Poet Anna Akhmatova is rightfully considered one of the best in her craft. Her works, full of lyricism, written during the Soviet era, are still studied in many countries. They have been translated into several dozen languages and are popular far beyond Russia. At the same time, the poetess herself lived a rather difficult and sometimes very sad life...
Interesting facts from the life of Anna Akhmatova
- She wrote her first poem at the age of 11. She wasn’t too impressed with the result, but it gave her a desire to improve and achieve more.
- The father of the future poetess did not believe in her talent and forbade her to put her real name - Gorenok - under her poems. Therefore, the girl used as a pseudonym maiden name his great-grandmother - Akhmatova.
- The poetess and her first husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, met while the girl was studying at the gymnasium. In 1910 they got married, and from this marriage a son, Lev, was born. The family existed for 4 years, then Akhmatova and Gumilyov separated, but the divorce was finalized only in 1918 (facts about Gumilyov).
- During a trip to Paris, she had a short affair with by the artist Amedeo Modigliani. The result of these relationships were several dozen paintings painted by the great Italian painter.
- Anna Akhmatova was extremely thin, for which in her youth she was teased as “a mummy who brings misfortune to everyone.”
- The collection “Rosary Beads” made her a famous poetess - this was the second book with her works to be published.
- During the first world war, Akhmatova fell ill with tuberculosis. Previously, two of her sisters died from this disease, and the poetess was afraid that the same fate awaited her, but in the end she coped with this dangerous illness.
- In total, Akhmatova had three husbands - after her divorce from Gumilyov, she lived for several years with orientalist Vladimir Shileiko, and then was in a civil marriage with art connoisseur Nikolai Punin.
- The poetess lived in the same apartment for several years with her lover, art critic Nikolai Punin, his wife and daughter. All participants in this “triangle” were unhappy, but were in no hurry to change anything. During these years she did not write a single poem.
- During the period of repression, both Akhmatova’s son, Lev, and her common-law husband Punin, and ex-spouse Gumilev. Her famous poem “Requiem” is dedicated to this stage of the poetess’ life. The work was published only in the late 1980s.
- After Punin's arrest, the poetess left his coat hanging on a coat rack as a memory of him. Now this apartment houses the Akhmatova Museum, and no one has removed the coat from the hanger.
- Akhmatova’s ex-husband, Gumilyov, was shot a few days after his arrest, Punin was released, but then detained again, and he eventually died in the camps, and the poetess’s son Lev spent a total of more than 10 years behind bars.
- In the 1920s, she worked as a clerk in the library of the Agricultural Institute in St. Petersburg.
- Many of Akhmatova’s works were not published not only during the author’s lifetime, but even for as long as 20 years after the poetess’s death.
- The poet kept a diary all her life, but this became known only after her death.
- After the war, medical scientist Vladimir Garshin proposed to Akhmatova - he communicated his intentions and feelings in a letter. Even before the poetess had time to answer him, Garshin changed his mind about marrying Akhmatova, citing the fact that a ghost appeared to him in a dream dead wife and asked not to do this.
Everyone knows Anna Akhmatova educated people. This is an outstanding Russian poetess of the first half of the twentieth century. However, how much this truly had to endure great woman- few people know.
We present to your attention short biography of Anna Akhmatova. We will try not only to focus on the most important stages the life of the poetess, but also tell interesting facts from her.
Biography of Akhmatova
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is a famous world-class poet, writer, translator, literary critic and critic. Born in 1889, Anna Gorenko (this is her real name), spent her childhood in hometown Odessa.
The future classicist studied in Tsarskoe Selo, and then in Kyiv, at the Fundukleevskaya gymnasium. When she published her first poem in 1911, her father forbade her to use real name, in connection with which Anna took the surname of her great-grandmother - Akhmatova. It was with this name that she entered Russian and world history.
There is one interesting fact associated with this episode, which we will present at the end of the article.
By the way, above you can see a photo of young Akhmatova, which differs sharply from her subsequent portraits.
Personal life of Akhmatova
In total, Anna had three husbands. Was she happy in at least one marriage? Hard to tell. In her works we find a lot of love poetry.
But this is rather some kind of idealistic image of unattainable love, passed through the prism of Akhmatova’s gift. But whether she had ordinary family happiness is unlikely.
Gumilev
The first husband in her biography was famous poet, from whom she had her only son, Lev Gumilev (author of the theory of ethnogenesis).
After living for 8 years, they divorced, and already in 1921 Nikolai was shot.
Anna Akhmatova with her husband Gumilev and son Lev It is important to emphasize here that her first husband loved her passionately. She did not reciprocate his feelings, and he knew about this even before the wedding. In a word, their living together was extremely painful and painful from constant jealousy and internal suffering of both.
Akhmatova was very sorry for Nikolai, but she did not feel feelings for him. Two poets from God could not live under the same roof and separated. Even their son could not stop their disintegrating marriage.
Shileiko
During this difficult period for the country, the great writer lived extremely poorly.
Having an extremely meager income, she earned extra money by selling herring, which was given out as rations, and with the proceeds she bought tea and smokes, which her husband could not do without.
In her notes there is a phrase relating to this time: “I will soon be on all fours myself.”
Shileiko was terribly jealous of his brilliant wife literally to everything: to men, guests, poems and hobbies.
Punin
Akhmatova's biography developed rapidly. In 1922 she marries again. This time for Nikolai Punin, the art critic with whom she lived the longest - 16 years. They separated in 1938, when Anna's son Lev Gumilyov was arrested. By the way, Lev spent 10 years in the camps.
Difficult years of biography
When he was just imprisoned, Akhmatova spent 17 difficult months in prison lines, bringing parcels to her son. This period of her life is forever etched in her memory.
One day a woman recognized her and asked if she, as a poet, could describe all the horror that the mothers of the innocently convicted experienced. Anna answered in the affirmative and then began work on her own famous poem"Requiem". Here's a short excerpt from there:
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?
First world war Akhmatova completely limited her public life. However, this was incomparable to what happened later in her difficult biography. After all, what was still waiting for her was the bloodiest in the history of mankind.
In the 1920s, a growing emigration movement began. All this had a very difficult impact on Akhmatova because almost all of her friends went abroad.
One conversation that took place between Anna and G.V. is noteworthy. Ivanov in 1922. Ivanov himself describes it as follows:
The day after tomorrow I'm leaving abroad. I’m going to Akhmatova to say goodbye.
Akhmatova extends her hand to me.
- Are you leaving? Take my bow to Paris.
- And you, Anna Andreevna, are not going to leave?
- No. I will not leave Russia.
- But life is getting more and more difficult!
- Yes, everything is more difficult.
- It can become completely unbearable.
- What to do.
- Won't you leave?
- I won’t leave.
In the same year she writes famous poem, which drew a line between Akhmatova and the creative intelligentsia who emigrated:
I'm not with those who abandoned the earth
To be torn to pieces by enemies.
I don't listen to their rude flattery,
I won’t give them my songs.But I always feel sorry for the exile,
Like a prisoner, like a patient,
Your road is dark, wanderer,
Someone else's bread smells like wormwood.
Since 1925, the NKVD has issued an unspoken ban so that no publishing house publishes any of Akhmatova’s works due to their “anti-nationality.”
IN short biography It is impossible to convey the burden of moral and social oppression that Akhmatova experienced during these years.
Having learned what fame and recognition were, she was forced to eke out a miserable, half-starved existence, in complete oblivion. At the same time, realizing that her friends abroad regularly publish and deny themselves little.
The voluntary decision not to leave, but to suffer with her people - this is the truly amazing fate of Anna Akhmatova. During these years, she made do with occasional translations of foreign poets and writers and, in general, lived extremely poorly.
Akhmatova's creativity
But let's go back to 1912, when the first collection of poems by the future great poetess was published. It was called "Evening". This was the beginning creative biography future star on the horizon of Russian poetry.
Three years later appears new collection"Rosary" which was printed in a quantity of 1000 pieces.
Actually, from this moment national recognition begins great talent Akhmatova.
In 1917 the world saw A new book with poems "White Flock". It was published twice as large, through the previous collection.
Among the most significant works Akhmatova can mention “Requiem”, written in 1935-1940. Why is this particular poem considered one of the greatest?
The fact is that it reflects all the pain and horror of a woman who lost her loved ones due to human cruelty and repression. And this image was very similar to the fate of Russia itself.
In 1941, Akhmatova wandered hungry around Leningrad. According to some eyewitnesses, she looked so bad that a woman stopped next to her and handed her alms with the words: “Take it for Christ’s sake.” One can only imagine how Anna Andreevna felt at that time.
However, before the blockade began, she was evacuated to, where she met with Marina Tsvetaeva. This was their only meeting.
A short biography of Akhmatova does not allow us to show in all details the essence of her amazing poems. It’s as if they are alive and talking to us, conveying and revealing many sides human soul.
It is important to emphasize that she wrote not only about the individual, as such, but considered the life of the country and its fate as the biography of an individual person, as a kind of living organism with its own merits and painful inclinations.
A subtle psychologist and a brilliant expert on the human soul, Akhmatova was able to depict in her poems many facets of fate, its happy and tragic vicissitudes.
Death and memory
On March 5, 1966, Anna Andreevna Akhmatova died in a sanatorium near Moscow. On the fourth day, the coffin with her body was delivered to Leningrad, where a funeral took place at the Komarovskoye cemetery.
Many streets in the city are named after the outstanding Russian poetess. former republics Soviet Union. In Italy, in Sicily, a monument was erected to Akhmatova.
In 1982, a small planet was discovered, which received its name in its honor - Akhmatova.
In the Netherlands, on the wall of one of the houses in the city of Leiden, the poem “Muse” is written in large letters.
Muse
When I wait for her to come at night,
Life seems to hang by a thread.
What honors, what youth, what freedom
In front of a lovely guest with a pipe in her hand.
And then she came in. Throwing back the covers,
She looked at me carefully.
I tell her: “Did you dictate to Dante?
Pages of Hell? Answers: “I am!”
Interesting facts from Akhmatova’s biography
Being recognized classic, back in the 20s, Akhmatova was subject to colossal censorship and silencing.
It was not published at all for decades, which left her without a livelihood.
However, despite this, abroad she was considered one of the greatest poets of our time and in different countries published even without her knowledge.
When Akhmatova’s father learned that his seventeen-year-old daughter had started writing poetry, he asked “not to disgrace his name.”
Her first husband, Gumilyov, says that they often quarreled over their son. When Levushka was about 4 years old, I taught him the phrase: “My dad is a poet, and my mom is hysterical.”
When a poetry company gathered in Tsarskoe Selo, Levushka entered the living room and shouted a memorized phrase in a loud voice.
Nikolai Gumilyov became very angry, and Akhmatova was delighted and began to kiss her son, saying: “Good girl, Leva, you’re right, your mother is hysterical!” At that time, Anna Andreevna did not yet know what kind of life awaited her ahead, and what age was coming to replace the Silver Age.
The poet kept a diary all her life, which became known only after her death. It is thanks to this that we know many facts from her biography.
Anna Akhmatova in the early 1960s Akhmatova was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1965, but it was ultimately awarded to Mikhail Sholokhov. Not long ago it became known that the committee initially considered the option of dividing the award between them. But then they settled on Sholokhov.
Two of Akhmatova’s sisters died of tuberculosis, and Anna was sure that the same fate awaited her. However, she was able to overcome weak genetics and lived to be 76 years old.
While going to the sanatorium, Akhmatova felt the approach of death. In her notes she left a short phrase: “It’s a pity there’s no Bible there.”
We hope that this biography Akhmatova answered all the questions you had about her life. We strongly recommend using an Internet search and reading at least selected poems by the poetic genius Anna Akhmatova.
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Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (Gorenko) is a talented and world-recognized poetess, whose biography tells the story of the tragic fate of a generation last representatives noble class Russian Empire, complemented by the drama that characterizes the lives of many creative personalities.
Years of life: 1889 - 1966.
Being persecuted most of its time literary life Having repeatedly experienced repression against loved ones, Anna Akhmatova did not stop writing even in the most difficult moments.
The imprint of tragedy left on the poetess’s work gave it special spiritual strength and anguish.
The best poems of Anna Akhmatova
Many of the poet’s works have earned worldwide recognition.
Each was born for a special occasion, becoming a logical continuation of the events of her life:
- The poetess's first collection of poems was published in 1912 under the title "Evening", shortly before the birth of her son. It already contained many poems that made Akhmatova’s name immortal: “Muse”, “Garden”, “Grey-Eyed King”, “Love”.
- The second collection was published already in 1414, before the start of World War I, under the title “Rosary Beads”. It was published in a much larger circulation, but would have been republished several times. Critics' reviews noted the poetess's noticeable creative growth. They emphasized the persuasiveness of poetic language, many successful literary devices, rhythm and rare style of the poetess (“Alexander Blok”, “In the evening”, “I learned to live simply, wisely”).
- Three years later - a month before the terrible events revolutionary events 1917, the collection “The White Flock” was published. In his lines, written during the years of Russia’s participation in World War I, the shades of the intimate experiences of the lyrical heroine, which abounded in the poems of previous collections, are already faintly heard. Akhmatova becomes stricter, more patriotic, more tragic, the appeal to the Divine is noticeably manifested (“In Memory of July 19, 1914”, “Your spirit is darkened by arrogance”). The poetic style is noticeably improved. It was best time her life, giving complete freedom for creativity.
- The collection “Plantain” was released in one of the most hard years for the poetess - in 1921, when she learns about her brother’s suicide, about the execution ex-husband and the father of his child Nikolai Gumilyov, about the death of his friend A. Blok. It includes poems written mainly in the 17-20s. The poetess put into the title the idea that the revolution, having destroyed cultural heritage country and making it impossible for the growth of “cultivated plants”, doomed its future to desolation - to “weeds”. Subject blooming garden, there are almost no warm lyrics from previous collections, the mood is minor and thoughtful (“And now I was the only one left”, “Immediately it became quiet in the house”). Pain and condemnation can be heard in the verses from the fact that the flower of the nation is leaving the country in a wide emigration stream (“You are an apostate: for the green island”).
- There are very few joyful lines in the collection “Anno Domini MCMXXI”. He was born after the shocks Anna experienced, so he leads the reader along the path of sadness and hopelessness (“Slander”, “Prediction”), which the poetess herself walked.
- And the apotheosis of the tragic pages of Akhmatova’s work is the poem “Requiem”, dedicated to the repressions of the 30s. The suffering of a mother whose son is suffering in prison is just an episode in the global grief of an entire people, whose sons and daughters are being crushed by a soulless state machine.
Brief biography of Anna Akhmatova
The future poetess was born in 1889 in the Russian Empire, in Odessa. Of the 6 children of the Gorenko family of hereditary nobles, no one wrote poetry except Anna.
After moving to St. Petersburg, Anna at the age of 10 entered the Tsarskoye Selo Mariinsky Gymnasium, at the age of 17 - the Fundukleevskaya Gymnasium in Kyiv, and 1908-10. – graduated from the Higher Women's Historical and Literary Courses.
early years
Already in early childhood She studied French, and at the age of 11 she composed her first poem.
IN summer months The Gorenko family took children suffering from tuberculosis to the sea - they had a house in Crimea.
Anna on the sea coast was known as a “wild young lady” because she did not feel burdened with secular demands - she swam, sunbathed, and ran barefoot, just like ordinary children of “ignoble blood.”
Subsequently, she will remember her free childhood in the poem “By the Sea” and will return to this topic later.
Personal life
Unlucky women's destiny pursued her all her life, despite the abundance of male attention. The first union was without love, with a difficult and troubled family life, a short second and painful third marriages that ended in divorce.
At the same time, the poetess’s charm, intelligence and talent not only earned her literary fame, but also provided many fans. Famous sculptor and the artist Amadeo Modigliani was captivated by the young poetess even on her first trip to Europe with Gumilyov.
At the same time, the first, most famous, portrait of Akhmatova appeared - a sketch of several strokes, which she valued more than all the others.
She kept the fiery letters addressed to Anna Modigliani, and one day she allowed Gumilyov to discover them - as revenge for his betrayal. This helped her speed up the divorce.
Another admirer is the artist and writer Boris Anrep, whom she especially singled out from the crowd of others. The poetess dedicated several dozen poems to him.
Composer and musical critic Arthur Lurie, philosopher and diplomat Isaiah Berlin also left their mark on the life of the Russian poetess, adding to the list of her fans. Berlin even contributed to Akhmatova receiving a doctorate from Oxford University, many years later - already at the end of her life.
Akhmatova's husbands
Anna married Nikolai Gumilyov, her first husband, while in love with someone else. She resigned herself to fate, yielding to the long courtship of an exalted admirer, who made several suicide attempts due to unrequited love. The groom's relatives did not approve of this marriage so much that they did not even appear at the wedding ceremony.
Gumilyov, being a talented poet, researcher and extraordinary personality, was not ready for family life. Despite his passionate love for young Anna before the wedding, he did not try to make his wife happy. Creative jealousy, betrayal on both sides, and lack of spiritual intimacy did not contribute to the preservation of the family. Only Gumilyov’s long absences made it possible to delay the divorce for as much as 8 years.
They broke up because of his next hobby, but continued to maintain friendly communication. The marriage produced Anna’s only son, Lev Gumilyov. Three years after the divorce, N. Gumilyov was shot Soviet power as a convinced monarchist, for failure to report an alleged counter-revolutionary conspiracy.
The second husband, with whom Anna married immediately after her divorce from Gumilyov, Vladimir Shileiko, was a talented scientist and poet. But, being very jealous of his wife, he limited her freedom, burned her correspondence, and did not allow her to write poetry. In the tragic year for Anna, 1921, they separated.
Akhmatova lived in a civil marriage with her third husband for 15 years, since 1922. Nikolai Punin also did not “come from the people” - he was a major scientist, art historian, critic, and held significant positions in government structures.
But, like her two previous husbands, he was also jealous of Anna’s creativity and tried in every possible way to belittle her poetic talent. Akhmatova had to live with her son at Punin’s house, where his first wife and daughter also lived. The children were not in equal conditions; preference was always given to Nikolai’s daughter, which greatly offended Anna.
When Punin was arrested for the first time, Akhmatova managed to secure his release. After some time, he broke up with Anna, starting a family with another woman. After living in a new marriage for several years, he was arrested again and never returned from prison.
Akhmatova's creativity
The Silver Age of Russian poetry was rich in talents and literary movements. Akhmatova’s work is a vivid example of such an original movement in literature as Acmeism, the founder and main authority of which was N. Gumilyov.
It is interesting that the public, while not particularly fond of Gumilyov’s own poems, was enthusiastic about the new representative of the movement, who quickly became a full-fledged participant in the “Workshop of Poets.”
The world of early Akhmatova’s poems consists of clear forms, bright emotions, achieved by imagery and rhythm of language, without leading into symbolism, blurriness and incomprehensibility of mystical images.
Clear narrative phrases made the lines written by her close and understandable to the reader, without forcing them to guess hidden meanings and implications.
The creative path of the poetess is divided into two periods. The first is built around the image of a lyrical heroine, loving, sensitive and suffering.
In the second period, the heroine undergoes metamorphoses, and the reason for this is life trials. Now she is a grieving mother, a woman, a patriot, acutely feeling the pain of the suffering of her people. Sometimes the line in her work is drawn according to the Great Patriotic War, but this is not entirely correct.
There is no clear division between these periods - with each collection, starting with “The Plantain,” the heroine becomes more and more clearly a citizen of her fatherland, and the patriotic intensity in the poems grows stronger. Indeed, it reaches its apogee in the early 40s (“Oath”, “Courage”), the impetus for its emergence is October Revolution, and is consolidated by the tragic year 1921 (“Anno Domini MCMXXI”).
After 1924, her poems stopped being published, and the Russian reader saw the official publication of the famous “Requiem” only towards the end of the 80s, just a few years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
After evacuation from besieged Leningrad to Tashkent, she writes many poems that do not reach the public. She is surrounded on all sides by censorship and prohibitions, and lives only by earning money from literary translations.
Last years of life and death
Only towards the end of her life, from 1962, the ice around the poetess begins to gradually melt. A new generation of readers has emerged. Disgrace with Akhmatova is a thing of the past - she speaks at author's evenings, her poems are quoted in literary circles.
A year before her death, the poetess is nominated to receive Nobel Prize in the field of literature.
The poetess’s son did not communicate with her for the last 10 years before his mother’s death. As a result, Akhmatova, being famous and beloved by the literary public, died alone, undergoing sanatorium treatment, at the venerable age of 76 years. The reason is another heart attack.
The poetess was buried near St. Petersburg, at the Komarovskoye cemetery. She bequeathed a wooden cross to be placed on her grave.
Lev Nikolaevich arranged the place of her burial himself, with the help of students, by building a fragment of a camp wall with a prison window from cobblestones. Anna came to such a wall for 1.5 years to deliver parcels to her son.
Interesting facts from the biography of Anna Akhmatova
Having listed the most important things, let’s add a few more interesting facts from the life and work of the poetess:
- The father of the future poetess, Andrei Antonovich, a naval officer and nobleman, did not approve of her poetic experiments, demanding not to disgrace his name with her poems. Anna Andreevna was offended, so from the age of 17 she began to sign as Akhmatova, taking the surname of her maternal great-grandmother, the successor of the old family of the Chagadayev princes and the Tatar branch of the Akhmatovs. Subsequently, after the first divorce, the poetess will take her pseudonym as her surname, officially. When asked about nationality, she always answered that she came from Tatar family, originating from Khan Akhmat.
- In 1965, the Nobel Prize Committee, considering two candidates from Russia - Akhmatova and Sholokhov, was inclined to divide the amount equally between the nominees. But in the end, preference was given to Sholokhov.
- After the death of A. Modigliani, several previously unknown sketches were found. The image of the model is very reminiscent of the image of young Anna, which can be judged from her photo.
- The poetess's son did not forgive his mother for not releasing him, accusing her of narcissism and lack of mother's love. Anna herself always admitted that she was a bad mother. An incredibly gifted, charismatic and enthusiastic person scientific activity, Lev Nikolaevich experienced the full power of the repressive state machine, which deprived him of his health and almost completely broke him. He was sure that his mother could, but was not particularly eager to help him with his release from prison. He especially hated the poem "Requiem", believing that a requiem is not dedicated to those who are still alive, and his mother was too hasty in burying him.
- Akhmatova died on the day of Stalin’s death - March 5.
We learn about the details of the life of this unique woman from her diary, which she did not part with throughout her adult life. The works written by Akhmatova also help to reconstruct the events of those years related to the life not only of her own, but also of her contemporaries - people who were close to her to varying degrees.
The history of the 20th century, grinding the fate of many talented people, caused indelible damage to Russian culture Silver Age. Based on Akhmatova’s play “Prologue, or a Dream within a Dream,” the series “The Moon at its Zenith” was even filmed, where the most important narrative line is the biographical memoirs of the poetess.
“I received the nickname “wild girl” because I walked barefoot, wandered without a hat, threw myself from a boat into the open sea, swam during a storm, and sunbathed until my skin came off, and with all this I shocked the provincial Sevastopol young ladies.”
March 5 is 50 years since the death of Anna Akhmatova. The future Russian poet was a very obstinate girl from childhood: she studied poorly, had bad behavior and wrote poetry, which was considered stupid. My father once exclaimed in anger: “Don’t disgrace my name!” She did not disgrace, but glorified her, despite the fact that she took a pseudonym to spite her father.
There are two versions of the origin famous family. First, the ancestor of the poetess was the Tatar Khan Akhmat. The second - Anna Gorenko's maternal grandmother was Akhmatova. Choose any option, we still don’t know exactly why Anna Gorenko took this loud surname as a pseudonym.
The fate of the poetess was tragic. Despite childhood joys and youthful recklessness, Anna grew up to be a serious and deeply sad person. Eye to eye, she faced two wars, a revolution and numerous repressions. All this affected her family.
"Husband in the grave, son in prison, ppray for me."
I will not talk about the sorrows of the fate of Anna Akhmatova and creative path- school textbooks and average websites are full of this information. So, as the beautiful she-devil Gippius wrote “Sarcastic Notes about the Tsar, Stalin and Her Husband,” I suggest you study the notes about the woman from the “lair of the serpent” and about the “most unread poet” in the form of interesting facts from the biography and memoirs of contemporaries.
From the lair of the serpent,
From the city of Kyiv,
I didn't take a wife, but a sorceress.
I thought I was funny
I told fortunes to the wayward one,
A cheerful songbird.
Non-reciprocal love
Anna and Nikolai met within the walls of the gymnasium: Gumilyov read poetry, Akhmatova was a student at the Tsarskoye Selo Women's Lyceum. She became the poet’s muse, but responded to him with non-reciprocity, which is why the disgruntled poet left for Paris for a long time. Afterwards, Anna suddenly decides that she is, after all, madly in love with Gumilyov, and returns him from France. But she was in no hurry to agree to the wedding. To bring matters to a marriage ceremony, Gumilev began to threaten the young poetess with suicide. The wedding celebration did take place, but already in 1918 the literary couple announced their divorce. Akhmatova treated Gumilev with all the warmth of her heart. True, she married three more times, but all marriages were unsuccessful.
Nicknames of Akhmatova
You can give a whole list of nicknames that the poetess was called. Half-nun, half-harlot, Russian Sappho, Anna of all Rus'.
We are all hawkmoths here, harlots,
How sad we are together!
Flowers and birds on the walls
Longing for the clouds.
Fighting tuberculosis
March 5, 1966 In 1915, Akhmatova was diagnosed with an ominous diagnosis for those times - tuberculosis. She was forbidden to see her son and was sent to a sanatorium for treatment in Finland. It is still unknown what actually happened in the sanatorium, why she hated all types of resort hospitals so much, the woman fled from it to St. Petersburg and refused to ever go for treatment again. Many say that Akhmatova had a presentiment of her death and seemed to know that she would die in a sanatorium, but only
Suicide attempt
All the children's poems before the wedding with Gumilyov were destroyed, but by amazing chance, several letters to Sergei von Stein (sister's husband) remained.
“You know, dear Sergei Vladimirovich, I have not slept for the fourth night. This is terrible, such insomnia. If you could see how pathetic and unnecessary I am. The main thing is that it is unnecessary, to no one, ever. Dying is easy. Did Andrey tell you how I hung myself on a nail in Evpatoria and the nail jumped out of the limestone wall? Mom cried, I was ashamed - in general, bad.” Excerpt from a note from 1906.
Diary
An interesting fact is that Akhmatova kept a diary all her life, but this became known only 7 years after her death.
NKVD and Stalin
After the collection was published in 1925, Akhmatova’s work began to be considered “provocative and anti-communist.” Stalin expelled the poetess from the Writers' Union, new life Akhmatova is a beggar. Anna Andreevna had to earn a living by translating, which, by the way, she did excellently.
World fame
Akhmatova gained fame throughout the world. Not only in Europe are her creations admired; the poetess’s 120th birthday was celebrated even in Kuala Lumpur!
Relationship with son
Lev Gumilev for a long time believed that his mother did not make enough efforts to free him, but before her death he finally realized all the gravity of the fate of the great poetess. The entire Leningrad University, where he taught at the history department, collected stones throughout the city for the construction of a monument to Akhmatova.
Will they forget? - that’s what surprised us!
I've been forgotten more than once
A hundred times I lay in my grave,
Where maybe I am now.
And the Muse became deaf and blind,
The grain rotted in the ground,
So that after, like a Phoenix from the ashes,
Rise blue on the air.
February 21, 1957. Leningrad.
