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Poetry

The Tragedy of Anna Akhmatova in Her Poem Requiem

June 2, 2022 by Essay Writer

Anna Akhmatova was one of the most famous poets in twenties century, who wrote a lot of amazing poems and one of her most incredible poems is “Requiem”. Akhmatova’s poetry is the testimony of a person who has been through many trials. It is evidence of how terrible and unfair it is when a handful of people want to destroy the natural foundations of human existence, or things the world has been developing for centuries. But at the same time, Akhmatova’s poetry is evidence that the will to live in people cannot be destroyed. And probably that is why the poetry of Anna Akhmatova is so important and so significant for us.

The main theme of the poem “Requiem” was the tragedy of Anna Akhmatova. Her son was arrested three times and her husband was accused of participating in an anti-government conspiracy. It was not just a hard time for her, but also for other people who had the same tragedy. I couldn’t say that “Requiem” is just Akhmatova’s tragedy, but it was the national tragedy that took place in the 1930s, which people lived by with fear, pain and sorrow. Poem “Requiem” is a protest against political violence. It reflects the feelings of pain of women who were standing and waiting for news of relatives outside a prison. These women were cut off from the whole world with its joys and cares. Akhmatova wrote these poem for women, who were suddenly separated from their loved ones. Also, poem “Requiem” seems to be torn apart, because it consists of fragments, which were written on different leaflets. These fragments make an impression of large depths that move and form a huge heavy stone statue. Poem “Requiem” is created from the simplest words, which very clearly describes emotions of people and sadness of the events happened at that time. “In the dark room children cried, the holy candle gasped for air. Your lips were chill from the ikon’s kiss, sweat bloomed on your brow–those deathly flowers! Like the wives of Peter’s troopers in Red Square I’ll stand and howl under the Kremlin towers. ” Akhmatova express how woman suffer when their loved ones were taken away from them, what they feel and how was it horrible to hear their children crying. It reflects the feelings of those who were torn from their loved ones and imprisoned in prison cells for the whole life. “This woman is sick to her marrow-bone, this woman is utterly alone, with husband dead, with son away in jail. Pray for me. Pray. ” It is another small piece of poem where Akhmatova emphasize how cruel the life was to all woman at that time and she draws the horrible image of lonely and unhappy woman, who is not even a woman, but a heartbroken ghost. “For seventeen months I have cried aloud, calling you back to your lair. I hurled myself at the hangman’s foot. You are my son, changed into nightmare. Confusion occupies the world, and I am powerless to tell somebody brute from something human, or on what day the word spells, “Kill!” Akhmatova and other woman waited for seventeen months and three hundred hours to know what would happen to their members of family, would be they killed or gone free. It was a hard probation for Akhmatova, but she was very strong women who always endured all the difficulties and sufferings.

This poem is not just a fiction, but it is also a real historical account of events and emotions that the writer experienced. These biographical connections mean that the poem is acutely felt. The events took place in Leningrad under the cruel Stalin Regime. In “Requiem” said, “and the sign, the soul, of Leningrad dangled outside its prison-house. ” “I have learned how faces fall to bone, how under the eyelids terror lurks how suffering inscribes on cheeks. ” This quote refers to Epilogue where Akhmatova describes those people who were tired and exhausted. Akhmatova prayed for them, who stood outside the jail, near the wall and who came there like coming home every day again and again. The poetic voice of “Requiem” also notes that when she dies, any monument to her should stand on the same place where she and all thousands of other women were kept for years in a state of complete uncertainty. She said that let this monument be the reminder of the inhumanity and the cruelty of this time in their lives. “And if a gag should blind my tortured mouth, through which a hundred million people shout, then let them pray for me, as I do pray for them, this eve of my Remembrance Day. And if my country ever should assent to casting in my name a monument, I should be proud to have my memory graced. ” Akhmatova doen’t want that monument be dedicated to her, but to all other women who waited for an answer and didn’t receive it. I can compare Anna Akhmatova to the journalist, as she was the witness of all the events happened in 1930s. She captured everything, such as time period, emotions of people, how the evens go, and attached into the poem. In the literature, young Akhmatova entered as an intimate-psychological poet, who can not only tell about the most talkative, but also give the reader the opportunity to experience these feelings with her. The poet’s late poetry keeps this rice, but is filled with new content, an awareness of the close connection of his fate with the fate of the people, his responsibility to history and culture for everything that takes place in the country; this was revealed in the poem “Requiem”.

Moreover, Akhmatova suffered from a totalitarian regime and as a writer. For fifteen years, a ban on printing was hanging over her. She perceived persecution of censorship as torture for many years: the poet felt condemned, a prisoner surrounded by arctic ice of silence, a poet whose muse was mercilessly tortured. Because of banning on printing, the poem “Requiem” was published abroad a few years later in 1963.

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