Where my people unfortunately were. Verse Requiem (Poem)

"Requiem" - one of Akhmatova's largest works - was written in 1935-1940. The epilogue is dated precisely to the 40th year - the last part poems. But “Requiem” came to the reader only in the second half of the 50s, since in 1946 Akhmatova was subjected to severe criticism from officials and was excommunicated from literature for a long time. Perhaps Requiem and the events on which it was based were to blame for this excommunication.

Akhmatova's husband was accused of participating in an anti-government conspiracy and was executed by execution near Petrograd in 1921. “Requiem” reflects the feelings that Akhmatova experienced after losing her loved one. And although the events described in “Requiem” date back to the 1930s, they echo the pain and grief experienced by the poetess herself.

Based on the composition, “Requiem” is most likely a poem. Individual poems are united by one idea - a protest against violence. “Requiem” reflected not only the feelings and experiences of Akhmatova herself, not only the grief of those who were torn away from their loved ones and imprisoned in prison cells, but also the pain of those women, those wives and mothers whom Akhmatova saw in the terrible prison lines. It is to these women sufferers that the dedication is addressed. It contains the melancholy of a sudden separation, when a grief-stricken woman feels torn off, cut off from the whole world with its joys and worries.

The introduction of the poem gives a vivid, merciless description of time. The first chapters reflect the boundless, deep abyss of human grief. It seems that these lines echo the cry of Yaroslavna, grieving both for her beloved and for all Russian soldiers.

Akhmatova’s poetry is the testimony of a person who went through all the trials to which the “wolf age” doomed her, evidence of how terrible and unfair the desire of a handful of people is to destroy the natural foundations of human existence, something that has been taking shape in the world for centuries. But at the same time this is evidence that living life, the present, the eternal in people cannot be destroyed. And this is probably why A. Akhmatova’s poetry is so important and so significant for us.

In the poem “Requiem” A. Akhmatova embeds her experiences in the context of the era. No wonder the poem begins like this:

No, and not under an alien sky,

And not under the protection of alien wings -

This was the final choice of the poetess.

Are none of them (new generations) destined for the greatest joy:

Every pause, every pyrrhic?

Korney Chukovsky.

“Only, unfortunately, there are no poets - however, maybe this is not necessary,” wrote V. Mayakovsky. And at this time, wonderful poets who served art and not class were persecuted and shot. Apparently, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Anna Andreevna Akhmatova did not consider Vladimir Mayakovsky to be a true poet.

Her fate is tragic even for our cruel age. In 1921, her husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot, allegedly for complicity in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy.

and, allegedly for complicity in a counter-revolutionary conspiracy. So what if they were divorced by this time? They were still connected by their son Lev. The father's fate was repeated in his son. In the thirties, he was arrested on false charges. “During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad,” Akhmatova recalls in the preface to Requiem.

With a terrible blow, a “stone word,” the death sentence was sounded, which was later replaced by camps. Then almost twenty years of waiting for my son.

In 1946, the “famous” Zhdanov resolution was published, which slandered Akhmatova and Zoshchenko and closed the doors of the magazines in front of them. Fortunately, the poetess was able to withstand all these blows, live a fairly long life and give people wonderful works. It is quite possible to agree with Paustovsky that “Anna Akhmatova is a whole era in the poetry of our country.”

It is difficult to analyze such a complex thing as the poem “Requiem”. And, of course, I can only do this superficially.

First a small dictionary. The lyrical hero (heroine) is the image of the poet in the lyrics, as if

Comparison is a comparison of two objects and phenomena that have a common feature to explain one to the other. The comparison consists of two parts, connected by the conjunctions as if, as if, as if and others. But it can also be non-union, for example, Akhmatova: “And Leningrad hung around its prisons like an unnecessary hanger.”

Epithet is an artistic definition. It often expresses the author’s attitude to the subject by highlighting some of the most important features for this author. For example, Akhmatova has “bloody boots”. The usual definition (leather boots) will not

Epithet.

Metaphor is the use of words in a figurative sense and the transfer of actions and characteristics of one object to another, somewhat similar. Akhmatova: “And hope still sings in the distance”, “Lungs fly by weeks.” Metaphor is like hidden comparison when the object being compared is not named. For example, “the yellow moon enters the house” is a metaphor. And if: “the yellow month enters” like a guest (ghost, etc.), then a comparison.

Antithesis - opposition: a turnover in which sharply opposing concepts and ideas are combined.

“... And now I can’t tell who is the beast and who is the man” (Akhmatova).

Hyperbole is an exaggeration based on the fact that what is said should not be taken literally, it creates an image. The opposite of hyperbole is understatement (litote). Example of a hyperbole:

The guy can barely fit into the chair.

One fist - four kilos.

Mayakovsky.

The main idea of ​​the poem “Requiem” is an expression of the people’s grief, boundless grief. The suffering of the people and the lyrical heroine merge. The reader's empathy, anger and melancholy, which cover when reading the poem, are achieved by the effect of a combination of many

Artistic media. Interestingly, among the latter there is practically no hyperbole.

no hyperbole. Apparently, this is because grief and suffering are so great that there is neither need nor opportunity to exaggerate them.

All epithets are chosen in such a way as to evoke horror and disgust at violence, to show the desolation of the city and country, and to emphasize the torment. The melancholy is “deadly”, the steps of the soldiers are “heavy”, Rus' is “innocent”, “black marusi” (prisoner cars, otherwise “black crow(s)”. The epithet “stone” is often used: “stone word”, “petrified suffering” and etc. Many epithets are close to folk ones: “hot tear”, “great river”, etc. In general, folk motifs are very strong in the poem, where the connection between the lyrical heroine and the people is special:

And I’m not praying for myself alone,

And about everyone who stood there with me

And in the bitter cold and in the July heat

Under the blinding red wall.

The last line is noteworthy. The epithets “red” and “blind” in relation to the wall create the image of a wall red with blood and blinded by the tears shed by the victims and their loved ones.

There are few comparisons in the poem. But everyone, one way or another, emphasizes the depth of grief, the extent of suffering. Some relate to religious symbolism, which Akhmatova often uses. In the poem there is an image close to all mothers, the Mother of Christ, silently re-

Carrying your grief. Some comparisons will not be erased from memory:

The verdict... And immediately tears will flow,

Already distant from everyone,

As if life was taken out of the heart with pain...

And again folk motifs: “And the old woman howled like a wounded animal.” “I will, like the Streltsy women, howl under the Kremlin towers.”

We must remember the story when Peter 1 executed hundreds of rebel archers. Akhmatova, as it were, personifies herself in the image of a Russian woman from the time of barbarism (17th century), which returned to Russia again.

Most of all, it seems to me, metaphors are used in the poem. “Mountains bend before this grief...” The poem begins with this metaphor. This tool allows you to achieve amazing brevity and expressiveness. “And the locomotives sang a short song of parting

Horns”, “Death stars stood above us”, “innocent Rus' was writhing.” And here’s another: “And burn through the New Year’s ice with your hot tears.” I remember Pushkin, Akhmatova’s favorite poet, “ice and fire.” Here is another of her motives, very symbolic: “But strong

Prison gates, and behind them convict holes…” echoes the message to the Decembrists. There are also extended metaphors that represent whole pictures:

I learned how faces fall,

How fear peeks out from under your eyelids,

Like cuneiform hard pages

Suffering appears on the cheeks.

The world in the poem is, as it were, divided into good and evil, into executioners and victims, into joy and suffering.

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.

Here even the dash emphasizes the antithesis. This remedy is used very widely. “And in the bitter cold, and in the July heat”, “And a stone word fell on my still living chest”, “You are my son and my horror”, etc. The poem has many other artistic means: allegories, symbols, personifications, the combinations and combinations of them are amazing.

creations, amazing combinations and combinations of them. All together this creates a powerful symphony of feelings and experiences.

To create the desired effect, Akhmatova uses almost all the main poetic meters, as well as different rhythms and the number of feet in the lines. All these means once again prove that Anna Akhmatova’s poetry is indeed “free and winged.”

Composition by Akhmatov A. – Requiem

Essay sample – Poem “Requiem”

No! and not under an alien firmament,

And not under the protection of alien wings, -

I was then with my people,

Where my people, unfortunately, were.

A. Akhmatova

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is a poet of great civic conscience. Her life is tragic, as is the history of the country from which it is impossible to separate her. Personal misfortunes did not break Akhmatova, but made her a great poet.

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.

In my opinion, best work Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”, which showed one of the most tragic pages of Russian history - the time of repression.

It was when I smiled

Only dead, glad for the peace.

And dangled like an unnecessary pendant

Leningrad is near its prisons.

Akhmatova was able to show, through the perception of personal grief, the tragedy of an entire generation, of the entire country.

The locomotive whistles sang,

Death stars stood above us

And innocent Rus' writhed

Under bloody boots

And under the black tires there is marusa.

The poem was written in different periods of time, from 1935 to 1940. It is as if she was assembled from fragments of a mirror - individual chapters; Akhmatova’s heroine sometimes merges with the personality of the narrator, the author. This unfortunate woman, tormented by grief, gradually comes to the conviction that she is obliged to tell everything to her descendants. You cannot take the truth about this terrible time with you, keep silent, pretend that nothing happened. This must not happen again.

And won't allow anything

I should take it with me.

(No matter how you beg him

And no matter how you bother me with prayer.)

The poet’s personal grief is intensified by the knowledge that hundreds, thousands are also suffering, that this is a tragedy for an entire people.

Once again the funeral hour approached.

I see, I hear, I feel you:

And the one that was barely brought to the window,

And the one that does not trample the earth for the dear one,

And the one that shook her beautiful head.

She said: “Coming here is like coming home!”

I would like to name everyone.

Yes, the list was taken away, and there is no place to find out.

You are amazed at the strength and resilience of this little woman, on whose shoulders such difficult trials fell. Akhmatova was able to withstand with dignity all the hardships that befell her, and not just survive them, but pour them into such wonderful poems, after reading which it is impossible to forget:

This woman is sick.

This woman is alone.

Husband in the grave, son in prison,

Pray for me.

Anna Akhmatova has enough willpower to remember her wonderful youth and smile a bitter smile at her carefree past. Perhaps from him she drew strength to survive this horror and capture it for posterity.

I should show you, mocker

And the favorite of all friends.

To the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoye Selo,

What will happen to your life -

Like a three hundredth with a transmission,

You will stand under the Crosses

And with my hot tears

Burn through New Year's ice.

Thanks to the civic courage of Akhmatova, Solzhenitsyn, Shalamov and other honest people, we know the truth about this time, we hope that this will never happen again. Otherwise, why all these sacrifices, is it really in vain?!

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.

Everything's messed up forever

And I can't make it out

Now, who is the beast, who is the man,

And how long will it be to wait for execution?

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, were.

INSTEAD OF A FOREWORD

During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad. One day someone “identified” me. Then a woman with blue lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard my name in her life, woke up from the stupor that is characteristic of us all and asked me in my ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper):

– Can you describe this?

And I said:

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

DEDICATION

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.
For someone the wind is blowing fresh,
For some, basking in the sunset -
We don't know, we're the same everywhere
We only hear the hateful grinding of keys
Yes, the soldiers' steps are heavy.
They rose as if to early mass,
They walked through the wild capital,
There we met, more lifeless dead,
The sun is lower and the Neva is foggy,
And hope still sings in the distance.
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.
Where are the involuntary friends now?
My two crazy years?
What do they imagine in the Siberian blizzard?
What do they see in the lunar circle?
To them I send my farewell greetings.

INTRODUCTION

It was when I smiled
Only dead, glad for the peace.
And swayed with an unnecessary pendant
Leningrad is near its prisons.
And when, maddened by torment,
The already condemned regiments were marching,
And a short song of parting
The locomotive whistles sang,
Death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the black tires there is marusa.

1

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.
There are cold icons on your lips,
Death sweat on the brow... Don't forget!
I will be like the Streltsy wives,
Howl under the Kremlin towers.

Autumn 1935, Moscow

2

The quiet Don flows quietly,
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.

3

No, it's not me, it's someone else who's suffering,
I couldn't do that, but what happened
Let the black cloth cover
And let the lanterns be taken away...
Night.

4

I should show you, mocker
And the favorite of all friends,
To the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoye Selo,
What will happen to your life -
Like a three hundredth, with transmission,
You will stand under the Crosses
And with your hot tears
Burn through New Year's ice.
There the prison poplar sways,
And not a sound - but how much is there
Innocent lives are ending...

end of introductory fragment

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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 as motifs, references and appeals in 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, which took heated revolutionary Russia 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 with a real genocide of the 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 end to the losses of the Russian land 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 were leaked to 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 designate the genre of musical works that served as accompaniment for Catholic funeral masses. 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 the direct meaning of the 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 silently stood 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, because the work consists of a prologue, main part and epilogue, 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 repeat itself.

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.

1. Prologue: the first two chapters (“Dedication” and “Introduction”). They introduce the reader to the story, show the time and place of action.
2. 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.
3. Chapters 5 and 6 - the mother predicts the death of her son and is tormented by the unknown.
4. Sentence. Message about exile to Siberia.
5. Towards death. The mother, in despair, calls out for death to come to her too.
6. Chapter 9 is a prison meeting that the heroine carries away in her memory along with the madness of despair.
7. 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.
8. 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 a 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 destroy their 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 as a reproach and a lesson to people 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 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.
• The theme of national suffering and sorrow is expressed in the description of a live 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 for those who unjustly sunk into oblivion, who were quietly and imperceptibly killed, tortured, exterminated in a country of victorious lawlessness.

Problems

The problems of the poem “Requiem” are multifaceted and topical, because even now innocent people are becoming victims of political repression, and their relatives are unable to change anything.

• Injustice. The sons, husbands and fathers of women standing in lines suffered innocently; their fate is determined by the slightest affiliation with phenomena alien to 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.
• The problem of 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 away their 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. A feeling of doom, ... gloomy tones of dying hopelessness, mystical experiences mixed with eroticism - such is Akhmatova’s spiritual world. 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 a negative impact 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 by internal contradictions, because the poet must perceive and describe the object in a detached manner, but Akhmatova was experiencing personal grief at that moment, which did not lend itself to objective description. 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.” A reviewer described this internal conflict as follows:

For me, the most important thing in “Requiem” is the theme of duality, the theme of the author’s inability to react adequately. 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.

The critic Antoliy Naiman argued with Zhdanov and did not agree that the poetess was alien to Soviet society and harmful to it. 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, “Akhmatova’s lyrical hero completely merges with the author” and reveals “the character of the poet himself,” but also that “the craving for someone close to him,” which distinguished Akhmatova’s early work, now replaces the principle of “distant approach.” 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 the 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.

“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 poem "Requiem" was first published in Munich in the summer of 1963. Complex in structure literary work, consisting of scattered poems that are united by meaning, by that time existed only in the form of separate sketches. And it is still unknown which of the admirers of the poetess’s work managed to combine them into a poem and send them abroad for publication. The thing is that, having written the next part of the poem, Anna Akhmatova read it to her close friends, after which she destroyed the drafts. The poems were memorized by people around the poetess, written down in diaries, passed on in literary circles on scattered pieces of paper, and in the early 60s, very few people could boast of having read this work in its entirety.

There were a great many reasons for such conspiracy. After all, the poem “Requiem” is dedicated to one of the most terrible pages Soviet history– the 30s of the 20th century, which saw numerous repressions. Anna Akhmatova was in disgrace, and she was clearly reminded of this almost daily. And although her work was considered completely reliable, the authorities took revenge on her for her husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilyov, who in 1921 was arrested on suspicion of organizing a conspiracy and shot.

In addition, in 1935, the son of Anna Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov, who at that time was a student at Leningrad University, was arrested for the first time. state university. Akhmatova personally wrote a letter to Stalin, thanks to which her son, accused of creating a terrorist group, was released. However, not for long, since in 1938 Lev Gumilev was re-arrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison to be served in Siberian camps. It was during this period that the idea of ​​the poem “Requiem” was born, work on which continued for almost a quarter of a century. The first sketches of “Requiem” were made back in 1934-1935, and Anna Akhmatova planned that the poems would be included in her new lyrical cycle. However, the next arrest of her son seemed to snap the poetess out of a certain stupor, forcing her to rethink her role in modern society. And to convey to descendants in the form of poetry all the horror and pain that people had to endure when faced with the merciless millstones of Stalin’s repressions.

Anna Akhmatova herself wrote in the preface to the poem that the idea of ​​creating this work was prompted by a simple Leningrad woman whom the poetess encountered in a line for bread. Someone recognized Akhmatova, and a whisper ran through the line, in which there were tired, hungry and constantly awaiting arrest people. And then an unknown woman turned to the poetess, asking if she could write about what was happening around her. Akhmatova answered in the affirmative.

The poem "Requiem", published in Germany without the knowledge of the author, produced the effect of a bomb exploding among foreign writers. If until this moment critics perceived Anna Akhmatova as a subtle lyricist with a touch of romanticism, then in “Requiem” she opened up to readers from the other side, appearing as an accuser and judge of an entire era. It is not surprising that after the publication of “Requiem” Anna Akhmatova gained fame as a folk Russian poetess.

The work on “Requiem” was finally completed in the mid-60s of the last century, but the magazines “Neva” and “October” decided to publish this work in the USSR only in 1987, 11 years after the death of the poetess. Later, the poem was included in a number of literary collections that were published in the USSR on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of Anna Akhmatova.

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,
was.

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 a normal, happy life and a terrible, inhuman reality.
The poem “Requiem” is quite short, but what a powerful effect it has 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 is blowing a fresh wind,
For someone is enjoying the sunset-
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 to those behind bars:

The verdict... And immediately the 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 the tragic fate of 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 of parting
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 with all her heart feels sorry for her native country, which is completely defenseless, and mourns for it. 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,
U The goddess's candle floated.

These lines contain enormous human grief. It was going “like a takeaway” - 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 them take away the lanterns...
Night.

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 who suffered such 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:

U 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 has 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 the 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.