Biography and personal life of the poetess
Who is Anna Akhmatova? Anna Akhmatova is a famous Russian poetess of the Silver Age, literary critic and translator. She was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Childhood and education
Where was Anna Akhmatova born? Anna was born in 1889 near Odessa in the family of a hereditary nobleman. Andrei Gorenko, the father of the future poetess, was a retired naval engineer. Mother Inna Erasmovna took care of the housework and housework. In addition to Anna, the family had six children.
Anna's maiden name is Gorenko. The father was afraid that his daughter would disgrace the family with her poetic passions, so at a young age she took a creative pseudonym - Akhmatova.
LiveInternetLiveInternet
Quote from TimOlya's message
Read in full In your quotation book or community!
Anna Akhmatova.
Northern star Anna Akhmatova. North Star
...She was called the “Northern Star”, although she was born on the Black Sea. She lived a long and very eventful life, in which there were wars, revolutions, losses and very little simple happiness. All of Russia knew her, but there were times when even her name was forbidden to be mentioned. The great poet with a Russian soul and a Tatar surname is Anna Akhmatova.
Nathan Isaevich Altman
Olga Ludvigovna Della-Vos-Kardovskay
She, whom all of Russia would later recognize as Anna Akhmatova, was born on June 11 (24), 1889 in the suburbs of Odessa, Bolshoy Fontan. Her father, Andrei Antonovich Gorenko, was a marine engineer, her mother, Inna Erasmovna, devoted herself to the children, of whom there were six in the family: Andrei, Inna, Anna, Iya, Irina (Rika) and Victor. Rika died of tuberculosis when Anya was five years old. Rika lived with her aunt, and her death was kept secret from the other children. Nevertheless, Anya felt what had happened - and as she later said, this death cast a shadow throughout her entire childhood.
Gorenko family. I.E. Gorenko, A.A. Gorenko, Rika (in arms), Inna, Anna, Andrey. Around 1894
When Anya was eleven months old, the family moved north: first to Pavlovsk, then to Tsarskoye Selo. But every summer they invariably spent on the shores of the Black Sea. Anya swam beautifully - according to her brother, she swam like a bird.
Anya grew up in an atmosphere quite unusual for a future poet: there were almost no books in the house, except for the thick volume of Nekrasov, which Anya was allowed to read during the holidays. The mother had a taste for poetry: she read the poems of Nekrasov and Derzhavin to the children by heart, she knew a lot of them. But for some reason everyone was sure that Anya would become a poetess - even before she wrote the first line of poetry.
Anna Gorenko with her younger brother Victor
Anya started speaking French quite early - she learned it by watching her older children’s classes. At the age of ten she entered the gymnasium in Tsarskoe Selo. A few months later, Anya became seriously ill: she lay unconscious for a week; They thought she wouldn't survive. When she came to, she remained deaf for some time. One of the doctors later suggested that it was smallpox - which, however, left no visible traces. The mark remained in my soul: it was from then on that Anya began writing poetry.
Anya Gorenko. 1900 Sevastopol.
Anya’s closest friend in Tsarskoe Selo was Valeria Tyulpanova (married Sreznevskaya), whose family lived in the same house as Gorenko.
Valeria Sergeevna Sreznevskaya (Tulpanova).
On Christmas Eve 1903, Anya and Valya met acquaintances of Sergei, Valya’s brother - Mitya and Kolya Gumilyov, who shared a music teacher with Sergei. The Gumilyovs escorted the girls home, and if this meeting did not make any impression on Valya and Anya, then for Nikolai Gumilyov, his very first – and most passionate, deep and long-lasting – feeling began on that day. He fell in love with Anya at first sight.
Anna Gorenko is a high school student. 1904 Tsarskoye Selo.
Anya Gorenko with the gymnasium class of 1904-1905. (second from left in second row). Photo from the family archive of E. Khalezova (Moscow).
She struck him not only with her extraordinary appearance - and Anya was beautiful with a very unusual, mysterious, bewitching beauty that immediately attracted attention: tall, slender, with long thick black hair, beautiful white hands, with radiant gray eyes on an almost white face, her profile resembled antique cameos. Anya stunned him and was completely different from everything that surrounded them in Tsarskoye Selo. For ten whole years she occupied the main place both in Gumilyov’s life and in his work.
N. Gumilev 1906 (pass to Tsarskoe Selo). Photo from the collection of the New York Public Library.
Kolya Gumilev, only three years older than Anya, even then recognized himself as a poet and was an ardent admirer of the French symbolists. He hid his self-doubt behind arrogance, tried to compensate for external ugliness with mystery, and did not like to concede to anyone in anything. Gumilyov asserted himself, consciously building his life according to a certain model, and fatal, unrequited love for an extraordinary, unapproachable beauty was one of the necessary attributes of his chosen life scenario.
He bombarded Anya with poems, tried to captivate her imagination with various spectacular follies - for example, on her birthday he brought her a bouquet of flowers picked under the windows of the imperial palace. On Easter 1905, he tried to commit suicide - and Anya was so shocked and frightened by this that she stopped seeing him.
Anna Gorenko
That same year, Anya’s parents separated. The father, having retired, settled in St. Petersburg, and the mother and children went to Evpatoria. Anya had to urgently prepare to enter the last grade of the gymnasium - due to moving, she fell far behind. The classes were brightened up by the fact that a romance broke out between her and the tutor - the first in her life, passionate, tragic - as soon as everything became known, the teachers immediately calculated - and far from the last.
Inna Erasmovna Gorenko (ur. Stogova)
In the spring of 1906, Anya entered the Kyiv gymnasium. For the summer she returned to Yevpatoria, where Gumilyov stopped by to see her on his way to Paris. They reconciled and corresponded all winter while Anya was studying in Kyiv.
Anna Akhmatova 1906
In Paris, Gumilyov took part in the publication of a small literary almanac “Sirius”, where he published one poem by Ani.
Her father, having learned about his daughter’s poetic experiments, asked not to disgrace his name. “I don’t need your name,” she replied and took the surname of her great-grandmother, Praskovya Fedoseevna, whose family went back to the Tatar Khan Akhmat. This is how the name of Anna Akhmatova appeared in Russian literature.
Seberbyakova Portrait of A.A. Akhmatova.
Gumilyov constantly came from Paris to visit her, and in the summer, when Anya and her mother lived in Sevastopol, he settled in a neighboring house to be closer to them.
Returning to Paris, Gumilyov first went to Normandy - he was even arrested for vagrancy, and in December he again tried to commit suicide. A day later he was found unconscious in the Bois de Boulogne...
Nikolay Stepanovich Gumilyov
In the fall of 1907, Anna entered the law faculty of the Higher Women's Courses in Kyiv - she was attracted by legal history and Latin. In April of the following year, Gumilyov, stopping in Kyiv on the way from Paris, again unsuccessfully proposed to her. The next meeting was in the summer of 1908, when Anya arrived in Tsarskoe Selo, and then when Gumilev, on the way to Egypt, stopped in Kyiv. In Cairo, in the Ezbekiye garden, he made another, final attempt at suicide. After this incident, the thought of suicide became hateful to him.
Nikolay Gumilyov. , M. V. Farmakovsky (1873–1946)
In May 1909, Gumilyov came to see Anya in Lustdorf, where she was then living, caring for her sick mother, and was again refused. But in November she suddenly - unexpectedly - gave in to his persuasion. They met in Kyiv at the artistic evening “Island of Arts”. Until the end of the evening, Gumilev did not leave Anya one step - and she finally agreed to become his wife.
Nikolai Gumilyov, Olga Lyudvigovna Della-Vos-Kardovskaya, 1909
They got married on April 25, 1910 in Nikolskaya Slobodka near Kiev. Akhmatova’s relatives considered the marriage obviously doomed to failure - and none of them came to the wedding, which deeply offended her.
Church in Nikolskaya Sloboda near Kiev, where N. Gumilyov and A. Gorenko were married.
Gorenko family. 1909
From left to right: Anna, Andrey (brother), Inna Erasmovna (mother), Victor (brother), Iya (sister).
After the wedding, the Gumilevs left for Paris. Here she meets Amedeo Modigliani, a then unknown artist who makes many of her portraits. Only one of them survived - the rest died during the siege. Something similar to a romance even begins between them - but as Akhmatova herself recalls, they had too little time for anything serious to happen.
Portrait of Modigliani
Akhmatova and Modigliani. At the unfinished portrait, Natalia Tretyakova
At the end of June 1910, the Gumilevs returned to Russia and settled in Tsarskoe Selo. Gumilyov introduced Anna to his poet friends. As one of them recalls, when it became known about Gumilyov’s marriage, no one at first knew who the bride was. Then they found out: an ordinary woman... That is, not a black woman, not an Arab, not even a Frenchwoman, as one might expect, knowing Gumilyov’s exotic preferences. Having met Anna, we realized that she was extraordinary...
Anna Akhmatova. 1910s
No matter how strong the feelings were, no matter how persistent the courtship was, soon after the wedding Gumilyov began to be burdened by family ties. On September 25, he again leaves for Abyssinia. Akhmatova, left to her own devices, plunged headlong into poetry. When Gumilev returned to Russia at the end of March 1911, he asked his wife, who met him at the station: “Did you write?” she nodded. “Then read!” – and Anya showed him what she had written. He said, "Okay." And from that time on I began to treat her work with great respect.
N.S. Gumilyov. Portrait by M. Farmakovsky
In the spring of 1911, the Gumilyovs again went to Paris, then spent the summer on the estate of Gumilyov’s mother Slepnevo, near Bezhetsk in the Tver province.
The Gumilevs' manor house in Slepnev
Memorial Akhmatova room in the Slepnev house, opened in June 1987. (Transported to the village of Gradishchi in 1935)
1911 A. Akhmatova (second from right) in Slepnev.
In the fall, when the couple returned to Tsarskoe Selo, Gumilyov and his comrades decided to organize an association of young poets, calling it the “Workshop of Poets.” Soon, on the basis of the Workshop, Gumilyov founded the movement of Acmeism, opposed to symbolism. There were six followers of Acmeism: Gumilev, Osip Mandelstam, Sergei Gorodetsky, Anna Akhmatova, Mikhail Zenkevich and Vladimir Narbut.
Gumilev and Akhmatova in 1913 at a literary evening (top row 4th and 5th from left)
(From the archive of O. E. Kestner, provided by K. Finkelstein, USA)
The term “acmeism” comes from the Greek “acme” - peak, highest degree of perfection. But many noted the consonance of the name of the new movement with the name of Akhmatova.
Akhmatova and Gumilyov in Tsarskoe Selo
In the spring of 1912, Akhmatova’s first collection “Evening” was published, with a circulation of only 300 copies. Criticism greeted him very favorably. Many of the poems in this collection were written during Gumilyov's travels in Africa. The young poetess became very famous. Fame literally fell on her. They tried to imitate her - many poetesses appeared, writing poems “like Akhmatova” - they began to be called “Podakhmatovkas”.
Anna Akhmatova with a friend in Italy 1912
In a short time, Akhmatova, from a simple, eccentric, funny girl, became that majestic, proud, regal Akhmatova, who was remembered by everyone who knew her. And after her portraits began to be published in magazines - and many, many painted her - they began to imitate her appearance: the famous bangs and the “false-classical” shawl appeared on every second person.
S.A. Sorin. 1914
In the spring of 1912, when the Gumilevs went on a trip to Italy and Switzerland, Anna was already pregnant. She spends the summer with her mother, and Gumilyov spends the summer in Slepnev.
The son of Akhmatova and Gumilyov, Lev, was born on October 1, 1912. Almost immediately, Nikolai’s mother, Anna Ivanovna, took him in - and Anya did not resist too much. As a result, Leva lived with his grandmother for almost sixteen years, seeing his parents only occasionally...
N.S. Gumilev, Lev Gumilev, A.A. Akhmatova. Tsarskoye Selo.
Lev Gumilev with his mother Anna Akhmatova and grandmother
Just a few months after the birth of his son, in the early spring of 1913, Gumilyov set off on his last trip to Africa - as the head of an expedition organized by the Academy of Sciences.
In his absence, Anna leads an active social life. A recognized beauty, an adored poet, she is literally basking in fame. Artists paint her, her fellow poets dedicate poems to her, and she is overwhelmed by fans...
At the beginning of 1914, Akhmatova’s second collection “The Rosary” was published. Although the critics received it somewhat coolly - Akhmatova was accused of repeating herself - the collection was a resounding success. Even despite the wartime, it was reprinted four times.
Anna Akhmatova
Akhmatova was widely recognized as one of the greatest poets of the time. She was constantly surrounded by crowds of admirers. Gumilev even told her: “Anya, more than five is indecent!” She was worshiped for her talent, and for her intelligence, and for her beauty.
Anna Akhmatova / Tatyana Krasovskaya / drawing
She was friends with Blok, with whom an affair was persistently attributed to her (the basis for this was the exchange of poems that were published), with Mandelstam (who was not only one of her closest friends, but in those years tried to court her - however, unsuccessfully) , Pasternak (according to her, Pasternak proposed to her seven times, although he was not truly in love).
Alexander Blok Osip Mandelstam
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
One of the people closest to her at that time was Nikolai Nedobrovo, who wrote an article about her work in 1915, which Akhmatova herself considered the best of what had been written about her in her entire life. Nedobrovo was desperately in love with Akhmatova.
Nikolai Vladimirovich Nedobrovo
In 1914, Nedobrovo introduced Akhmatova to his best friend, poet and artist Boris Anrep. Anrep, who lived and studied in Europe, returned to his homeland to participate in the war. A whirlwind romance began between them, and soon Boris ousted Nedobrovo both from her heart and from her poetry. Nedobrovo took this very hard and parted ways with Anrep forever. Although Anna and Boris managed to meet infrequently, this love was one of the strongest in Akhmatova’s life. Before the final departure to the front, Boris gave her a throne cross, which he found in a destroyed church in Galicia.
Anrep Boris Vasilievich (Boris von Anrep)
Gumilyov also went to the front. In the spring of 1915, he was wounded, and Akhmatova constantly visited him in the hospital. She spent the summer, as usual, in Slepnev - there she wrote most of the poems for the next collection. Her father died in August. By this time she herself was already seriously ill - tuberculosis.
Anna Akhmatova
Doctors advised her to immediately leave for the south. She lives in Sevastopol for some time, visits Nedobrovo in Bakhchisarai - as it turned out, this was their last meeting; in 1919 he died. In December, doctors allowed Akhmatova to return to St. Petersburg, where she again continues to meet with Anrep. Meetings were rare, but Anna in love looked forward to them all the more.
In 1916, Boris left for England - he planned to stay for a month and a half, but stayed for a year and a half. Before leaving, he visited Nedobrovo and his wife, who then had Akhmatova. They said goodbye and he left. They exchanged rings goodbye. He returned on the eve of the February Revolution. A month later, Boris, at the risk of his life, under bullets, crossed the ice of the Neva - to tell Anna that he was leaving for England forever.
Over the following years, she received only a few letters from him. In England, Anrep became known as a mosaic artist. In one of his mosaics he depicted Anna - he chose her as a model for a figure of compassion. The next time - and the last - they saw each other only in 1965, in Paris.
Saint Anna. Mullingar, Ireland
Most of the poems from the collection “The White Flock,” published in 1917, are dedicated to Boris Anrep.
Meanwhile, Gumilyov, although active at the front - he was awarded the St. George Cross for valor - leads an active literary life. He publishes a lot and constantly writes critical articles. In the summer of 17th he ended up in London and then in Paris. Gumilev returned to Russia in April 1918.
The next day, Akhmatova asked him for a divorce, saying that she was marrying Vladimir Shileiko.
Vladimir Kazimirovich Shileiko
Vladimir Kazimirovich Shileiko was a famous Assyrian scientist, as well as a poet. The fact that Akhmatova would marry this ugly, completely unadapted to life, insanely jealous man came as a complete surprise to everyone who knew her. As she later said, she was attracted by the opportunity to be useful to a great man, and also by the fact that with Shileiko there would not be the same rivalry that she had with Gumilyov. Akhmatova, having moved to his Fountain House, completely subordinated herself to his will: she spent hours writing his translations of Assyrian texts under his dictation, cooking for him, chopping wood, making translations for him. He literally kept her under lock and key, not allowing her to go anywhere, forced her to burn all the letters she received unopened, and did not allow her to write poetry.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova.
Her friend, composer Arthur Lurie, with whom she became friends back in 1914, helped her. Under his leadership, Shileiko was taken to the hospital, as if for treatment of sciatica, where she was kept for a month. During this time, Akhmatova entered the service of the library of the Agronomic Institute - they provided firewood and a government apartment. When Shileiko was released from the hospital, Akhmatova invited him to move in with her. There Akhmatova herself was the hostess, and Shileiko calmed down. They finally separated in the summer of 1921.
Anna Akhmatova
Then one funny circumstance was discovered: when Akhmatova moved in with him, Shileiko promised to formalize their marriage himself - fortunately, then it was only necessary to make an entry in the house register. And when they were getting divorced, Lurie, at Akhmatova’s request, went to the house committee to cancel the entry - and it turned out that it never existed.
Anna Akhmatova
Many years later, she, laughing, explained the reasons for this absurd union: “It’s all Gumilev and Lozinsky, they repeated with one voice - an Assyrian, an Egyptian! Well, I agreed.”
From Shileiko, Akhmatova moved to her long-time friend, dancer Olga Glebova-Sudeikina, the ex-wife of the artist Sergei Sudeikin, one of the founders of the famous “Stray Dog”, whose star was the beautiful Olga. Lurie, whom Akhmatova dismissed for frivolity, became friends with Olga, and soon they left for Paris.
Anna Akhmatova and Olga Glebova-Sudeikina
In August 1921, Alexander Blok died. At his funeral, Akhmatova learned the terrible news - Gumilev was arrested in the so-called Tagantsev case. Two weeks later he was shot. His only fault was that he knew about the impending conspiracy, but did not report it.
In the same August, Anna’s brother Andrei Gorenko committed suicide in Greece.
Andrei Gorenko (Akhmatova's older brother)
Akhmatova’s impressions of these deaths resulted in a collection of poems, “The Plantain,” which was then expanded and became known as “Anno Domini MCMXXI.”
After this collection, Akhmatova did not publish collections for many years, only individual poems. The new regime did not favor her work - for its intimacy, apoliticality and “noble roots”. Even the opinion of Alexandra Kollontai - in one of her articles she said that Akhmatova’s poetry is attractive to young working women because it truthfully depicts how badly a man treats a woman - did not save Akhmatova from critical persecution. A series of articles branded Akhmatova’s poetry as harmful, since she writes nothing about work, the team and the struggle for a bright future.
Anna Akhmatova
At this time, she was left practically alone - all her friends either died or emigrated. Akhmatova herself considered emigration completely unacceptable for herself.
It became more and more difficult to print. In 1925, an unofficial ban was placed on her name. It hasn't been published for 15 years.
In the early spring of 1925, Akhmatova again experienced an exacerbation of tuberculosis.
L.N. Gumilev and A.A. Akhmatova in the Marble Palace (1926)
When she was lying in a sanatorium in Tsarskoye Selo - together with Mandelstam's wife Nadezhda Yakovlevna - Nikolai Nikolaevich Punin, a historian and art critic, constantly visited her. About a year later, Akhmatova agreed to move to his Fountain House.
Anna Akhmatova
"Fountain House"
Punin was very handsome - everyone said that he looked like the young Tyutchev. He worked at the Hermitage, doing modern graphics. He loved Akhmatova very much - although in his own way.
Anna Akhmatova and N.N. Punin. Leningrad. Fountain House. 1927. Photo by P. Luknitsky
Officially, Punin remained married. He lived in the same apartment with his ex-wife Anna Arens and their daughter Irina. Although Punin and Akhmatova had a separate room, they all dined together, and when Arens went to work, Akhmatova looked after Irina. The situation was extremely tense.
Anna Akhmatova Anna Akhmatova in the “sphinx” pose Anna Akhmatova
Unable to publish poetry, Akhmatova delved into scientific work. She began researching Pushkin and became interested in the architecture and history of St. Petersburg. She helped Punin a lot in his research, translating French, English and Italian scientific works for him. In the summer of 1928, her son Leva, who by that time was already 16 years old, moved in with Akhmatova. The circumstances of his father's death prevented him from continuing his studies. It was with difficulty that he was placed in a school where Nikolai Punin’s brother Alexander was the director. Then Lev entered the history department of Leningrad University.
Lev Nikolaevich Gumilev
In 1930, Akhmatova tried to leave Punin, but he managed to convince her to stay by threatening suicide. Akhmatova remained to live in
Fountain House, leaving it only for a short time.
By this time, the extreme poverty of Akhmatova’s life and clothing was already so obvious that it could not go unnoticed. Many found Akhmatova’s special elegance in this. In any weather, she wore an old felt hat and a light coat. Only when one of her old friends died did Akhmatova put on the old fur coat bequeathed to her by the deceased and did not take it off until the war. Very thin, still with the same famous bangs, she knew how to make an impression, no matter how poor her clothes were, and walked around the house in bright red pajamas at a time when they were not yet accustomed to seeing a woman in trousers.
Anna Akhmatova
Everyone who knew her noted her unsuitability for everyday life. She didn't know how to cook and never cleaned up after herself. Money, things, even gifts from friends never lingered with her - almost immediately she distributed everything to those who, in her opinion, needed them more. For many years she made do with the bare minimum - but even in poverty she remained a queen.
Yu. Annenkov. 1921-3
In 1934, Osip Mandelstam was arrested - Akhmatova was visiting him at that moment. A year later, after the murder of Kirov, Lev Gumilyov and Nikolai Punin were arrested. Akhmatova rushed to Moscow to work, she managed to deliver a letter to the Kremlin. They were soon released, but this was only the beginning.
Osip Mandelstam and Anna Amatova. Moscow 1934
Punin became clearly burdened by his marriage to Akhmatova, which now, as it turned out, was also dangerous for him. He demonstrated his infidelity to her in every possible way, said that he was bored with her - and yet he did not let her leave. Besides, there was nowhere to go - Akhmatova did not have her own home...
Anna Akhmatova
Summer 1936 at the Shervinsky estate. In the middle is A.D. Shervinsky, to the right is A.A. Akhmatova and S.V. Shervinsky
In March 1938, Lev Gumilev was arrested again, and this time he spent seventeen months under investigation and was sentenced to death. But at this time his judges themselves were repressed, and his sentence was replaced by exile.
In November of the same year, Akhmatova finally managed to break with Punin - but Akhmatova only moved to another room in the same apartment. She lived in extreme poverty, often getting by with only tea and black bread. Every day I stood in endless lines to give my son a parcel. It was then, in line, that she began writing the Requiem cycle. The poems of the cycle were not written down for a very long time - they were kept in the memory of Akhmatova herself and several of her closest friends.
Anna Akhmatova, Petrov-Vodkin
Quite unexpectedly, in 1940, Akhmatova was allowed to publish. At first, several individual poems were published, then he allowed the release of an entire collection, “From Six Books,” which, however, mainly included selected poems from previous collections. Nevertheless, the book caused a stir: it was taken off the shelves for several hours, people fought for the right to read it
However, after a few months, the publication of the book was considered a mistake, and it began to be withdrawn from libraries.
Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain House. 1940
When the war began, Akhmatova felt a new surge of strength. In September, during the heaviest bombings, she spoke on the radio with an appeal to the women of Leningrad. Together with everyone else, she is on duty on the roofs, digging trenches around the city. At the end of September, by decision of the city party committee, she was evacuated from Leningrad by plane - ironically, she was now recognized as an important enough person to be saved... Through Moscow, Kazan and Chistopol, Akhmatova ended up in Tashkent.
A.A. Osmerkin. 1939-1940
She settled in Tashkent with Nadezhda Mandelstam, constantly communicated with Lydia Korneevna Chukovskaya, and became friends with Faina Ranevskaya, who lived nearby - they carried this friendship throughout their lives. Almost all Tashkent poems were about Leningrad - Akhmatova was very worried about her city, about everyone who remained there. It was especially difficult for her without her friend, Vladimir Georgievich Garshin.
Garshin, Vladimir Georgievich
After breaking up with Punin, he began to play a big role in Akhmatova’s life. A pathologist by profession, Garshin was very concerned about her health, which Akhmatova, according to him, criminally neglected. Garshin was also married; his wife, a seriously ill woman, required his constant attention. But he was a very intelligent, educated, interesting conversationalist, and Akhmatova became very attached to him. In Tashkent, she received a letter from Garshin about the death of his wife. In another letter, Garshin asked her to marry him, and she accepted his proposal. She even agreed to take his last name.
Diaz Silva Paola
At the beginning of 1944, Akhmatova left Tashkent. First, she came to Moscow, where she performed at an evening held in the hall of the Polytechnic Museum. The reception was so stormy that she even got scared. When she appeared, the audience stood up. They say that when Stalin found out about this, he asked: “Who organized the rise?”
Anna Akhmatova, N.A. Tyrsa. Anna Akhmatova
She told everyone she knew that she was going to Leningrad to see her husband, dreamed of how she would live with him... And the more terrible was the blow that awaited her there.
Garshin, who met her on the platform, asked: “And where should we take you?” Akhmatova was speechless. As it turned out, without saying a word to anyone, he married a nurse. Garshin destroyed all her hopes of finding a home that she had not had for a long time. She never forgave him for this.
Subsequently, Akhmatova said that, apparently, Garshin had gone crazy from hunger and the horrors of the blockade.
Garshin died in 1956. On the day of his death, the brooch that he once gave to Akhmatova split in half...
This was Akhmatova’s tragedy: next to her, a strong woman, there were almost always weak men who tried to shift their problems onto her, and there was never a person who could help her cope with her own troubles...
Anna Akhmatova, V Mikhailov
After returning from Tashkent, her demeanor changed - it became simpler, calmer, and at the same time more distant. Akhmatova abandoned her famous bangs; after suffering typhus in Tashkent, she began to gain weight. It seemed that Akhmatova had been reborn from the ashes for a new life. In addition, she was again recognized by the authorities. For her patriotic poems, she was awarded the medal “For the Defense of Leningrad.” Her research on Pushkin and a large selection of poems were being prepared for publication. In 1945, Lev Gumilev returned to Akhmatova’s great joy. From exile, which he served since 1939, he managed to get to the front. Mother and son lived together. It seemed that life was getting better.
Anna Akhmatova 1945
In the fall of 1945, Akhmatova was introduced to the literary critic Isaiah Berlin, then an employee of the British embassy. During their conversation, Berlin was horrified to hear someone in the yard calling his name. As it turned out, it was Randolph Churchill, the son of Winston Churchill, a journalist. The moment was terrible for both Berlin and Akhmatova. Contacts with foreigners - especially embassy employees - were not encouraged at that time, to put it mildly. A personal meeting might still not be seen - but when the prime minister's son is yelling in the yard, it is unlikely to go unnoticed.
Nevertheless, Berlin visited Akhmatova several more times.
Portrait of Isaiah Berlin
Berlin was the last of those who left a mark on Akhmatova’s heart. When Berlin himself was asked whether he had something with Akhmatova, he said: “I can’t decide how best to answer...”
On August 14, 1946, a resolution of the CPSU Central Committee “On the magazines “Zvezda” and “Leningrad” was issued. The magazines were stigmatized for providing their pages to two ideologically harmful writers - Zoshchenko and Akhmatova. Less than a month later, Akhmatova was expelled from the Writers' Union, deprived of food cards, and her book, which was in print, was destroyed.
According to Akhmatova, many writers who wanted to return to Russia after the war changed their minds after the decree. Thus, she considered this resolution to be the beginning of the Cold War. She was as absolutely convinced of this as she was that the Cold War itself was caused by her meeting with Isaiah Berlin, which she found fatal and of cosmic significance. She was firmly convinced that all further troubles were caused by her.
In 1956, when he was again in Russia, she refused to meet with him - she did not want to incur the wrath of the authorities again...
Anna Akhmatova
After the ruling, she found herself in complete isolation - she herself tried not to meet with those who did not turn away from her, so as not to cause harm. Nevertheless, people continued to come to her, bring food, and she was constantly sent food cards by mail. Criticism turned against her - but for her it was much less scary than complete oblivion. She called any event only a new fact in her biography, and she was not going to give up her biography. At this time, she is working hard on her central work, “Poem without a Hero.”
Anna Akhmatova and Boris Pasternak. Moscow. 1946.
Anna Akhmatova and Olga Berggolts. Leningrad, 1947
In 1949, Nikolai Punin was arrested again, and then Lev Gumilev. Lev, whose only crime was that he was the son of his parents, was to spend seven years in the camp, and Punin was destined to die there.
In 1950, Akhmatova, breaking herself, in the name of saving her son, wrote a cycle of poems “Glory to the World,” glorifying Stalin. However, Lev returned only in 1956 - and even then, it took a long time to get his release... He left the camp with the conviction that his mother did nothing to alleviate his fate - after all, they could not refuse her, so famous! While they lived together, their relationship was very strained, then, when Leo began to live separately, it almost completely ceased.
He became a famous orientalist. He became interested in the history of the East while in exile in those parts. His works are still considered one of the most important in historical science. Akhmatova was very proud of her son.
Anna Akhmatova with her son Lev Gumilev
Since 1949, Akhmatova began to engage in translations - Korean poets, Victor Hugo, Rabindranath Tagore, letters from Rubens... Previously, she refused to engage in translations, believing that they took time away from her own poems. Now I had to - it provided both income and relatively official status.
In 1954, Akhmatova quite by accident earned herself forgiveness. The delegation that arrived from Oxford wished to meet with the disgraced Zoshchenko and Akhmatova. She was asked what she thought about the resolution - and she, sincerely believing that it was not the place of foreigners who do not understand the true state of affairs to ask such questions, simply answered that she agreed with the resolution. They didn't ask her any more questions. Zoshchenko began to explain something at length - and this hurt himself even more.
Ardov B.V. Portrait of A. A. Akhmatova. Early 1960s
The ban on Akhmatova’s name was again lifted. She was even allocated from the Writers' Union - although Akhmatova was expelled from it, as a translator she could be considered a "writer" - a dacha in the writers' village of Komarovo near Leningrad; She called this house Booth. And in 1956, largely thanks to the efforts of Alexander Fadeev, Lev Gumilyov was released.
Anna Akhmatova in Komarovo
The last ten years of Akhmatova’s life were completely different from the previous years. Her son was free, she finally had the opportunity to publish. She continued to write - and wrote a lot, as if in a hurry to express everything that she was not allowed to say before. Now the only obstacles were illnesses: she had serious heart problems, and her obesity made it difficult for her to walk. Until her last years, Akhmatova was regal and stately, wrote love poems and warned young people who came to her: “Just don’t fall in love with me! I don't need this anymore
Anna Akhmatova reads the poem The Heiress. Komarovo. 1964
Akhmatova received the opportunity to travel abroad. In 1964, she was awarded the Etna-Taormina International Poetry Prize in Italy, and in 1965, for her scientific work in the field of Pushkin studies, the University of Oxford awarded her the honorary degree of Doctor of Literature. In London and Paris, where she stopped on the way back, she was able to meet again with the friends of her youth - Salome Halpern, Yuri Annenkov, who once painted her, Isaiah Berlin, Boris Anrep... She said goodbye to her youth, to her life.
Anna Akhmatova in Italy
Akhmatova died on March 5, 1966 - ironically, on the anniversary of Stalin's death, which she loved to celebrate. Before being sent to Leningrad, her body lay in the Moscow morgue at the hospital, located in the building of the old Sheremetev Palace, which, like the Fountain House, depicted a coat of arms with the motto heard in the “Poem without a Hero”: “Deus conservat omnia” - “ God preserves everything."
After the funeral service in St. Nicholas Cathedral in Leningrad, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova was buried in Komarovo - not far from her only real home for many years. Crowds of people accompanied her on her last journey - the path to Eternity...
https://v-vulf.ru/officiel/officiel-44-1.htm https://www.pravmir.ru https://ahmatova.niv.ru https://chtoby-pomnili.com
/
