I have been reading about the life and the poetry of the Russian poet Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966). Many regard her as one of the greatest Russian poets of the 20th Century. She was already acclaimed before the First World War but chose not to emigrate, unlike many of the intelligentsia, following the Bolshevik revolution. Remarkably, Akhmatova survived the Stalinist purges and terror, but not without enormous privation. Her first husband, also a poet, was executed on baseless charges and another husband was sent to the camps. Most painful of all was her son Lev who had three spells in the Gulag simply because he was the son of his parents. Akhmatova's most famous poem (or rather poetical sequence written at intervals over several years) is Requiem which references her son's incarceration: "In the terrible years of the Yezhov terror, I spent seventeen months waiting in line outside the prison in Leningrad...". Whilst it was a personal account, many interpreted Requiem as giving expression to the voices of millions of Russians who had suffered under Stalin. Her poetry was banned from 1925 to the 1940s and any new poetry, in order to preserve it, was committed to memory by her and her most trusted friends because of the risks involved in writing it down. During 'The Thaw' in the late 50s and early 60s it was circulated by samizdat copies and some eventually passed the censors and got published.
Anyway, I came across one of her poems that resonated because of its celebration of the simple things in life, especially those found in nature; the pleasures of home; and its generally positive outlook on life. Perhaps these are the things that contributed to her resilience, although many of her worries were far from "superfluous":-
I Taught Myself To Live Simply
I taught myself to live simply and wisely,
to look at the sky and pray to God,
and to wander long before evening
to tire my superfluous worries.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
and the yellow-red rowanberry cluster droops
I compose happy verses
about life's decay, decay and beauty.
I come back. The fluffy cat
licks my palm, purrs so sweetly
and the fire flares bright
on the saw-mill turret by the lake.
Only the cry of a stork landing on the roof
occasionally breaks the silence.
If you knock on my door
I may not even hear.
Anna Akhmatova
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| Anna Akhmatova |
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