Essay on the topic: Reflection of the tragedy of the individual, family, people in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”
Plan
Introduction. A. Akhmatova - poet " Silver Age»
Section 1. Artistic originality of A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”
a) history of creation
b) analysis of the poem
Section 2. Critics about A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”
Conclusion. Summary and conclusions
Bibliography
Introduction. A.A. Akhmatova - poet of the “Silver Age”
At the turn of the last century and the century before last, although not literally chronologically, on the eve of the revolution, in an era shocked by two world wars, perhaps the most significant “female” poetry in all world literature of modern times arose in Russia - the poetry of Anna Akhmatova. The closest analogy, which arose among her first critics, was the ancient Greek love singer Sappho: the Russian Sappho was often called the young Akhmatova.
Anna Andreevna Gorenko was born on June 11 (23), 1889 near Odessa. As a one-year-old child, she was transported to Tsarskoye Selo, where she lived until she was sixteen years old. Akhmatova’s first memories were of Tsarskoye Selo: “... the green, damp splendor of the parks, the pasture where my nanny took me, the hippodrome where little colorful horses galloped, the old train station...” Anna studied at the Tsarskoye Selo girls’ gymnasium. He writes about it this way: “I studied poorly at first, then much better, but always reluctantly.” In 1907, Akhmatova graduated from the Fundukleevsky gymnasium in Kyiv, then entered Faculty of Law Higher women's courses. The beginning of the 10s was marked in the fate of Akhmatova important events: she married Nikolai Gumilyov, found friendship with the artist
Amadeo Modigliani, and in the spring of 1912 her first collection of poems, “Evening,” was published, which brought Akhmatova instant fame. She was immediately ranked by critics among the greatest Russian poets. Her books became a literary event. Chukovsky wrote that Akhmatova was greeted with “extraordinary, unexpectedly noisy triumphs.” Her poems were not only heard, they were confirmed, quoted in conversations, copied into albums, they were even explained to lovers. “All of Russia,” noted Chukovsky, “remembered the glove that Akhmatova’s rejected woman talks about when leaving the one who pushed her away.”
Anna Andreevna left a memorable portrait for her descendants: her images created by artists N. Altman, Yu. Annenkov, K. Petrov-Vodkin, A. Modigliani and others, the idea of the “Russian Sappho” (the opinion of the times), or the “Chrysostomed Anna of All Rus'” , as Marina Tsvetaeva called her.
From her great-grandmother, the Tatar princess Akhmatova, comes the famous pseudonym, with which she replaced her surname - Gorenko. Her autobiographical note “Briefly about myself” has been published. It says: “I was born on June 11 (23), 1889 near Odessa ( Big Fountain). My father was at that time a retired naval mechanical engineer. As a one-year-old child, I was transported to the north - to Tsarskoe Selo. I lived there until I was sixteen.” Further, in Akhmatova’s characteristic laconic manner, the vital important points her life.
Vital and creative path Anna Andreevna (1889 - 1966) covers more than half a century of the twentieth century - here and Russo-Japanese War, which did not pass by either her consciousness or her verse, nor that most complex and rich in poetic achievements era, which we call the Silver Age and where she comes from, here is the First World War, and the Stalinist repressions that did not bypass her family, and the Great Patriotic War, and the wild bacchanalia of 1946, when they once again tried to disgracefully throw Akhmatova out of Russian literature, and, finally, a truly majestic and fruitful decline, crowned with world recognition.
Object of study for this coursework : Akhmatova’s work – the poem “Requiem”.
Subject of study : the problem of the genre of the poem “Requiem”.
The purpose of the stated work is a study of the artistic originality of the poem “Requiem” by the outstanding poetess of the “Silver Age” A.A. Akhmatova.
To achieve this goal, it is necessary to solve the following tasks:
1. Consider the history of the creation of this work.
2. Analyze the artistic originality of the poem “Requiem”.
3. Consider the opinion of critics about the poem “Requiem”.
Section 1. Artistic originality of A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”
1.1 The history of the creation of the poem “Requiem”
Three pages in the Roman Newspaper. Such a tragic, Mozartian title - “Requiem”. For more than a quarter of a century, they were silent about this work.
I always imagined this woman as sophisticated, refined, somehow flying (probably because of Modigliani’s portrait), somewhat arrogant. Sophistication, even literary snobbery, emanated from her first collections of lyrics - of course, belonging to the intellectual elite, high education and upbringing, the romantic veil of the early twentieth century, the love of the famous Gumilyov... Although all this: education and upbringing, belonging to the intellectual elite and Gumilyov’s love - and determined her fate. Her fate, the fate of her son and the themes of her work.
The poem "Requiem" took a quarter of a century to grow , born from pain and suffering, from short notes in a personal diary, from long thoughts, from desperate sobs and calm, firm lines of a poetic testament. And the life of its author, growing and going beyond the specific biography of the real Anna Akhmatova, became lines in the history of the country, rooted in ancient times.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova had to go through a lot. The terrible years that changed the entire country could not but affect its fate. The poem “Requiem” was evidence of everything that the poetess had to face.
Inner world the poet’s mind is so amazing and subtle that absolutely all experiences, to one degree or another, influence him. A true poet cannot ignore a single detail or phenomenon. surrounding life. Everything is reflected in poetry: both good and tragic. The poem “Requiem” makes you think about the fate of the brilliant poetess, who had to face a horrific catastrophe.
Anna Akhmatova herself was not a direct victim of the repressions of the second half of the 30s. However, her son and husband were repeatedly arrested and spent many years in prisons and camps (Akhmatova’s husband died there). Akhmatova captured these terrible years in Requiem. The poem is truly a requiem for those who died in the waves of Stalin’s terror. The poetess prefaces it with a prosaic introduction, where she recalls the long standing in Leningrad prison lines.
“Then the woman standing behind me asked me in my ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper):
Can you describe this? And I said: - I can.
Then something like a smile crossed what had once been her face.”
So, the poem is based on facts personal biography: October 22, 1935 son of Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumileva Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov was arrested. A student at the history department of Leningrad State University, he was thrown into prison as a “member of an anti-Soviet terrorist group.” This time, Akhmatova managed to get her son out of prison quite quickly: already in November he was released from custody. To do this, she had to write a letter to Stalin.
For the second time, L.N. Gumilyov was arrested in March 1938 and sentenced to ten years in the camps, later the term was reduced to 5 years. In 1949, Lev was arrested for the third time and sentenced to death, which was later replaced by exile.
Vina L.N. Gumilyov has never been proven. In 1956 and 1975, he was completely rehabilitated (on charges of 1938 and 1949), and it was finally “established that L.N. Gumilyov was convicted unfoundedly.”
Anna Andreevna viewed the arrests of 1935 and 1938 as revenge from the authorities for the fact that Lev was the son of N.S. Gumilev.
The arrest of 1949, according to A. Akhmatova, was a consequence of the notorious resolution of the Central Committee of 1946, now the son was imprisoned because of her.
What Anna experienced during these years was reflected not only in the “Requiem”, but also in the “Poem without a Hero”, and in the “Shards” cycle, and in a number of lyric poems different years.
However, it would be wrong to reduce the content of the poem “Requiem” only to a family tragedy. “Requiem” is the embodiment of the people’s grief, the people’s tragedy, it is the cry of the “hundred-million people” who happened to live at that time.
Anna Akhmatova felt indebted to those with whom she stood in prison lines, with whom she “was in trouble together” and “lying at the feet of the executioner’s bloody doll.”
Almost the entire “Requiem” was written in 1935 – 1940, section "Instead of a Preface" And " Epigraph" labeled 1957 and 1961
At first it was conceived as a lyrical cycle and only later was renamed into a poem. The first sketches date back to 1934; Anna Akhmatova worked most intensively on the poem in 1938–1940. But the topic did not let her go, and in the 60s Akhmatova continued to contribute individual stanzas into the poem.
During the life of A.A. Akhmatova’s “Requiem” was not published in our country, although in the 60s it was widely distributed among readers in “samizdat” lists.
In the 40s and 50s, Anna Andreevna burned the manuscripts of “Requiem” after reading poems to people she trusted. The poem existed only in the memory of those closest to us, proxies who memorized stanzas.
OK. Chukovskaya, the author of “Notes about Anna Akhmatova,” cites the following evidence from her diaries of those years: “A long conversation about Pushkin: about the Requiem in Mozart and Salieri.” In the footnotes, Chukovskaya says: “Pushkin has nothing to do with it, it’s a code. In fact, A.A. showed me that day her “Requiem”, written down for a minute, to check if I remembered everything by heart” (January 31, 1940) “A. A. wrote down - gave it to me to read - burned it over the ashtray “Madness is already a wing” - a poem about a prison meeting with her son” (May 6, 1940).
In 1963, one of the copies of the poem went abroad... there, for the first time, “Requiem” was published in full (Munich edition 1963). The perception of Russian writers abroad is conveyed by an essay by the famous prose writer B.K. Zaitsev, published in the newspaper “Russian Thought”: “The other day I received a book of poems from Munich, 23 pages, called “Requiem”... These poems by Akhmatova are a poem, naturally. It came here from Russia, it is printed “without the knowledge or consent of the author” - it is stated on the 4th page, in front of the portrait. Published by the Partnership Foreign Writers“(the “man-made” lists circulate, probably like Pasternak’s writings, throughout Russia in whatever way)…
Anna Akhmatova... The name and surname of this poetess are known to everyone. How many women read her poems with rapture and cried over them, how many kept her manuscripts and worshiped her work? Now the poetry of this extraordinary author can be called priceless. Even after a century, her poems are not forgotten, and often appear with motifs, references and appeals to modern literature. But her descendants remember her poem “Requiem” especially often. This is what we will talk about.
Initially, the poetess planned to write a lyrical cycle of poems dedicated to the period of reaction that caught the heated revolutionary Russia taken by surprise. As you know, after finishing civil war and the reign of relative stability, the new government carried out demonstrative reprisals against dissidents and representatives of society alien to the proletariat, and this persecution ended in real genocide Russian people, when people were imprisoned and executed, trying to keep up with the plan given “from above.” One of the first victims of the bloody regime were Anna Akhmatova’s closest relatives - Nikolai Gumilev, her husband, and their common son, Lev Gumilev. Anna's husband was shot in 1921 as a counter-revolutionary. The son was arrested simply because he bore his father's surname. We can say that it was with this tragedy (the death of her husband) that the story of writing “Requiem” began. Thus, the first fragments were created back in 1934, and their author, realizing that there would be no loss of Russian land end soon, decided to combine the cycle of poems into a single body of the poem. It was completed in 1938-1940, but for obvious reasons was not published. It was in 1939 that Lev Gumilyov was put behind bars.
In the 1960s, during the Thaw period, Akhmatova read the poem to devoted friends, but after reading she always burned the manuscript. However, its copies leaked into samizdat (banned literature was copied by hand and passed from hand to hand). Then they went abroad, where they were published “without the knowledge or consent of the author” (this phrase was at least some kind of guarantee of the poetess’s integrity).
Meaning of the name
Requiem is a religious term for a funeral church service for a deceased person. Famous composers used this name to denote the genre. musical works, which served as accompaniment for the Catholic funeral mass. For example, Mozart's Requiem is widely known. In the broadest sense of the word, it means a certain ritual that accompanies a person’s departure to another world.
Anna Akhmatova used direct meaning title "Requiem", dedicating the poem to prisoners condemned to death. The work seemed to sound from the lips of all the mothers, wives, daughters who saw off their loved ones to death, standing in lines unable to change anything. In Soviet reality, the only funeral ritual allowed to prisoners was the endless siege of the prison, in which women stood silently in the hope of at least saying goodbye to their dear but doomed family members. Their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons seemed to be stricken with a fatal illness and were waiting for a solution, but in reality this illness turned out to be dissent, which the authorities were trying to eradicate. But it only eradicated the flower of the nation, without which the development of society would have been difficult.
Genre, size, direction
At the beginning of the 20th century, the world was captured by a new phenomenon in culture - It was wider and larger-scale than any literary direction, and split into many innovative movements. Anna Akhmatova belonged to Acmeism, a movement based on clarity of style and objectivity of images. The Acmeists strove for a poetic transformation of everyday and even unsightly life phenomena and pursued the goal of ennobling human nature through art. The poem “Requiem” became an excellent example of a new movement, because it fully corresponded to its aesthetic and moral principles: objective, clear images, classical rigor and directness of style, the author’s desire to convey atrocity in the language of poetry in order to warn descendants from the mistakes of their ancestors.
No less interesting is the genre of the work “Requiem” - a poem. According to some compositional features, it is classified as an epic genre, because the work consists of a prologue, a main part and an epilogue, and covers more than one historical era and reveals the relationships between them. Akhmatova reveals a certain tendentiousness of maternal grief in national history and calls on future generations not to forget about him, so as not to allow the tragedy to happen again.
The meter in the poem is dynamic, one rhythm flows into another, and the number of feet in the lines also varies. This is due to the fact that the work was created in fragments over a long time, and the poetess’s style changed, as did her perception of what happened.
Composition
The features of the composition in the poem “Requiem” again point to the poetess’s original intention - to create a cycle of complete and autonomous works. Therefore, it seems that the book was written in fits and starts, as if it had been repeatedly abandoned and spontaneously supplemented again.
- Prologue: the first two chapters (“Dedication” and “Introduction”). They introduce the reader to the story, show the time and place of action.
- The first 4 verses show historical parallels between the fate of mothers of all times. The lyrical heroine tells snippets from the past: the arrest of her son, the first days of terrible loneliness, the frivolity of youth that did not know its bitter fate.
- Chapters 5 and 6 - the mother predicts the death of her son and is tormented by the unknown.
- Sentence. Message about exile to Siberia.
- Towards death. The mother, in despair, calls out for death to come to her too.
- Chapter 9 is a prison meeting that the heroine carries away in her memory along with the madness of despair.
- Crucifixion. In one quatrain, she conveys the mood of her son, who urges her not to cry at the grave. The author draws a parallel with the crucifixion of Christ - an innocent martyr like her son. She compares her maternal feelings to the anguish and confusion of the Mother of God.
- Epilogue. The poetess calls on people to build a monument to the people's suffering, which she expressed in her work. She is afraid to forget about what was done to her people in this place.
What is the poem about?
The work, as already mentioned, is autobiographical. It tells how Anna Andreevna came with parcels to her son, imprisoned in prison. prison fortress. Lev was arrested because his father was executed due to the most dangerous sentence - counter-revolutionary activity. Entire families were exterminated for such an article. So Gumilyov Jr. survived three arrests, one of which, in 1938, ended in exile to Siberia, after which, in 1944, he fought in a penal battalion, and then was again arrested and imprisoned. He, like his mother, who was forbidden to publish, was rehabilitated only after Stalin’s death.
First, in the prologue, the poetess is in the present tense and reports the sentence to her son - exile. Now she is alone, because she is not allowed to follow him. With bitterness from the loss, she wanders through the streets alone and remembers how she waited for this verdict in long lines for two years. There stood hundreds of the same women to whom she dedicated “Requiem.” In the introduction, she dives into this memory. Next, she tells how the arrest took place, how she got used to the thought of him, how she lived in bitter and hateful loneliness. She is afraid and suffers from waiting for her execution for 17 months. Then she finds out that her child was sentenced to prison in Siberia, so she calls the day “bright,” because she was afraid that he would be shot. Then she talks about the meeting that took place and about the pain that the memory of her son’s “terrible eyes” causes her. In the epilogue, she talks about what these lines did to the women who withered before our eyes. The heroine also notes that if a monument is erected to her, it must be done in the very place where she and hundreds of other mothers and wives were kept for years in a feeling of complete obscurity. Let this monument be a stark reminder of the inhumanity that reigned in that place at that time.
The main characters and their characteristics
- Lyrical heroine. Its prototype was Akhmatova herself. This is a woman with dignity and willpower, who, nevertheless, “threw herself at the feet of the executioner,” because she madly loved her child. She is drained of grief, because she has already lost her husband due to the fault of the same brutal state machine. She is emotional and open to the reader, does not hide her horror. However, her whole being hurts and suffers for her son. She says about herself distantly: “This woman is sick, this woman is alone.” The impression of detachment is strengthened when the heroine says that she could not worry so much, and someone else does it for her. Previously, she was “a mocker and the favorite of all friends,” and now she is the very embodiment of torment, calling for death. On a date with her son, madness reaches its climax, and the woman surrenders to him, but soon self-control returns to her, because her son is still alive, which means there is hope as an incentive to live and fight.
- Son. His character is less fully revealed, but a comparison with Christ gives us a sufficient idea of him. He is also innocent and holy in his humble torment. He tries his best to console his mother on their only date, although his terrible gaze cannot hide from her. She laconically reports about his son’s bitter fate: “And when, maddened by torment, the already condemned regiments marched.” That is, the young man behaves with enviable courage and dignity even in such a situation, since he is trying to maintain the composure of his loved ones.
- Women's images in the poem “Requiem” are filled with strength, patience, dedication, but at the same time with inexpressible torment and anxiety for the fate of loved ones. This anxiety withers their faces like autumn leaves. Waiting and uncertainty are ruining them vitality. But their faces, exhausted by grief, are full of determination: they stand in the cold, in the heat, just to achieve the right to see and support their relatives. The heroine tenderly calls them friends and predicts Siberian exile for them, because she has no doubt that all those who can will follow their loved ones into exile. The author compares their images with the face of the Mother of God, who silently and meekly experiences the martyrdom of her son.
Subject
- Theme of memory. The author urges readers to never forget about the grief of the people, which is described in the poem “Requiem”. In the epilogue, he says that eternal sorrow should serve people as a reproach and a lesson that such a tragedy happened on this earth. With this in mind, they must prevent this cruel persecution from occurring again. The mother calls as witnesses to her bitter truth all those who stood with her in these lines and asked for one thing - a monument to these causelessly ruined souls who languish on the other side of the prison walls.
- The theme of maternal compassion. The mother loves her son, and is constantly tormented by the awareness of his bondage and her helplessness. She imagines how the light makes its way through the prison window, how lines of prisoners walk, and among them is her innocently suffering child. From this constant horror, waiting for a verdict, standing in hopelessly long lines, a woman experiences clouding of reason, and her face, like hundreds of faces, falls and fades in endless melancholy. She elevates maternal grief above others, saying that the apostles and Mary Magdalene wept over the body of Christ, but none of them even dared to look at the face of his mother, standing motionless next to the coffin.
- Homeland theme. About the tragic fate of her country, Akhmatova writes this way: “And innocent Rus' writhed under bloody boots and under the tires of black marus.” To some extent, she identifies the fatherland with those prisoners who fell victim to repression. In this case, the technique of personification is used, that is, Rus' writhes under the blows, like a living prisoner trapped in a prison dungeon. The grief of the people expresses the grief of the homeland, comparable only to the maternal suffering of a woman who has lost her son.
- Subject national suffering and grief is expressed in the description of a living queue, endless, oppressive, stagnant for years. There the old woman “howled like a wounded animal,” and the one “who was barely brought to the window,” and the one “who doesn’t trample the ground for her dear one,” and the one “who, shaking her beautiful head, said: “I come here as if I’m home.” "". Both old and young were shackled by the same misfortune. Even the description of the city speaks of a general, unspoken mourning: “It was when only the dead smiled, glad for the peace, and Leningrad swayed like an unnecessary pretense near its prisons.” The steamship whistles sang of separation to the beat of the trampling ranks of condemned people. All these sketches speak of a single spirit of sadness that has gripped the Russian lands.
- Theme of time. Akhmatova in “Requiem” unites several eras; her poems are like memories and premonitions, and not a chronologically structured story. Therefore, in the poem, the time of action is constantly changing, in addition, there are historical allusions and appeals to other centuries. For example, the lyrical heroine compares herself with the Streltsy wives who howled at the walls of the Kremlin. The reader constantly moves in jerks from one event to another: arrest, sentencing, everyday life in a prison line, etc. For the poetess, time has acquired routine and colorless waiting, so she measures it by the coordinates of the events that have occurred, and the intervals up to these coordinates are filled with monotonous melancholy. Time also promises danger, because it brings oblivion, and this is what the mother, who has experienced such grief and humiliation, is afraid of. Forgetting means forgiveness, and she won’t agree to that.
- Theme of love. Women do not betray their loved ones in trouble and selflessly await at least news about their fate. In this unequal battle with the system of suppression of the people, they are driven by love, before which all the prisons of the world are powerless.
Idea
Anna Akhmatova herself erected the monument she spoke about in the epilogue. The meaning of the poem "Requiem" is to erect an immortal monument in memory of lost lives. The silent suffering of innocent people was to result in a cry that would be heard for centuries. The poetess draws the reader’s attention to the fact that the basis of her work is the grief of the entire people, and not her personal drama: “And if they shut my exhausted mouth, with which a hundred million people are screaming...”. The title of the work speaks about the idea - it is a funeral rite, the music of death that accompanies a funeral. The motif of death permeates the entire narrative, that is, these verses are an epitaph to those who unjustly sunk into oblivion, who were quietly and imperceptibly killed, tortured, exterminated in the country of victorious lawlessness.
Problems
The problems of the poem “Requiem” are multifaceted and topical, because even now victims political repression innocent people become, and their relatives are unable to change anything.
- Injustice. The sons, husbands and fathers of the women standing in the queues suffered innocently; their fate is determined by the slightest affiliation with phenomena alien to the new government. For example, Akhmatova’s son, the prototype of the hero of “Requiem,” was convicted for bearing the name of his father, who was convicted of counter-revolutionary activities. The symbol of the demonic power of the dictatorship is a blood-red star that follows the heroine everywhere. This is a symbol of the new power, which in its meaning in the poem is duplicated with the death star, an attribute of the Antichrist.
- Problem historical memory. Akhmatova is afraid that the grief of these people will be forgotten by new generations, because the power of the proletariat mercilessly destroys any sprouts of dissent and rewrites history to suit itself. The poetess brilliantly foresaw that her “exhausted mouth” would be silenced for many years, banning publishing houses from publishing her works. Even when the ban was lifted, she was mercilessly criticized and silenced at party congresses. The report of the official Zhdanov, who accused Anna of being a representative of “reactionary obscurantism and renegade in politics and art,” is widely known. “The range of her poetry is pathetically limited, the poetry of an enraged lady rushing between the boudoir and the prayer room,” said Zhdanov. This is what she was afraid of: under the auspices of the struggle for the interests of the people, they were mercilessly robbed, depriving them of the enormous wealth of Russian literature and history.
- Helplessness and powerlessness. The heroine, with all her love, is powerless to change the situation of her son, like all her friends in misfortune. They are only free to wait for news, but there is no one to expect help from. There is no justice, as well as humanism, sympathy and pity, everyone is captured by a wave of stuffy fear and speaks in a whisper, just so as not to frighten own life, which can be taken away at any moment.
Criticism
The critics' opinion about the poem "Requiem" did not form immediately, since the work was officially published in Russia only in the 80s of the 20th century, after Akhmatova's death. In Soviet literary criticism, it was customary to belittle the author for ideological inconsistency with the political propaganda unfolding throughout the 70 years of the existence of the USSR. For example, Zhdanov’s report, which has already been quoted above, is very indicative. The official clearly has the talent of a propagandist, so his expressions are not distinguished by reasoning, but are colorful in stylistic terms:
Her main theme is love and erotic motifs, intertwined with motifs of sadness, melancholy, death, mysticism, and doom. The feeling of doom, ... the gloomy tones of dying hopelessness, mystical experiences mixed with eroticism - this is spiritual world Akhmatova. Either a nun or a harlot, or rather, a harlot and a nun whose fornication is mixed with prayer.
Zhdanov in his report insists that Akhmatova will have a bad influence on young people, because she “promotes” despondency and melancholy about the bourgeois past:
Needless to say, such sentiments or the preaching of such sentiments can only have an effect bad influence on our youth, can poison their consciousness with a rotten spirit of lack of ideas, apoliticality, and despondency.
Since the poem was published abroad, Soviet emigrants spoke about it, who had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the text and speak about it without censorship. For example, detailed analysis“Requiem” was made by the poet Joseph Brodsky while in America after he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. He spoke admiringly of Akhmatova’s work not only because he was in agreement with her civic position, but also because he was personally acquainted with her:
“Requiem” is a work constantly balancing on the brink of madness, which is brought about not by the catastrophe itself, not by the loss of a son, but by this moral schizophrenia, this split - not of consciousness, but of conscience.
Brodsky noticed that the author was torn from internal contradictions, because a poet must perceive and describe an object in a detached manner, but Akhmatova was worried at that moment personal grief, which could not be objectively described. In it, a battle took place between the writer and the mother, who saw these events differently. Hence the tortured lines: “No, it’s not me, it’s someone else who is suffering.” The reviewer described this internal conflict So:
For me, the most important thing in “Requiem” is the theme of duality, the theme of the author’s inability to adequate reaction. It is clear that Akhmatova describes all the horrors of the “Great Terror”. But at the same time she always talks about how close she is to madness. This is where the greatest truth is told.
Critic Antoliy Naiman argued with Zhdanov and did not agree that the poetess is alien Soviet society and harmful to him. He convincingly proves that Akhmatova differs from the canonical writers of the USSR only in that her work is deeply personal and filled with religious motives. He spoke about the rest like this:
Strictly speaking, “Requiem” is Soviet poetry realized in the ideal form that all its declarations describe. The hero of this poetry is the people. Not a greater or lesser number of people called so out of political, national and other ideological interests, but the whole people: every single one of them participates on one side or the other in what is happening. This position speaks on behalf of the people, the poet speaks with them, is part of them. Her language is almost newspaper-like, simple, understandable to the people, and her methods are straightforward. And this poetry is full of love for the people.
Another review was written by art historian V.Ya. Vilenkin. In it he says that the work should not be tormented scientific research, it is already clear, and pompous, ponderous research will not add anything to it.
Its (cycle of poems) folk origins and its folk poetic scale are in themselves obvious. Personally experienced, autobiographical things drown in it, preserving only the immensity of suffering.
Another literary critic, E.S. Dobin, said that since the 30s “ lyrical hero Akhmatova completely merges with the author” and reveals “the character of the poet himself,” but also that “the craving for what is close, lying nearby,” which distinguished Akhmatova’s early work, is now replaced by the principle of “approaching the distant. But the distant one is not extra-mundane, but human.”
Writer and critic Yu. Karyakin most succinctly expressed main idea a work that captured his imagination with its scale and epicness.
This is truly a national requiem: a cry for the people, the concentration of all their pain. Akhmatova’s poetry is the confession of a person who lives with all the troubles, pains and passions of his time and his land.
It is known that Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the compiler of introductory articles and the author of epigraphs to Akhmatova’s collections, spoke of her work with due respect and especially appreciated the poem “Requiem”, as greatest feat, the heroic ascent to Golgotha, where crucifixion was inevitable. She miraculously managed to save her life, but her “exhausted mouth” was shut up.
Interesting? Save it on your wall!“Requiem” has become a single whole, although there you can hear a folk song, and Lermontov, and Tyutchev, and Blok, and Nekrasov, and - especially in the finale - Pushkin: “... And let the prison dove hum in the distance, And ships quietly sail along the Neva.” . All the lyrical classics magically united in this, perhaps the tiniest great poem in the world.
Anna Akhmatova's life was tragic. This courageous woman, who had to endure terrible times, experienced a lot of grief. In 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was shot. Although by that time Akhmatova was divorced from him, the pain for him, for other people who died innocently, hurt her heart. As a poet, Akhmatova is also going through hard times: her poems are rarely published, and critics are becoming increasingly unkind. And in 1935, his son was arrested, who three years later was sentenced to eight years for “terrorism.” The poem “Requiem” is dedicated to these events.
A. Akhmatova worked on her poem mainly in the 30s and 40s. But this work could not be published in a timely manner. Most of The verses of the poem are associated with the arrest in 1938 of Akhmatova’s son and many other Leningraders. In the chapter “Instead of a Preface,” the poetess recalls: “During the terrible months of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad.” In such queues there were many people desperate with grief and fear. The poem about the suffering experienced, which Akhmatova promised to write to one of the women with “blue lips,” is the voice of the entire people. Until 1962, A. Akhmatova did not write more than one line for the poem. Sometimes she wrote down this or that fragment on a piece of paper in order to introduce it to one of her closest and most trusted friends. A. Akhmatova did not dare to speak out loud: she felt that “the walls had ears.” After the silent interlocutor memorized the lines, the manuscript was consigned to the fire. Later, the poetess proudly said that eleven people knew “Requiem” by heart, and no one betrayed her. Requiem was first published in Munich in 1963. In Russia, the poem was published only in 1987. The work consists of ten chapters. The poems seem to be completely different in style, but they are united by the theme of the suffering of the people and the strength of the human spirit. "Requiem" is a poem dedicated to repression and written during the years of repression. The reader is faced with the tragedy of a woman, a mother, a person, which A. Akhmatova reveals through her personal tragedy.
Mountains bend before this grief,
The great river does not flow
But the prison gates are strong,
And behind them are “convict holes”
And mortal melancholy.
As you know, a requiem is a solemn mourning work. Akhmatova's "Requiem" is a poem about the death of people. It is no coincidence that the word “death” appears most often in the work. All symbolism (hell, death, cross) is subordinated to the idea of unity of people in suffering. The unity of all women, all suffering mothers and wives from the Mother of God, Streltsy wives, wives of the Decembrists to the wives and mothers of the repressed. The image of the mother is collective: it symbolizes the religious procession of mothers accompanying their children in their suffering. Akhmatova turns to biblical images: Christ, Mary, mother of Jesus, Magdalene. When Christ was crucified, “no one dared to look where the mother stood silently.” In this image of the Mother, the poetess reveals the suffering of all mothers as the greatest sorrow on Earth.
At the end of the poem, Akhmatova turns to the theme of “monument”.
And if ever in this country
They are planning to erect a monument to me,
I give my consent to this triumph,
But only with the condition not to put it
Not near the sea where I was born:
The last connection with the sea is severed,
Not in the royal garden near the treasured stump,
Where the inconsolable shadow is looking for me...
Akhmatova asks to erect this monument there, in Leningrad, where she, along with other women, stood in line for three hundred hours to receive the parcel. This is a memory of the era, the poet and all those who stood “in bitter cold, and in the July heat under the red, blinding wall.”
The Requiem cycle does not exist in isolation in the poet’s work. The world of A. Akhmatova’s poetry is a tragic world. Even in her early poems, the motives of misfortune and grief are perceived as motives of personal misfortune. For a poet to talk about his own pain means to talk about the pain of everyone. In the poem “Requiem” A. Akhmatova proved to everyone that the tragedy of a woman and mother is part of the national tragedy.
I would like to call everyone by name,
Yes, the list was taken away and there is no place to find out.
For them I wove a wide cover
From the poor, they have overheard words.
A. Akhmatova
The main creative and civic achievement of A.A. Akhmatova was the creation of her poem “Requiem”. The poem consists of several poems, related friend with a friend on the same topic - the topic of memory of those who in the thirties found themselves in prison dungeons, and of those who courageously endured the arrests of their relatives, the death of loved ones and friends, who tried to help them in difficult times.
In the preface, A. Akhmatova talks about the history of the creation of the poem. An unfamiliar woman, just like Akhmatova, who was standing in prison lines in Leningrad, asked her to describe all the horrors of the Yezhovshchina. And Anna Andreevna responded. It couldn’t be otherwise, because as she herself says:
I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.
Repression fell not only on friends, but also on Akhmatova’s family: he was arrested and exiled son - Leo Gumilyov, and then her husband - N.N. Punin, and earlier, in 1921, Anna Andreevna’s first husband, N. Gumilyov, was shot.
Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me... -
she writes in “Requiem”, and in these lines one can hear the prayer of an unfortunate woman who has lost her loved ones. “Mountains bend before this grief,” we read in the “Dedication” to the poem and understand that for those who heard “only the hateful gnashing of keys and the heavy steps of soldiers,” it will never be bright again sunlight, fresh wind.
In the “Introduction,” Akhmatova paints a vivid image of Leningrad, which seemed to her like a “dangling pendant” near the prisons, “convict regiments” that walked along the streets of the city, “death stars” standing above it.
The bloody boots and tires of the black Marus (the so-called cars that came at night to arrest townspeople) crushed “innocent Rus'.” And she just writhes under them. Before us passes the fate of a mother and son, whose images are correlated with gospel symbolism. Akhmatova expands the temporal and spatial framework of the plot, showing a universal tragedy. We see it a simple woman, whose husband is arrested at night, then the biblical Mother, whose Son was crucified. Here before us is a simple Russian woman, in whose memory the crying of children, the melting candle at the shrine, the mortal sweat on the brow of a loved one who is being taken away at dawn will forever remain. She will cry for him just as the Streltsy “wives” once cried under the walls of the Kremlin. Then suddenly we see the image of a woman so similar to Akhmatova herself, who does not believe that everything is happening to her - “a mocker,” “the favorite of all friends,” “the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoe Selo.” Could she ever have thought that she would be three hundredth in line at Kresty? And now her whole life is in these queues.
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.
It’s impossible to make out who is the “beast” and who is the “man,” because innocent people are being arrested, and all the mother’s thoughts involuntarily turn to death.
And then the sentence sounds - “the stone word”, and you have to kill the memory, petrify the soul and learn to live again. And the mother thinks about death again, only now about her own. It seems to her like salvation, and it doesn’t matter what form it takes: a “poisoned shell”, a “weight”, a “typhoid child” - the main thing is that it will relieve suffering and spiritual emptiness. These sufferings are comparable only to the suffering of the Mother of Jesus, who also lost her Son.
But Mother understands that this is only madness, because death will not allow you to take with you:
Nor the son's terrible eyes -
Petrified suffering
Not the day when the storm came,
Not an hour of prison visiting,
Not the sweet coolness of your hands,
Not a single linden shadow,
Not a distant light sound -
Words of last consolation.
So we have to live. To live in order to name those who died in Stalin’s dungeons, to remember, to remember always and everywhere who stood “both in the bitter cold and in the July heat under the blinding red wall.”
There is a poem in the poem called "The Crucifixion". It describes last minutes the life of Jesus, his appeal to his mother and father. There is a misunderstanding of what is happening, and the reader comes to the realization that everything that is happening is senseless and unfair, because there is nothing worse than the death of an innocent person and the grief of a mother who has lost her son.
A. Akhmatova fulfilled her duty as a wife, mother, and poet, telling in her poem about the tragic pages of our history. Biblical motives allowed her to show the scale of this tragedy, the impossibility of forgiving those who created this madness, and the impossibility of forgetting what happened, because we were talking about the fate of the people, about millions of lives. Thus, the poem “Requiem” became a monument to innocent victims and those who suffered with them.
In the poem, A. Akhmatova showed her involvement in the fate of the country. The famous prose writer B. Zaitsev, after reading “Requiem,” said: “Was it possible to imagine... that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - a feminine, maternal cry, not only for herself, but for all those who suffer - wives, mothers , brides, in general, about all those crucified?” And it is impossible for the lyrical heroine to forget the mothers who suddenly turned gray, the howl of the old woman who lost her son, the rumble of the black marus. And the poem “Requiem” sounds like a memorial prayer for all those who died in the terrible time of repression. And as long as people hear her, because the entire “hundred-million-strong nation” is screaming with her, the tragedy that A. Akhmatova talks about will not happen again.
A.A. Akhmatova entered literature as a lyrical, chamber poet. Her poems about unrequited love, about the heroine’s experiences, her loneliness among people and a bright, imaginative perception of the world around her attracted the reader and made him feel the author’s mood. But it took time and the terrible events that shook Russia - war, revolution - for A.A. Akhmatova developed a civic, patriotic feeling. The poetess has compassion for her homeland and her people, considering it impossible for herself to leave it during the difficult years of trials. But the years became especially difficult for her Stalin's repressions. For the authorities, Akhmatova was an alien person, hostile to the Soviet system. The 1946 decree confirmed this officially. She was not forgotten that her husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot in 1921 for participating in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy (according to official version), nor the proud silence since the late 20s - that unofficial “internal emigration” that the poetess chose for herself. Akhmatova accepts her fate, but this is not humility and indifference - a willingness to stand and endure everything that befell her. “We did not deflect a single blow,” Akhmatova wrote. And her “Requiem”, written from 1935 to 1940 not for publication, for herself, “for the table” - and published much later - is evidence of the courageous civic position of both lyrical heroine the poem and its author. It reflects not only the personal tragic circumstances of A.A.’s life. Akhmatova - arrest of her son, L.N. Gumilev, and husband, N.N. Lunin, - but also the grief of all Russian women, those wives, mothers, sisters who stood with her for 17 terrible months in prison lines in Leningrad. The author speaks about this in the preface to the poem - about the moral duty to his “sisters in misfortune”, about the duty of memory to those who died innocently.
Death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the thorns of black marus.
The grief of a mother and wife is common to all women of all eras, all troubled times. Em shares Akhmatova with others, speaking about them as about himself:
I will be like the Streltsy wives,
Howl under the Kremlin towers.
The mother's suffering, her inescapable grief, and loneliness emotionally color events in black and yellow color- a color traditional for Russian poetry, a symbol of grief and illness.
It flows quietly quiet Don,
The yellow moon enters the house.
He walks in with his hat tilted.
Sees the yellow moon shadow.
This woman is sick
This woman is alone.
Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me.
Terrible loneliness sounds in these lines, and it seems especially piercingly sharp in contrast to the happy, carefree past:
I should show you, mocker
And the favorite of all friends,
To the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoye Selo,
Composition
Throughout its history, Russia has endured many adversities. Wars with a foreign enemy, internecine strife, popular unrest - the shadows of these events look at us through the “veil of times past” from the pages of ancient manuscripts and yellowed books.
The 20th century surpassed all previous centuries in the severity and cruelty of the trials that befell the Russian people, and not only the Russians. Having won the most terrible and bloody war in the history of mankind, the victorious people, as before the war, were powerless in the face of another enemy. This enemy was more cruel and insidious than the foreign invader, his true nature was hidden under the guise of the “father of all nations,” and his “fatherly concern” for the well-being of his country could not be compared even with cruelty towards the enemy.
During the totalitarian regime mass repression and terror reached its climax. Millions of people became victims of the ruthless “Inquisition”, without ever understanding what their guilt was before their fatherland.
A bitter reminder of the events of those years are for us not only the facts given in history textbooks, but also literary works that also reflected feelings, mental anguish and worries about the fate of the country, the people who had to live in those difficult years and be eyewitnesses to the suffering of your people.
The poems “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova and “By Right of Memory” by Alexander Tvardovsky are some of these works that show the tragedy of the generation of the 30-50s.
The poem “Requiem” was written as an autobiography of the poetess for the period of “two frenzied years” of her life and - at the same time - covers decades of humiliation and pain throughout the country.
Guilty Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the black Marus tires.
The chapters of the poem are imbued with the suffering of a mother who is deprived of her son: “I followed you like I was being carried out.” Akhmatova very accurately conveys what she felt in those days. The reader is left with a sense of the reality of what is described; With a shudder you understand that all this is not the fruit of the author’s imagination, but a reflection of the cruel and terrible years in the life of the poetess: anxious worries about fate only son, mental anguish that forces you to walk along a narrow line over the abyss of madness, and, finally, the loss of the meaning of life and the desire for quick death as deliverance from unbearable torment:
You will come anyway - why not now?
I'm waiting for you - it's very difficult for me.
But the main essence of the poem is not to tell contemporaries and descendants about the tragic fate of the poetess, but to show the people's tragedy. After all, millions of mothers just like Akhmatova herself, millions of wives, sisters and daughters all over the country stood in similar queues, warming in their souls the hope of receiving at least some news from a loved one.
Akhmatova inextricably linked her life with the life of the people and drank to the dregs the cup of people's suffering.
And not under the protection of alien wings, -
I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.
The tragic fate of Anna Akhmatova, described in the poem “Requiem,” symbolizes the universal tragedy of the generation of those terrible decades. A. Tvardovsky’s poem “By the right of memory” is a kind of window into the past. In it, the author turned to memories of past life, about dreams and hopes teenage years, and most importantly, Tvardovsky, looking back on the past years, rethought historical meaning Stalin's attempts to build a bright future by eradicating the “enemies of communism.” The author showed what it means to suddenly become an enemy of the people for a person devoted to his country. The identification of “enemies of the people” also followed chains of family ties. Fear forced people to renounce their family and friends, since a person who went missing in battle or was recognized as a kulak doomed his entire family to universal contempt and humiliation.
Marked from birth
A baby of enemy blood,
And everything seemed to be missing
The land of branded sons.
“The son is not responsible for his father” - this Stalinist saying pushed many people to make a deal with their conscience.
Forget where you came from,
And realize, don’t contradict:
To the detriment of love for the father of nations -
Any other love.
IN final chapter Tvardovsky raises the question of the right to memory of people who were deprived of an honest name during their lifetime.
To forget, to forget silently commanded,
They want to drown you in oblivion
Living reality. And so that the waves
They closed over her. True story - forget!
Forgetting relatives and friends
And so many destinies the way of the cross.
The poems “Requiem” and “By Right of Memory” became speaking monuments to a very difficult time in the history of our homeland. They remind us of the innocent and senseless victims of bloody decades and oblige us to prevent a repetition of these terrible events.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova had to go through a lot. The terrible years that changed the entire country could not but affect its fate. The poem “Requiem” was evidence of everything that the poetess had to face.
The poet’s inner world is so amazing and subtle that absolutely all experiences have an impact on him to one degree or another. A true poet cannot ignore a single detail or phenomenon of the surrounding life. Everything is reflected in poetry: both good and tragic. The poem “Requiem” makes the reader think once again about the fate of the brilliant poetess, who had to face a horrific catastrophe.
The epigraph to the poem were lines that were, in essence, a confession of involvement in all the disasters of his native country. Akhmatova honestly admits that her whole life was closely connected with the fate of her native country, even in the most terrible periods:
No, and not under an alien sky,
And not under the protection of alien wings -
I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately,
These lines were written much later than the poem itself. They are dated 1961. Already in retrospect, recalling the events of past years, Anna Andreevna again realizes those phenomena that drew a line in the lives of many people, separating the normal, happy life and a terrible, inhuman reality.
The poem "Requiem" is quite short, but how strong effect it has an effect on the reader! It is impossible to read this work with indifference; the grief and pain of a person with whom terrible events occurred force one to accurately imagine the entire tragedy of the situation.
In a few lines entitled “Instead of a Preface,” Anna Andreevna talks about what preceded the writing of the poem. The years of Yezhovshchina were essentially genocide against one’s own people. Endless prison queues, in which relatives and close friends of prisoners stood, became a kind of symbol of that time. Prison entered the lives of the most worthy people, making even the very hope of happiness impossible.
The poem "Requiem" consists of several parts. Each part carries its own emotional and semantic load. For example, “Dedication” is a description of the feelings and experiences of people who spend all their time in prison queues. The poetess speaks of “deadly melancholy”, of hopelessness, of the absence of even the slightest hope of changing the current situation. People's entire lives now depended on the verdict that would be passed on a loved one. This sentence forever separates the family of the convicted person from normal people. Akhmatova finds amazing figurative means to convey her condition and that of others:
For someone the wind is blowing fresh,
For someone the sunset is basking -
We don't know, we're the same everywhere
We only hear the hateful grinding of keys
Yes, the soldiers' steps are heavy.
“Fresh wind”, “sunset” - all this acts as a kind of personification of happiness and freedom, which are now inaccessible to those languishing in prison lines and those behind bars:
The verdict... And immediately tears will flow,
Already separated from everyone,
As if with pain the life was taken out of the heart,
As if rudely knocked over,
But she walks... She staggers... Alone.
Anna Akhmatova had to endure the arrest and execution of her husband and the arrest of her son. How sad it is that a most talented person had to face all the hardships of a monstrous totalitarian regime great country Russia allowed itself to be subjected to such mockery, why? All lines of Akhmatova’s work contain this question. And when reading the poem, it becomes harder and harder for the reader to think about tragic destinies innocent people.
It was when I smiled
Only dead, glad for peace,
And dangled like an unnecessary pendant
Leningrad is near its prisons.
And when, maddened by torment,
The already condemned regiments were marching,
AND a short song separation
The locomotive whistles sang,
Death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed under bloody boots
And under the black marus tires.
Russia is crushed and destroyed. The poetess regrets with all her heart home country, who is completely defenseless, mourns for her. How to come to terms with what happened? What words to find? Something terrible can happen in a person’s soul, and there is no escape from it.
They took you away at dawn
I followed you, as if on a takeaway,
Children were crying in the dark room,
The goddess's candle floated.
These lines contain enormous human grief. It was going “as if it were being taken out” - this is a reminder of the funeral. The coffin is taken out of the house, followed by close relatives. Crying children, a melted candle - all these details are a kind of addition to the painted picture.
The arrest of a loved one makes those around them lose sleep and peace of mind, reflecting on their sad fate:
The quiet Don flows quietly,
The yellow moon looks into the house,
He walks in with his hat tilted.
Sees the yellow moon shadow.
This woman is sick
This woman is alone.
Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me.
The poetess's suffering has reached its climax; as a result, she practically does not notice anything around her. The husband was shot, and the son was in prison; a tragedy happened to the closest and dearest people. My whole life became like an endlessly terrible dream. And that's why the lines are born:
No, it's not me, it's someone else who is suffering.
I couldn't do that, but what happened
Let the black cloth cover
And let the lanterns be taken away...
Indeed, can a person endure everything that befell the poetess? And even a hundredth part of all the trials would be enough to lose your mind and die of grief. But she's alive. And as a contrast, the memory of her youth appears, in which Anna Andreevna was cheerful, light and carefree.
Parting with her son, pain and anxiety for him dry up a mother's heart. It is impossible to even imagine the whole tragedy of a person to whom such a thing happened. terrible trials. It would seem that there is a limit to everything. And that is why you need to “kill” your memory so that it does not interfere, does not press like a heavy stone on your chest:
I have a lot to do today:
We must completely kill our memory,
It is necessary for the soul to turn to stone,
We must learn to live again.
Everything Akhmatova experienced takes away from her the most natural human desire - the desire to live. Now the meaning that supports a person in the most difficult periods of life has already been lost. And so the poetess turns to death, calls for it, hopes for its speedy arrival. Death appears as liberation from suffering. However, death does not come, but madness does. A person cannot withstand what befalls him. And madness turns out to be salvation, now you can no longer think about reality, so cruel and inhuman:
Madness is already on the wing
Half of my soul was covered,
And he drinks fiery wine,
And beckons to the black valley.
The final lines of the poem symbolize farewell to real world.
The poetess understands that madness will take away from her everything that was so dear until now. But this is precisely what turns out to be the best way out in this situation, symbolizing salvation, liberation from everything that torments and burdens us so much.
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