The artistic originality of A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem

Landscaping and planning 01.10.2019

The poem "Requiem" is one of the top works of A.A. Akhmatova. The poem was written in the period from 1935 to 1940. Until mid-1962, the work did not have a handwritten text, but lived in the memory of Akhmatova and several of her closest friends. The history of the creation of this secret document of the era is as follows: Akhmatova lived in the belief that a listening device was installed in her room, so the verses from the Requiem were usually not spoken aloud, but were written down on a piece of paper, memorized, and then burned. Last reading full text works, before the "Requiem" was retyped, took place on May 27, 1962. On this day, in the small garden on Ordynka, L. K. Chukovskaya, at the request of Akhmatova, read the entire Requiem. L. K. Chukovskaya recalls this event in the following way: “She listened, and I read aloud the poems that I repeated to myself so many times. She untied the knot in her handkerchief and opened her coat. She listened to my voice, peered into the trees and cars. Silent. I have read every single one. I asked if she was going to record them now. “I don’t know,” she answered, from which I understood that I still have no right to write down.” The idea of the poem was explained by Akhmatova herself in the preface to Requiem: “In the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. Somehow, someone "recognized" me. Then the woman with blue lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard my name in her life, woke up from the stupor characteristic of all of us and asked in my ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper): “Can you describe this?” And I said, "I can." Then something like a smile flickered across what had once been her face.

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Anna Akhmatova's poem Requiem, piercing in terms of the degree of tragedy, was written from 1935 to 1940. Until the 1950s, the poet kept her text in memory, not daring to write it down on paper so as not to be repressed. Only after Stalin's death was the poem...

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Anna Andreevna Akhmatova was destined to live a long life filled with the same tragedy as her time. She had to go through two world wars, revolutions, Stalinist repressions. About Akhmatova, we can say that she witnessed the greatest folk ...

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A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem" is a unique work in the history of Russian literature. Its very creation is an act of the greatest courage and mental fortitude, because it was created in the midst of Stalinist repressions, literally in the hot pursuit of terrible events ....

Anna Akhmatova in her poem "Requiem" set herself the task of creating a monument to the great national grief - both to those who stood with her in prison lines, and to the whole country - destitute and tortured by Stalin's repressions: For them I wove a wide ...

Anna Akhmatova is my favorite poetess, whom I read with pleasure. Her works both inspire and make you think about life, about the past fate of the Russian people. This is a poetess of the twentieth century, whose spirit was broken by the sorrows that were sent to her by fate. She created by describing the trials she faced. She also created such a work as the Requiem, on which we will write, dwelling on the history of the creation of this poem.

Anna Akhmatova: poem Requiem

Akhmatova's poem Requiem is a work that touches on the terrible years that changed the whole country. Years of repression and persecution, years of arrests of innocent people, arbitrariness of the authorities. These are endless queues in prisons where relatives stood to see relatives of prisoners, close prisoners. The arrests also affected the life of Akhmatova, because she had to stand in the same lines when her son was arrested. In the work, Anna poured out her soul and showed all the sorrows that touched her life, and not only family pain is shown in the poem, the common folk pain poured out here.

Let us dwell on the history of the creation of Anna Akhmatova's poem Requiem. What is this story?

The history of creation fell on difficult years for the country and the Requiem poem was created for six years. The idea appeared at the moment when the poetess stood in the prison queue to visit her son, who was accused of participating in an anti-Soviet terrorist group. There, a certain woman, recognizing Anna Akhmatova, asked to describe everything that was happening. Anna agreed. Anna wrote about her idea in the preface.

In general, Akhmatova's son was taken under arrest several times. This happened for the first time in 1935, and his mother managed to secure his quick release by turning to Stalin. Then the second arrest in 1938. In 1939 - the third arrest and sentence - execution. But the sentence is replaced by exile.

Returning to the history of the creation of Akhmatova's Requiem, the poetess made the first sketches in 1934-1935. She wanted to publish poetry in the planned lyrical cycle, but the second arrest of her son unsettles her. Now she has set the goal of showing the whole truth, conveying to society and showing readers all the horror and pain that people experienced during the years of repression. So the lyrical cycle became a poem, which the poetess began to write in 1938-1940. She finished writing in the fifties. The work is not printed immediately, but transferred to each other in single copies. She became very popular.

For the first time it was printed in Munich in 1963, but it was only part of the poem. The complete Requiem was published only in 1987. So the Requiem was published, consisting of different parts. A poem that was not read at one time, but was written down on small leaves, memorized, and then burned. We can now, without fear of anything, read the work aloud and set ourselves as an example the wonderful poetess Anna Akhmatova.

Artistic originality of A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem"

The history of the creation of the poem "Requiem"

Three pages in "Roman-gazeta". Such a tragic, Mozartian name - "Requiem". For more than a quarter of a century, they kept silent about this work.

I always imagined this woman as refined, refined, somehow flying (probably because of the portrait of Modigliani), somewhat arrogant. Sophistication, even literary snobbery emanated from her first collections of lyrics - still, 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" grew a quarter of a century , born from pain and suffering, from short notes personal diary, from long reflections, from desperate sobs and calm, firm lines of a poetic testament. And the life of its author, outgrowing, going beyond the specific biography of the real Anna Akhmatova, became lines of the country's history, rooted in ancient times.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova had to go through a lot. The terrible years that changed the whole country could not but affect its fate. The poem "Requiem" was a testament to everything that the poetess had to face.

The inner world of the poet is so amazing and subtle that absolutely all experiences to one degree or another exert their influence on 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 terrible catastrophe.

Anna Akhmatova herself was not a direct victim of the repressions of the second half of the 1930s. 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 really a requiem for those who died in the waves Stalinist terror. The poetess precedes her with a prosaic introduction, where she recalls the long standing in the Leningrad prison lines.

“Then the woman standing behind me asked me in my ear (there everyone spoke in a whisper):

Can you describe this? And I said: - I can.

Then something like a smile flickered across what had once been her face.

So, the poem was based on the facts of a personal biography: on October 22, 1935, the son of Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov, Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov, was arrested. A student of the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University, he was thrown into prison as a "participant in an anti-Soviet terrorist group." This time, Akhmatova managed to break her son out of prison rather quickly: already in November he was released from custody. To do this, she had to write a letter to Stalin.

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, Leo was arrested for the third time, sentenced to death, which was later replaced by exile.

Vina L.N. Gumilyov has never been proven. In 1956 and 1975 he was fully rehabilitated (on the charges of 1938 and 1949), it was finally “established that L.N. Gumilyov was convicted unreasonably.”

Anna Andreevna considered the arrests of 1935 and 1938 as the revenge of the authorities for the fact that Lev was the son of N.S. Gumilyov.

The arrest of 1949, according to A. Akhmatova, was the result of the notorious decision of the Central Committee of 1946, now her son was sitting because of her.

Anna's experience during these years was reflected not only in the "Requiem", but also in the "Poem without a Hero", and in the cycle "Shards", 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 people's grief, people's tragedy, it is the cry of "a hundred million people" who had to live at that time.

Anna Akhmatova felt indebted to those with whom she stood in the prison queues, with whom she "got into trouble together" and "was lying at the feet of the bloody executioner's 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 it renamed into a poem. The first sketches date back to 1934; Anna Akhmatova worked most intensively on the poem in 1938-1940. But the theme did not let her go, and in the 60s Akhmatova continued to add separate stanzas to the poem.

During the life of A.A. Akhmatova in our country, "Requiem" was not published, although in the 60s it was widely distributed among readers in "samizdat" lists.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Anna Andreevna burned the manuscripts of the "Requiem" after she read poems to people she trusted. The poem existed only in the memory of the closest, trusted persons, who memorized the stanzas by heart.

OK. Chukovskaya, the author of Notes on 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 footnotes, Chukovskaya says: “Pushkin has nothing to do with it, this is a cipher. In fact, A. A. showed me that day her “Requiem”, written down for a minute, To check whether I remembered everything by heart” (January 31, 1940) “A. A. wrote down - gave me to read - burned over the ashtray "Already madness is a wing" - a poem about a prison meeting with her son "(May 6, 1940).

In 1963, one of the lists of the poem went abroad ... there for the first time the "Requiem" was published in full (Munich edition of 1963). The perception of Russian writers abroad is conveyed by the essay of the famous prose writer B.K. Zaitsev, published in the Russian Thought newspaper: “The other day I received a book of poems from Munich, 23 pages, called Requiem ... These poems by Akhmatova are a poem, of course. It came here from Russia, printed "without the knowledge and consent of the author" - stated on the 4th page, before the portrait. Published by the "Association of Foreign Writers" (lists of "man-made" go, probably, like Pasternak's writings, in Russia anyway) ...

Yes, this elegant lady from The Stray Dog had to drink a cup, perhaps bitterer than all of us, in these truly “Cursed Days” (Bunin) ... I saw Akhmatova as a “merry sinner from Tsarskoe Selo” and ”, but Fate brought her an estimate of the Crucifixion. Could it have been imagined then, in this Stray Dog, that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - feminine, maternal, a cry not only about herself, but also about all those who suffer - wives, mothers, brides, in general about all those who are crucified?<…>

Where did male power verse, its simplicity, the thunder of words, as if ordinary, but buzzing with death bells, breaking the human heart and causing artistic admiration? Truly, "volumes are much heavier." Written twenty years ago. The silent verdict on atrocities will forever remain. (Paris, 1964)

“The greatness of these 23 pages” is amazingly accurately defined by Boris Zaitsev, which finally approved the title of a truly national poet for Akhmatova.

The few of her contemporaries who were lucky enough to hear it performed by the author told her about the nationality of the Requiem. A.A. Akhmatova extremely valued this opinion, in her diaries there is such an entry: “December 13, 1962 (Ordynka). Gave to read "R . Almost everyone has the same reaction. I have never heard such words about my poems. (Folk.) And they say the most different people».

In Russia, "Requiem" was fully published only in 1987 in the magazines "October" No. 3, "Neva" No. 6. Several editions of her works, including the poem "Requiem" . Currently, the poem is included in the school curriculum.

Almost the entire "Requiem" was written in 1935-1940, the section "Instead of a Preface" and the epigraph are marked 1957 and 1961. For a long time, the work existed only in the memory of Akhmatova and her friends, only in the 1950s. she decided to write it down, and the first publication took place in 1988, 22 years after the death of the poet.

The very word "requiem" (in Akhmatova's notebooks - Latin Requiem) means "burial mass" - a Catholic service for the dead, as well as a mourning piece of music. Latin name poems, as well as the fact that in the 1930s - 1940s. Akhmatova was seriously engaged in studying the life and work of Mozart, in particular his "Requiem" and, suggests the connection of Akhmatova's work with the musical form of the requiem. By the way, in Mozart's "Requiem" there are 12 parts, in Akhmatova's poem - the same number ( 10 chapters + Dedication and Epilogue).

The epigraph and instead of the preface are the original semantic and musical keys of the work. The epigraph (lines from the 1961 poem “So it was not in vain that we had troubles together ...”) introduces lyrical theme:

I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.

Instead of a Preface (1957), picking up the theme of "my people", takes us to "then" - the prison queue of Leningrad in the 1930s. Akhmatov's "Requiem", like Mozart's, was written "on order"; but in the role of "customer" - "a hundred millionth people." The lyrical and the epic are merged into one in the poem: talking about her grief (the arrest of her son - L.N. Gumilyov, her husband - N.N. Punin), Akhmatova speaks on behalf of millions of "nameless"; behind her author's "I" is the "we" of all those whose only creativity was life itself.

The dedication continues the theme of the prose Preface. But the scale of the described events changes:

Mountains bend before this grief,

Doesn't flow great river,

But the prison gates are strong,

And behind them are hard labor burrows ...

The first four verses of the poem, as it were, outline the coordinates of time and space. Time is no more, it has stopped (“the great river does not flow”); “The wind is blowing fresh” and “the sunset is basking” - “for someone”, but no longer for us. The rhyme "mountains - burrows" forms a spatial vertical: "involuntary girlfriends" found themselves between heaven ("mountains") and the underworld ("burrows" where they torture their relatives and friends), in earthly hell.

The motif of the "wild capital" and the "rabid years" of the Initiation in the Introduction is embodied in the image of great poetic power and precision:

And dangled with an unnecessary pendant

Near the prisons of their Leningrad.

Here, in the Introduction, a biblical image from the Apocalypse appears, accompanying the heroine throughout her entire journey of the cross: “the stars of death stood above us ...”, “... and a huge star threatens to die soon”, “... the polar star shines."

Numerous variations of similar motifs, characteristic of the Requiem, are reminiscent of musical leitmotifs. In the Dedication and the Introduction, the main motifs and images that will develop further in the poem are outlined.

In Akhmatova's notebooks there are words that characterize the special music of this work: "... a mourning Requiem, the only accompaniment of which can only be Silence and the sharp distant strikes of a funeral bell." But the Silence of the poem is filled with sounds: the hateful rattle of the keys, the parting song of the locomotive whistles, the crying of children, the howling of women, the rumble of black marus ("marusi", "raven", "funnel" - as the people called cars for transporting arrested persons), squelching doors and the howl of an old woman ... Through these "hellish" sounds are barely audible, but still audible - the voice of hope, dove cooing, splashing water, censer ringing, hot rustle of summer, words of last consolation. From the underworld (“prison hard labor holes”) - “not a sound - but how many / Innocent lives end there ...” Such an abundance of sounds only enhances the tragic Silence, which explodes only once - in the chapter Crucifixion -.

The choir of angels glorified the great hour,
And the heavens were on fire...

Crucifixion is the semantic and emotional center of the work; for the Mother of Jesus, with whom the lyrical heroine Akhmatova identifies herself, as well as for her son, the "great hour" has come:

Magdalene fought and sobbed,
The beloved student turned to stone,
And to where silently Mother stood,
So no one dared to look.

Magdalene and the beloved disciple, as it were, embody those stages of the Way of the Cross that the Mother has already passed: Magdalene - rebellious suffering, when the lyrical heroine "howled under the Kremlin towers" and "threw at the feet of the executioner", John - the quiet stupor of a man trying to "kill the memory ”, distraught with grief and calling for death.

The terrible ice star that accompanied the heroine disappears in the X chapter - "the heavens melted into fire." The silence of the Mother, whom "so no one dared to look at," is resolved by a cry-requiem, but not only for her son, but for all, "millions killed cheaply, / Who trodden a path in the void" (O.E. Mandelstam). This is her duty now.

The epilogue that closes the poem "switches time" to the present, returning us to the melody and common sense Forewords and Dedications: the image of the prison queue “under the blinded red wall” appears again (in the 1st part).

Again the hour of the funeral approached.
I see, I hear, I feel you.

"Requiem" became a monument in words to Akhmatova's contemporaries - both the dead and the living. She mourned all of them with her "weeping lyre." Akhmatova completes the personal, lyrical theme epic. She gives consent to the celebration of the erection of a monument to herself in this country only on one condition: that it will be a Monument to the Poet near the Prison Wall:

Then, as in blissful death I fear
Forget the rumble of black marus.
Forget how hateful squelched the door
And the old woman howled like a wounded animal.

"Requiem" can be called without exaggeration Akhmatova's poetic feat, a high example of genuine civic poetry.

Critic B. Sarnov called Akhmatova's human and poetic position "manly stoicism." Her fate is an example of a humble and grateful acceptance of life, with all its joys and sorrows. Akhmatova's "royal word" harmoniously connected the local with the unearthly:

And the voice of eternity is calling
With irresistible unearthly,
And over the cherry blossoms
The radiance of the light moon pours.
And it seems so easy
Whitening in the thicket of emerald,
Road, I won't tell you where...
There among the trunks is even lighter,
And everything looks like an alley
At the Tsarskoye Selo pond.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova found it necessary to inform the reader about how the idea of the Requiem came about before the beginning of the poem - instead of a preface: “During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. Somehow, someone "recognized" me. Then the woman with blue lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard my name in her life, woke up from the stupor characteristic of all of us and asked in my ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper):

Can you describe this? And I said

Then something like a smile flickered across what had once been her face.

So, the poem was based on the facts of a personal biography: on October 22, 1935, the son of Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov, Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov, was arrested. A student of the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University was thrown into prison as a "participant in an anti-Soviet terrorist group." This time, Akhmatova managed to get her son out of prison rather quickly: already in November he was released from custody. To do this, she had to write a letter to Stalin. She later describes it this way:

They took you away at dawn

Behind you, as if on a takeaway, I walked,

Children were crying in the dark room,

At the goddess, the candle swam.

Icons on your lips are cold,

Death sweat on the forehead...

Not forget!

I will be like archery wives,

Howl under the Kremlin towers.

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, sentenced to death, which was later replaced by exile).

The guilt of L. N. Gumilyov has never been proven. In 1956 and 1975, he was fully rehabilitated (on the charges of 1938 and 1949), it was finally “established that L. N. Gumilev was convicted unreasonably” (From the report of the Main Military Prosecutor’s Office).

Anna Andreevna considered the arrests of 1935 and 1938 as the revenge of the authorities for the fact that Lev was the son of N. S. Gumilyov.

The arrest of 1949, according to A. Akhmatova, was the result of the notorious decision of the Central Committee of 1946, now her son was in the camp because of her.

An amazing premonition of the tragic fate of the son of great Russian poets was captured in a poem by M. Tsvetaeva, created back in 1916 (Leo was then only four years old):

The child's name is Leo

Mother - Anna.

His name is anger

In the mother - silence.

red lion cub

With green eyes

A terrible legacy for you to bear!

Northern Ocean and Southern

And a string of pearls

Black rosary - in your handful!

Experienced by Anna Andreevna in these years was reflected not only in the "Requiem", but also in the "Poem without a Hero", and in the cycle "Shards", and in a number of lyrical poems of different years:

To me, devoid of fire and water,

Separated from her only son...

So the furious debater argued

to the Yenisei plains,

To you he is a vagabond, shuang, a conspirator,

He is my only son...

(shards)

When I smiled

Only the dead, happy with peace.

And dangled with an unnecessary pendant

Near their prisons

Leningrad. And when, mad with torment,

There were already condemned regiments,

And a short parting song

Locomotive whistles sang,

The death stars were above us

And the innocent writhed

Russia under bloody boots

And under the tires of black marus.

Anna Akhmatova felt indebted to those with whom she stood in the prison queues, with whom she “got into trouble together” and “was lying at the feet of the executioner’s bloody doll”:

And I pray not for myself alone, but for all who stood there with me And in the bitter cold, and in the July heat Under the red, blinded wall.

At first, "Requiem" 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 theme did not let her go, and in the 60s Akhmatova continued to add individual stanzas to the poem.

During the life of A. A. Akhmatova in our country, "Requiem" was not published, although in the 60s it was widely distributed among readers in "samizdat" lists. In the 1940s and 1950s, Anna Andreevna burned the manuscripts of the Requiem after she read poems to people she trusted. The poem existed only in the memory of the closest, trusted persons, who memorized stanzas from it by heart. L. K. Chukovskaya, the author of Notes on 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 footnotes, Chukovskaya says: “Pushkin has nothing to do with it, this is a cipher. In fact, A.A. showed me that day her Requiem, written down for a minute, to check whether I remembered everything by heart. (January 31, 1940) “A. A. wrote down - gave me to read - burned over the ashtray "Already madness is a wing" - a poem about a prison meeting with her son "(May 6, 1940).

In 1963, one of the lists of the poem went abroad ... there for the first time the "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 Russkaya Mysl: “The other day I received a book of poems from Munich, 23 pages, called Requiem ... These poems by Akhmatova are a poem, naturally. (All poems are connected with each other. The impression of one whole thing.) It came here from Russia, it is printed "without the knowledge and consent of the author" - it is stated on the 4th page, before the portrait. Published by the "Association of Foreign Writers" (lists of "man-made" go, probably, like Pasternak's writings, in Russia anyway) ...

Yes, this elegant lady from the Stray Dog had to drink a cup, perhaps bitterer than all of us, in these truly “Cursed Days” (Bunin) ... I saw Akhmatova as a “Tsarskoye Selo merry sinner” and a “mockery”, but brought her the Crucifixion. Could it have been imagined then, in this Stray Dog, that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - feminine, maternal, a cry not only about herself, but also about all those who suffer - wives, mothers, brides, in general about all those who are crucified?

Where did the masculine strength of the verse come from, its simplicity, the thunder of words, as if ordinary, but buzzing with a death bell ringing, smashing the human heart and arousing artistic admiration? Truly "volumes are much heavier". Written twenty years ago. The silent verdict on atrocities will forever remain. (Paris, 1964)

“The greatness of these 23 pages” is amazingly accurately defined by Boris Zaitsev, which finally approved the title of a truly national poet for Akhmatova.

The few of her contemporaries who were lucky enough to hear it performed by the author told her about the nationality of the "Requiem". A. A. Akhmatova extremely valued this opinion, in her diaries there is such an entry: “December 13, 1962 (Ordynka). Gave to read "Requiem>. Almost everyone has the same reaction. I have never heard such words about my poems. (“Narodnyy.”) And all kinds of people speak.” An epigraph taken from a 1961 poem: “I was then with my people

Where my people, unfortunately, were, ”explains both the idea of the poem and its main idea in the best possible way.

In Russia, "Requiem" was published in full only in 1987 in the magazines "October" N 3, "Neva" N 6. On the occasion of the centenary of the birth of A. A. Akhmatova, several editions of her works were published at once, including the poem "Requiem". Currently, the poem is included in the school curriculum.

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