Anna Akhmatova: Poems

Anna Akhmatova, born Anna Gorenko in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1889, later adopted the name Akhmatova. In 1910, she married Nikolai Gumilyov, a prominent Russian poet and theorist. Shortly after, Akhmatova began publishing her own poetry and, along with Gumilyov, became a central figure in the Acmeist movement. Acmeism emphasized clarity and craft as a response to the loose style and vague language of late nineteenth-century Russian poetry.

The Russian Revolution profoundly impacted her life. Despite their recent divorce, Akhmatova was deeply affected by the Bolsheviks’ execution of her friend and former partner, Gumilyov, in 1921. To silence her, their son Lev Gumilyov was imprisoned in 1938, remaining in prison camps until his release in 1956, following Stalin’s death.

Akhmatova remarried twice. Her third husband, Nikolai Punin, was imprisoned in 1949 and died in a Siberian prison camp in 1953. Her writing was unofficially banned from 1925 to 1940, and again after World War II. However, unlike many of her contemporaries, she never considered exile.

Persecuted by the Stalinist government and prevented from publishing, Akhmatova’s life was difficult. Yet, her early poetry maintained such popularity that even Stalin hesitated to directly attack her. Her most significant work, “Requiem,” portrays the suffering of the Russian people under Stalinism, particularly the experiences of women who, like her, waited outside prison walls.

“Requiem” was not published in Russia in its entirety until 1987, though it was begun around the time of her son’s arrest. His imprisonment, and later that of her husband Punin, provided the specific inspiration for the poem, a sequence of lyrics about imprisonment and its impact on those whose loved ones are arrested, sentenced, and incarcerated.

Akhmatova was awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University in 1965 and died in Leningrad in 1966.

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