 1961 (in delirium)
Anna Akhmatova was the last to pass away from the “four of us", a group comprising Russian poets Anna Akhmatova (1889–1966), Osip Mandelstam (1891–1938), Boris Pasternak (1890–1960), and Marina Tsvetaeva (1892–1941). They first crossed paths before the 1917 Russian Revolution and somehow managed to support one another through the turbulence of the early Soviet era, though two of them met untimely deaths long before the others. Their legacies endured not only through their own works but also in the reflections of each other's creations.
In this collection, Akhmatova’s poetry often remembers her fellow poets and the tragedies surrounding their lives and deaths. The copy I own is translated by D.M. Thomas, and I’ve encountered several English renditions of There Are Four of Us. Yet, none captures the same evocative sense of solitude in an aging Soviet state as this version does, where one is far removed from the company of her cherished peers.
February 11, 2008
One often wonders, when one hears everyone and their brothers spouting superlatives about a poet from a historically repressive country, whether the superlatives are based on the poet's actual work, or whether they're in some way based on the poet's admirable-- but irrelevant-- ability to perform within a culture that is repressive to the poet's art. In some cases, the superlatives are justified, for example Vladimir Holan's stunning book-length poem _A Night with Hamlet_, written while Holan was officially a non-person in Hungary in the sixties.
Akhmatova has been called "the greatest Russian woman poet ever, and perhaps the greatest woman poet ever." I can't help but think those lauding on these kinds of laurels are looking more at her life than her work. There are certainly flashes of great brilliance here, but to put Akhmativa's work up against that of, say, Elizabeth Bishop, Deborah Allbery, or even the underrated Dorianne Laux would quickly reveal many of its flaws.
This is not to say that Akhmatova's poetry is completely without merit, and one must be forced to consider the viability of the work of any translator who would consider "He, was it, through the packed hall/Sent you (or was it a dream?)" to be the best way to translate anything, much less poetry. And thus, perhaps, the original is far more eloquent than what we receive here. That taken into account, there is still the problem to contend with that much of Akhmatova's work is, for obvious reasons, overtly political, and makes no attempt to convey its message artistically; worse yet, a good deal of that work is imagist, impressionist. The end result is something that's thick, sludgy, and impossible to read.
However, every once in a while a good line will shine through, and occasionally we find ourselves staring at a poem that seems to exist well outside the boundaries of this particular collection:
* * *
Voronezh
And the town is frozen solid, leaded with ice.
Trees, walls, snow, seem to be under glass. Cautiously I tread on crystals. The painted sleighs can't seem to get a grip. And over the statue of Peter-in-Voronezh Are crows, and poplars, and a pale-green dome Washed-out and muddy in the sun-motes. The mighty slopes of the field of Kulikovo Tremble still with the slaughter of barbarians. And all at once the poplars, like lifted chalices, Enmesh more boisterously overhead Like thousands of wedding-guests feasting And drinking toasts to our happiness. And in the room of the banished poet Fear and the Muse take turns at the watch, And the night comes When there will be no sunrise.
* * *
Unfortunately, there's too little of this and too much of the rest. Giving the benefit of the doubt where the translation is concerned, I can still only manage ** 1/2.
Akhmatova has been called "the greatest Russian woman poet ever, and perhaps the greatest woman poet ever." I can't help but think those lauding on these kinds of laurels are looking more at her life than her work. There are certainly flashes of great brilliance here, but to put Akhmativa's work up against that of, say, Elizabeth Bishop, Deborah Allbery, or even the underrated Dorianne Laux would quickly reveal many of its flaws.
This is not to say that Akhmatova's poetry is completely without merit, and one must be forced to consider the viability of the work of any translator who would consider "He, was it, through the packed hall/Sent you (or was it a dream?)" to be the best way to translate anything, much less poetry. And thus, perhaps, the original is far more eloquent than what we receive here. That taken into account, there is still the problem to contend with that much of Akhmatova's work is, for obvious reasons, overtly political, and makes no attempt to convey its message artistically; worse yet, a good deal of that work is imagist, impressionist. The end result is something that's thick, sludgy, and impossible to read.
However, every once in a while a good line will shine through, and occasionally we find ourselves staring at a poem that seems to exist well outside the boundaries of this particular collection:
* * *
Voronezh
And the town is frozen solid, leaded with ice.
Trees, walls, snow, seem to be under glass. Cautiously I tread on crystals. The painted sleighs can't seem to get a grip. And over the statue of Peter-in-Voronezh Are crows, and poplars, and a pale-green dome Washed-out and muddy in the sun-motes. The mighty slopes of the field of Kulikovo Tremble still with the slaughter of barbarians. And all at once the poplars, like lifted chalices, Enmesh more boisterously overhead Like thousands of wedding-guests feasting And drinking toasts to our happiness. And in the room of the banished poet Fear and the Muse take turns at the watch, And the night comes When there will be no sunrise.
* * *
Unfortunately, there's too little of this and too much of the rest. Giving the benefit of the doubt where the translation is concerned, I can still only manage ** 1/2.
September 10, 2013
I really enjoyed my first foray into Russian poetry (Eugene Onegin notwithstanding) with this book. The translation succeeds in naturally conveying the simplicity and elegance of Akhmatova's style, with very few awkward moments, so the poems are easy to read. Most importantly, however, in this selection you can see the transformation of a city and a nation reflected in that of a poet: from a woman writing about growing up and living in cultured St Petersburg and the pleasant countryside, to a prophet of the people's pain in a Leningrad besieged and beset by physical and social violence. This metamorphosis is the most interesting aspect of Akhmatova's poetry, and it seemed clear to me that she best fulfilled her genius in the moments when it was most complete, as in the viscerally powerful 'Requiem', which I must say is my favourite of the bunch. This book makes you feel that Akhmatova truly was the poet of Russia's people.
December 1, 2015
Re-read this last night looking for an epigraph for one of my stories. What stands out most are the grace in suffering and the delicate thread of hope that is never lost.
June 25, 2022
"The city, demented and dostoyevsky, Wrapped itself in its fog."
3.5 stars
3.5 stars
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