What does the title of the poem Requiem say? Poem "Requiem" by A.A. Akhmatova. Themes explored in the poem "Requiem"

Composition

Anna Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem,” poignant in its degree of tragedy, was written from 1935 to 1940. Until the 1950s, the poet kept her text in her memory, not daring to write it down on paper, so as not to be subject to reprisals. Only after Stalin's death was the poem written down, but the truth expressed in it was still dangerous, and publication was impossible. But “manuscripts don’t burn,” eternal art remains alive. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem,” which contained the pain of the hearts of thousands of Russian women, was published in 1988, when its author had been dead for 22 years.

Anna Akhmatova, together with her people, went through a terrible time of “universal muteness,” when the torment overwhelms, becomes unbearable, and it is impossible to scream. Her fate is tragic. Akhmatova’s husband, the remarkable Russian poet Nikolai Gumilyov, was shot in 1921 on false charges of conspiracy against the new Bolshevik government. Talent and intelligence were persecuted by Stalin's executioners until the tenth generation. Usually, after the arrested person, his wife, ex-wife, their children and relatives went to the camps. The son of Gumilyov and Akhmatova, Lev, was arrested in the thirties and again on false charges. Akhmatova’s husband, N.N. Punin, was also arrested. Arbitrariness reigned in the country, an atmosphere of unbearable fear was intensified, and everyone expected arrest.

The title “Requiem,” which means “funeral mass,” very accurately corresponds to the feelings of the poetess, who recalled: “During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad.”
I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.

In the poem, Akhmatova speaks on behalf of millions of people who did not understand what their relatives were accused of and tried to get at least some information from the authorities about their fate. The “word of stone” was the mother’s death sentence for her son, which was later replaced by imprisonment in the camps. Akhmatova waited for her son for twenty years. But even this was not enough for the authorities. In 1946, the persecution of writers began. Akhmatova and Zoshchenko were subjected to sharp criticism, and their works were no longer published. The strong-willed poetess withstood all the blows of fate.

The poem “Requiem” expresses the immense grief of the people, the defenselessness of people, and the loss of moral guidelines:
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?

Akhmatova, like no one else, knew how to express a person’s extreme mental state in succinct, short lines of her poems. The situation of hopelessness, doom and absurdity of what is happening makes the author doubt his own mental health: Madness is already on the wing
Half of my soul was covered,
And he drinks fiery wine,
And beckons to the black valley.
And I realized that he
I must concede victory
Listening to your own
Already like someone else's delirium.

There is no hyperbole in Akhmatova's poem. The grief experienced by the “people of a hundred million” can no longer be exaggerated. Afraid of going crazy, the heroine internally distances herself from events and looks at herself from the outside:
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 the lanterns be taken away...
Night.

The epithets in the poem intensify the disgust of terror against one’s own people, evoke a feeling of horror, and describe the desolation in the country: “deadly melancholy,” “guiltless” Rus', “heavy” steps of soldiers, “petrified” suffering. The author creates the image of a “red blind” wall of power, against which the people fight in the hope of justice:
And I’m not praying for myself alone,
And about everyone who stood there with me
And in severe hunger, and in the July heat
Under the blinding red wall.

In the poem, Akhmatova uses religious symbolism, for example, the image of the mother of Christ, the Virgin Mary, who also suffered for her son.

Having experienced such grief, Akhmatova cannot remain silent, she testifies. The poem creates the effect of polyphony, as if different people are speaking, and the lines hang in the air:
This woman is sick
This woman is alone
Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me.

The poem contains many metaphors that amaze with the skill and strength of feelings and will never be forgotten: “mountains bend before this grief,” “the death stars stood above us,” “...and burn through the New Year’s ice with your hot tears.” The poem also contains such artistic means as allegories, symbols, and personifications. All of them create a tragic requiem for all those innocently killed, slandered, and disappeared forever in the “black convict holes.”

The poem “Requiem” ends with a solemn poem in which one feels the joy of victory over the horror and numbness of many years, preserving memory and common sense. The creation of such a poem is a real civic feat of Akhmatova.

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Anna Andreevna Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem” is based on the poetess’s personal tragedy. The result of the years of Stalinist repressions was a work the publication of which was out of the question for a long time. We invite you to familiarize yourself with the analysis of the poem, which will be useful for 11th grade students in preparation for a lesson on literature and the Unified State Exam.

Brief Analysis

Year of writing– 1938-1940.

History of creation– The history of writing the poem is closely connected with the personal tragedy of the poetess, whose husband was shot during the reaction period and whose son was arrested. The work is dedicated to all those who died during the period of repression only because they dared to think differently than what was required by the current government.

Subject– In her work, the poetess revealed many topics, and they are all of equal importance. This is the theme of folk memory, grief, maternal suffering, love and homeland.

Composition– The first two chapters of the poem form a prologue, and the last two form an epilogue. The 4 verses following the prologue are a summary of maternal grief, chapters 5 and 6 are the culmination of the poem, the highest point of the heroine’s suffering. Subsequent chapters focus on the topic of memory.

Genre- Poem.

Direction- Acmeism.

History of creation

The first sketches of "Requiem" date back to 1934. Initially, Anna Andreevna planned to write a cycle of poems dedicated to the reactionary period. One of the first victims of totalitarian tyranny were the closest and dearest people of the poetess - her husband, Nikolai Gumilev, and their common son, Lev Gumilev. The husband was shot as a counter-revolutionary, and the son was arrested only because he bore his father’s “shameful” surname.

Realizing that the reigning regime was merciless in its bloodthirstiness, Akhmatova after a while changed her original plan and began writing a full-fledged poem. The most fruitful period of work was 1938-1940. The poem was completed, but for obvious reasons was not published. Moreover, Akhmatova immediately burned the manuscripts of “Requiem” after reading them to her closest people, whom she trusted infinitely.

In the 60s, during the Thaw period, Requiem began to gradually spread among the reading public thanks to samizdat. In 1963, one of the copies of the poem went abroad, where it was first published in Munich.

The full version of “Requiem” was officially approved for publication only in 1987, with the beginning of Perestroika in the country. Subsequently, Akhmatova’s work was included in the compulsory school curriculum.

The meaning of the poem's title is quite deep: requiem is a religious term meaning the holding of a funeral church service for a deceased person. Akhmatova dedicated her work to all prisoners - victims of the regime, who were destined for death by the ruling power. This is the heartbreaking cry of all mothers, wives and daughters who see off their loved ones on the chopping block.

Subject

Theme of national suffering is revealed by the poetess through the prism of her own, personal tragedy. At the same time, she draws parallels with mothers from different historical eras, who sent their innocent sons to death in the same way. Hundreds of thousands of women literally lost their minds in anticipation of a terrible sentence that would forever separate them from a loved one, and this pain is timeless.

In the poem, Akhmatova experiences not only personal grief, she is heartbroken for her patronymic, which is forced to become an arena for the senselessly cruel executions of her children. She identifies her homeland with a woman forced to look helplessly at the torment of her child.

The poem perfectly reveals theme of boundless love, stronger than which there is nothing in the world. Women are not able to help their loved ones who find themselves in trouble, but their love and loyalty can warm them during the most difficult trials in life.

The main idea of the work- memory. The author calls to never forget about the people's grief, and to remember those innocent people who became victims of the merciless machine of power. This is part of history, and erasing it from the memory of future generations is a crime. Remembering and never allowing a repetition of a terrible tragedy is what Akhmatova teaches in her poem.

Composition

Carrying out an analysis of the work in the poem “Requiem”, it should be noted the peculiarity of its compositional structure, indicating Akhmatova’s original intention - to create a cycle of completed individual poems. As a result, it seems that the poem was written spontaneously, in fits and starts, in separate parts.

The first two chapters (“Dedication” and “Introduction”) are the prologue of the poem. Thanks to them, the reader learns what the place and time of the work is.
The next 4 verses present historical parallels between the bitter fate of mothers of all times. The lyrical heroine recalls her youth, which did not know any problems, the arrest of her son, and the days of unbearable loneliness that followed.
In chapters 5 and 6, the mother is tormented by the premonition of her son’s death, she is frightened by the unknown. This is the culmination of the poem, the apotheosis of the heroine’s suffering.
Chapter 7 - a terrible sentence, a message about the exile of his son to Siberia.
Verse 8 - the mother, in a fit of despair, calls for death, she wants to sacrifice herself, but protect her child from the evil fate.
Chapter 9 is a prison meeting, forever imprinted in the memory of the unfortunate woman.
Chapter 10 - in just a few lines, the poetess draws a deep parallel between the suffering of her son and the torment of the innocent crucified Christ, and compares her maternal pain with the anguish of the Mother of God.
In the epilogue, Akhmatova calls on people not to forget the suffering that the people endured during those terrible years of repression.

Genre

The literary genre of the work is poem. However, “Requiem” also has the characteristic features of an epic: the presence of a prologue, the main part of an epilogue, a description of several historical eras and drawing parallels between them.

Lesson

Subject: A. Akhmatova. Poem "Requiem". History of creation and publication. The meaning of the name. Reflection of personal tragedy and national grief.

Target: introduce the poem “Requiem”; through the analysis of the lyric-epic text, lead students to an understanding of the individuality of the poetess in revealing the theme of the work, to highlight the central images and plot lines; develop the ability to consciously perceive the teacher’s words, see the main thing, make generalizations and conclusions; cultivate a culture of communication, the ability to listen to the opinion of the interlocutor, express one’s point of view, and the ability to interact in a team; arouse interest in the history of the Motherland through the work of A. A. Akhmatova.

Equipment: textbook, dictionary, “Requiem” by Mozart and “Requiem” by A. Akhmatova (audio recordings); multimedia board (presentation “I was then with my people,

Where my people, unfortunately, were...").

Lesson type: lesson in learning new knowledge.

Lesson progress

I. Organizational moment.

II. Message of the topic, purpose of the lesson.

Epigraph

Anna Akhmatova is a whole era in the poetry of our country.

She generously endowed her contemporaries with human dignity,

with its free and winged poetry - from the first books about love

to the stunningly profound "Requiem" .

K. Paustovsky .

I was then with my people,

Where my people, unfortunately, were...

A. Akhmatova .

III. Students' perception and assimilation of educational material.

1. Teacher's word .

Anna Akhmatova... What a proud, majestic name! They tried to erase this name from the tablets of Russian literature, erase it from people's memory, but it always remained a standard of decency and nobility, a beacon for the weakened and those who have lost faith.

We have already studied the work of this poetess when we talked about the “Silver Age” of Russian poetry. You remember her as lyrical, somewhat extravagant, shrouded in a mysterious love haze.

Today we will talk about a different Akhmatova, the one who took upon herself the courage to become the voice of the “hundred-million people”, the one whose maternal grief, cast in laconic lines, shocks with the power of her suffering even today.

We will begin our acquaintance with “Requiem” with a message about the complicated history of its creation and publications.

2. Student message.

The mental pain born of the injustice of fate towards her son, the mortal fear for him, squeezing the bleeding mother’s heart - all this spilled out in poetry. "REQUIEM" was born in mental anguish.

The basis of the poem was Akhmatova’s personal tragedy. Her son Lev was arrested three times. He was arrested for the first time in 1935. He was arrested for the second time in 1938. and sentenced to 10 years in the camps, later the term was reduced to 5 years. He was arrested for the third time in 1949, sentenced to death, which was then replaced by exile. His guilt was not proven; he was subsequently rehabilitated. Akhmatova herself viewed the first 2 arrests as revenge from the authorities for the fact that Lev was the son of Nikolai Gumilyov. The arrest of 1949, according to Akhmatova, was a consequence of the well-known Resolution of the Central Committee of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks, and now the son was imprisoned because of her. All his life Lev Gumilyov will pay for the fact that he is the son of great parents.

The poem was written in 1935-1940. Akhmatova was afraid to write down her poems and therefore told new lines to her friends (in particular, Lydia Chukovskaya), who then kept the “Requiem” in their memory. So the poem survived for many years when its printing was impossible. One of Akhmatova’s admirers recalls that to his question: “How did you manage to preserve a record of these poems through all the difficult years?”, she replied: “But I didn’t write them down. I carried them through two heart attacks in my memory.”

In 1962, when all the poems were written down, Akhmatova proudly announced: 11 people knew “Requiem” by heart, and no one betrayed me.”

In 1963, the poem was published abroad and only in 1987 it became known to a wide readership in Russia. "Requiem" stunned even the Russian emigration. Here is the testimony of Boris Zaitsev: “Was it possible to imagine then that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - feminine, maternal, a cry not only for herself, but for all those who suffer - wives, mothers, brides, in general for all those being crucified?”

3. The teacher's word.

“Requiem” took shape gradually. It consists of individual poems written at different times. But, preparing these poems for publication, Akhmatova calls the cycle a poem.

The composition of the poem is three-part: it consists of a prologue, a main part, an epilogue, but at the same time it has a complex structure. The poem begins with an epigraph. What follows is a preface, written in prose and called “Instead of a Preface” by Akhmatova.

The prologue consists of two parts (“Dedication” and “Introduction”).

After this comes the main part, consisting of 10 small chapters, three of which have a title - the seventh: “Sentence”, the eighth: “To Death”, the tenth: “Crucifixion”, consisting of two parts. The remaining chapters follow the title of the first line. The poem ends with an Epilogue, also consisting of two parts.

Please note the dates the chapters were written. They clearly correspond to the time of his son's arrests. But the Preface and Epigraph date from much later years.

- Think about how this can explain? (This topic, this pain did not go away for Akhmatova for many years.)

4. Justification for choosing the title of the poem.

Before listening to the poem, let’s think about the title, because the semantic load of the title is very great.

- Let’s find out what the word “requiem” means in the dictionary? (In the Catholic Church there is a funeral mass. The name is given from the first word of the Latin chant: “Grant them eternal rest, O Lord”; a funeral polyphonic work).

It was not by chance that A. Akhmatova gave her poem such a name. I think it will be easier for you to perceive this work and comprehend it if you listen to a short excerpt from"Requiem" by Mozart . This is one of Anna Andreevna’s favorite works.

- What mood does this music create?

(Solemn, mournful, sad.)

- What mood should a reader have when picking up a work with such a title? (The title itself suggests that a work so named will be dedicated to tragic events. Thus, the author immediately declares the theme of grief, sadness, and remembrance.)

5. Teacher's word .

Now let’s turn to the problematic question that we will have to answer at the end of the lesson. To do this, let’s write down Solzhenitsyn’s words in a notebook.

A.I. Solzhenitsyn said this about the poem: “It was a tragedy for the people, and for you – a mother and a son” . We have to confirm or refute Solzhenitsyn’s point of view:

The poem "Requiem" - a tragedy of the people or a tragedy of mother and son?

6. Reading and analysis of the poem.

1) The poem begins with a preface. Let's read "Instead of a Preface" .

− Let us explain the incomprehensible expression “In the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina...”

(Nikolai Ivanovich Yezhov - People's Commissar of Internal Affairs from 1936 to 1938. The years of Yezhovism were terrible with cruel repressions).

“Instead of a Preface” is written in prose .

− Why do you think Akhmatova introduces this autobiographical detail into the text? (This is the key to understanding the poem. The preface takes us to the prison line in Leningrad in the 1930s. A woman standing with Akhmatova in the prison line asks “to... describe this.” Akhmatova perceives this as a kind of order, a kind of duty to those with whom she spent 300 hours in terrible queues. In this part of the poem, Akhmatova first declares the poet’s position.)

− What vocabulary helps you imagine that time? (Akhmatova was not recognized, but as they often said then"identified" . Everyone speaks only in a whisper and only “in the ear”; numbness common to everyone. In this small passage, the era visibly emerges.)

2) The teacher's word.

Now you will hear the voice of A. Akhmatova reading the beginning of the Requiem. Listen to him. It is deceptively monotonous, dull, restrained, but amazingly deep, as if saturated with the pain of what it has experienced (portrait of Akhmatova.The chapter is called "Dedication" ).

3) Conversation with students.

− To whom does Akhmatova dedicate the poem? (Women, mothers, “friends of two maddened years” with whom I stood in prison queues for 17 months.)

− How does Akhmatova describe maternal grief? (The whole life of people now depends on the verdict that will be passed on a loved one. In the crowd of women who still hope for something, the one who heard the verdict feels torn, cut off from the whole world with its joys and worries.)

− What artistic means help convey this grief? Find them in the text. What is their role?

EPITHETS

Mountains bend before this grief,

Doesn't leakgreat river ,

But strongprison gates ,

And behind them"convict holes "

ANDmortal melancholy .

… We only hear the keyshateful grinding

Yesthe steps are heavy soldier.

… Where nowunwitting girlfriends

my twocrazy years ?

They create an image of a prison country, where the main feeling that people live with is hopelessness, mortal melancholy, and the absence of even the slightest hope for change.

“Convict holes” enhance the feeling of the severity and tragedy of what is happening.

Here the time and space in which the lyrical hero is located are characterized. There is no more time, it has stopped, has become numb, has become silent.

The loved ones feel everything: the “strong prison doors” and the mortal melancholy of the convicts.

COMPARISONS

… We rose as if to early mass ,

They walked through the wild capital,

We met theremore lifeless than the dead ,

The sun is lower and the Neva is foggy,

And hope still sings in the distance.

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...

They emphasize the depth of grief, the extent of suffering.

ANTITHESIS

For someonethe 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

Yesheavy steps of a soldier .

With the help of this artistic means, the author shows that the world is, as it were, divided into two parts: executioners and victims, good and evil, joy and sorrow. A fresh wind, a 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.

− Why does Akhmatov put “convict holes” in quotation marks? What work is the quote from?

(A.S. Pushkin “In the depths of Siberian ores...”

Love and friendship up to you

They will reach through the dark gates,

As in yoursconvict holes

My free voice comes through.)

− For what purpose did Akhmatova include a quote from Pushkin in her text?

(It specifically evokes in us associations with the Decembrists, since they suffered and died for a high goal.)

− And why do Akhmatova’s contemporaries suffer and die or go to hard labor? (This is senseless suffering, they are innocent victims of Stalin’s terror. Senseless suffering and death are always experienced more difficult, which is why words about “deadly melancholy” appear in the poem. The presence here of Pushkin’s line from the poem “In the depths of the Siberian ores...” expands the space, gives a way out into history.)

− What pronoun does Akhmatova use in the Dedication? Why? (The pronoun “I” would indicate only personal grief, the pronoun “we” emphasizes general pain and misfortune. Her grief inextricably merges with the grief of every woman. The great river of human grief, overflowing with its pain, destroys the boundaries between “I” and “we.” This is our grief, it is we who are “the same everywhere”, it is we who hear the “heavy steps of soldiers”, it is we who walk through the savage capital).

4) The teacher's word.

From the very beginning, Akhmatova emphasizes that the poem concerns not only her misfortunes as a mother, but concerns the nation's grief.Reading the Introduction .

5) Conversation with students .

− What artistic image does Akhmatova create in this chapter?

In literature lessons we talked to you about the St. Petersburg of Pushkin, Nekrasov, Dostoevsky. Akhmatova loved the city in which she became a poet, which gave her fame and recognition; a city in which she knew happiness and disappointment.

(“And under the tires of black marusya...” - black marusya is the same as a black raven, a machine for transporting prisoners).

− How does she paint this city now? What artistic means does he use for this? Find them in the text, let's draw a conclusion about their role in this part of the poem.

METAPHORS

… And a short onesong of separation

Locomotive whistles sang ,

Death stars stood above us

And innocent Rus' writhed …

COMPARISON

… And swayed with an unnecessary pendant

Leningrad is near its prisons...

EPITHETS

… ANDinnocent writhedRus

Underbloody boots

And underblack marus tires

(These artistic means very accurately characterize that time, allowing us to achieve amazing brevity and expressiveness. Akhmatova’s beloved city not only lacks Pushkin’s splendor, it is even darker than the Petersburg described in Dostoevsky’s novel. Before us is a city, an appendage to a gigantic prison, spreading its buildings over the dead and motionless Neva. The symbol of the time here is a prison, regiments of convicts going into exile, bloody boots and black marusi. And from all this “innocent Rus' was writhing.”

− The “death star” metaphor requires comment.

6) Student message.

The Death Star is a biblical image that appears in the Apocalypse.

“The fifth Angel sounded his trumpet, and I saw a Star fall from heaven to Earth, and the key to the well of the abyss was given to it. She opened the deep well, and smoke came out of the well like smoke from a great furnace; and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the well. From the smoke came locusts to the Earth..."

The image of a star is the main symbol of the coming Apocalypse in the poem.

The fact that the star is an ominous symbol of death is indicated by the context of the poem.

The image of the star will appear in Requiem again in the chapter “Towards Death”.

7) The teacher’s word with elements of conversation.

− Time-Apocalypse. Where is all this happening? Is it only in Leningrad?

From the artistic details scattered throughout the poem, as well as specific geographical names, an idea of the entire space of Russia is formed: this is the Siberian blizzard, and the quiet Don, and the Neva, and the Yenisei, and the Kremlin towers, and the sea, and the Tsarskoye Selo gardens. But in these vast spaces there is only suffering, “only the dead smile, they are glad for the peace.” The introduction is the background against which the events will unfold, it reflects the place and time of the action, and only after the introduction does the specific theme of the requiem begin to sound - lamentation for his son.

− The main part opens with the poem “They took you away at dawn...” Let's read the first chapter.

− What event is described in the first chapter? What words and expressions help you feel the severity of what happened? (As they were being taken out, the children were crying, the candle had melted, deathly sweat was on their brow. The scene of the arrest is associated with the removal of the body of the deceased. “It was like being taken out” - this is a reminder of the funeral. The coffin is being taken out of the house. Relatives, relatives, and crying children are following it; it has swollen candle - all these details are a kind of addition to the painted picture).

− From whose perspective is the poem being narrated?

(On behalf of “I”, i.e. the person of the lyrical heroine: the author of the poem and the suffering mother).

− Why does Akhmatova use the image of a “streltsy wife” here?

(Message about Sagittarius)

“I, like the Streltsy wives, will howl under the Kremlin towers” - these lines give rise to an association with the Peter the Great era during the suppression of the Streltsy rebellion, when a brutal reprisal of the rebels followed, and hundreds of Streltsy were executed and exiled. This historical event became the basis for the plot of Surikov’s painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution.”

− How do these historical events relate to the poem's plot and theme? (Appealing to the image of the “streltsy wife” helps to connect the times, speak about the typical fate of the Russian woman and emphasize the severity of specific suffering, as well as the most brutal suppression of the streltsy rebellion was associated with the initial stage of Stalin’s repressions. L.G., as it were, personifies herself with the image of the Russian woman of the times barbarism, which returned to Russia again. The meaning of the comparison is that nothing can justify the shed blood).

− Immediately after the scene of the son’s arrest, which ends with the mother’s “howl,” the theme of the mother’s illness begins . Reading the second chapter .

− Guys, do these lines remind you of anything from your childhood?

Let's see how the mother's crying in this chapter is connected to folklore.

Lullaby song - a genre of oral folk art. This is a song in which a mother, rocking her child to sleep, often imagines what his future will be like.

− What color is given in the second chapter? What is the color yellow traditionally associated with in Russian literature? What does this color mean for Akhmatova?

(Accompanies illness, death, enhances the feeling of tragedy.)

Let's turn to chapter 3.

− Why does the third chapter consist of confusing phrases? (The unrhymed, broken line emphasizes the unbearable suffering of the heroine. The suffering of L.G. is such that she hardly notices anything around her. Her husband was shot, her son is in prison. Her whole life has become like an endless nightmare.)

− What happens to the heroine?

(A split personality occurs)

The lyrical heroine is divided into two: on the one hand, the consciousness is suffering and cannot withstand the suffering, on the other hand, the consciousness is observing this suffering as if from the outside.“No, it’s not me, it’s someone else who is suffering. I couldn't do that" . It is impossible to express unspeakable grief with simple and restrained words. Clear logic and harmonious verse are interrupted - l.g. cannot speak, a spasm has seized his throat. The verse ends mid-sentence, with an ellipsis.

Let's open chapter 4 .

…Like a three hundredth, with transmission,

You will stand under the Crosses…

(Crosses - prison in Leningrad)

− To whom are the words of chapter 4 addressed? (To herself.).

− Why do memories of youth appear? How does the poem include Akhmatova’s bright youth and her terrible present?

In contrast, her memory takes her back to her carefree past. L.G. tries to look at his life from the outside and with horror notices himself, the former “cheerful sinner,” in the crowd under the Crosses, where so many innocent lives end. Did she ever think that she would be three hundredth in the prison line? But if she has the strength to remember her beautiful youth, to smile a bitter smile at her carefree past, maybe in it she will find the strength to survive this horror and capture it for posterity.

Reading chapter 5.

− Highlight the verbs in chapter five .

(I scream, call, rush, can’t make it out, wait, looks, threatens)

− What do verbs convey? (The mother’s despair, L.G. at first acts, tries to do something to find out about the fate of her son, but there is no more strength to resist, numbness and submissive expectation of death sets in. Everything is confused in her mind, she hears the ringing of a censer, sees lush flowers and the traces go somewhere to nowhere, and the luminous star becomes fatal and threatens imminent death. L.G. is in a daze, and another blow-sentence falls on her.

Reading the seventh chapter.

− Verdict to whom? What contextual synonym is it replaced in Chapter 7?

Chapter 7 is the culmination of the story about the fate of the son, but in the foreground is the mother’s reaction. The verdict has been pronounced, the world has not collapsed. But the strength of the pain is such that the voice of L.G. breaks into an internal cry, suppressed by a deliberately everyday, monotonous listing of strange things, which breaks off the speech mid-sentence. The verdict kills, first of all, hope, which helped L.G. live. Now life has no meaning, moreover, it becomes an unbearable burden. This is emphasized by the antithesis. The conscientiousness of the choice is indicated not only by the refusal to live, but also by the emphatically calm manner of reasoning.

− What choices do you think the mother faces in these chapters?

(How to cope with the death of your son)

− What do you think L.G. is keeping silent about? (She sees another way out - death.)

Such payment for existence is unacceptable for her− payment at the cost of one's own unconsciousness. She prefers death to such survival. The alternative to life is death.

You will come anyway, why not now? - this is how the next one beginsChapter 8 .

− In what form is l.g. ready to accept death?

Take any form for this,

Burst inpoisoned shell

Ile withsneak up with a weight like an experienced bandit,

Ilpoison with typhus child .

Or a fairy tale invented by you

And sickeningly familiar to everyone, -

So that I can seetop of the hat is blue

And the building manager, pale with fear.

(A poisoned shell, a bandit’s weight. Typhoid fever and even seeing “the top of a blue cap” was the worst thing at that time; NKVD officers wore blue caps. During searches and arrests, the presence of the building manager was mandatory).

Reading chapter 9.

− If the alternative to life is death, then what is the alternative to death?

Madness. Madness acts as the final limit of the deepest despair and grief,“madness has covered half of the soul with the wing”, “beckons into the black valley” . Akhmatova emphasizes this idea using repetition: there will be nothing that supported the mother’s sanity and life.

− Why is madness worse than death? And this is more terrible, because, having gone crazy, a person forgets about what is dear to him(“And it won’t allow me to take anything with me... Not my son’s terrible eyes... Not part of the prison visit...” ). Madness is the death of both memory and soul. This is the third way. But he is not chosen by L.G. poems.

− Which path does she choose? (Live, and suffer, and remember).

− The culmination of the mother's suffering in the poem is Chapter "Crucifixion" . It is in this chapter that all the pain of a mother who lost her son is revealed .

− Read the title of chapter 10, what does it mean?

(Direct appeal to evangelical issues)

− How can we explain the appearance of the Crucifixion of Christ in the poem? (It appears in the heroine’s mind when she is on the verge of life and death, when “madness has covered half of the soul with the wing”).

Reading chapter 10 .

− What are the biblical images and motifs in this chapter?

The closeness of the “Crucifixion” to its source - to the Holy Scriptures is already confirmed by the epigraph to the chapter: “Do not weep for Me, Mother, see in the tomb.”

The focus on the biblical text is also visible in the first lines of the chapter - in the description of the natural disasters accompanying the execution of Christ.

In the Gospel of Luke we read: “...and darkness came over all the earth until the ninth hour: and the sun was darkened, and the curtain of the Temple was torn in the middle.”

Jesus’ question addressed to the Father, “Why has he forsaken me?” also goes back to the Gospel, being an almost quotable reproduction of the words of the crucified Christ.

The words of Jesus “Oh, do not weep for Me...” in the text of the Gospel are addressed not to his mother, but to the women accompanying him, “who wept and lamented for Him.”

− Do the words addressed to the Father and Mother sound the same?

The first part describes the last minutes of Jesus before his execution, his appeal to his mother and father. His words addressed to God sound like a reproach, a bitter lament about his loneliness and abandonment. The words spoken to the mother are simple words of consolation, pity, a call for calm.

− With the help of what artistic image does Akhmatova show the greatest catastrophe, which is the death of Christ?

The choir of angels praised the great hour,

And the skies melted into fire .

In the second part, Jesus is already dead. At the foot of the Crucifixion there are three: Magdalene, beloved disciple John and the Virgin Mary - the mother of Christ. There are no first and last names in the Requiem, except for the name of Magdalene. Even Christ is not named. Mary is “Mother”, John is “beloved disciple”.

− What is unique about Akhmatova’s interpretation of the Gospel story? (Addressing the words of the Son directly to the Mother, Akhmatova thereby rethinks the Gospel text (Akhmatova focuses her main attention on the Mother and her suffering. And the death of the son entails the death of the Mother, and therefore the Crucifixion created by Akhmatova is not the crucifixion of the son, but of the Mother, or rather and Son and Mother)).

− How is the image of the Mother revealed in chapter 10? (Magdalene and her beloved disciple seem to embody those stages of the way of the cross that have already been passed by the Mother: Magdalene - rebellious suffering, when the lieutenant "howled under the Kremlin towers" and "threw herself at the feet of the executioner", John - the quiet numbness of a man trying “to kill the memory”, mad with grief and calling for death. The mother’s grief is boundless - it is impossible to even look in her direction, her grief cannot be expressed in words. The silence of the Mother, whom “no one dared to look at,” is resolved by a cry-requiem. for his son, but also for all those who were destroyed).

− Why did Akhmatova use this particular story from the Bible? (In the poem, Akhmatova combined the history of God’s Son with the fate of her own, and therefore the personal and the universal merge into one. The mother’s suffering is associated with the grief of the Mother of God).

8) Epilogue . The student reads by heart.

9) The teacher’s word with elements of conversation.

− Remember what order Akhmatova received while standing in the prison line described in the preface?

(The nameless woman asks on behalf of everyone to “Describe it.” And the poet promises: “I can”)

− Did she accomplish this? (In the Epilogue, she reports to them on her fulfilled promise. L.G., at the end of her poetic narrative, again sees herself in the prison queue. At the beginning of the poem, a specific image of the prison queue is given).

For the first time in the poem we see a portrait created using an extended metaphor.

− Whose portrait is this? Or whose? (This is a portrait of exhausted women, mothers.)

− Is this a specific portrait or a generalized one?

In the Epilogue, the image of the prison queue is generalized. L.g. merges with this queue, absorbs the thoughts and feelings of these exhausted women. The epilogue is written in the genre of a funeral lament, a funeral prayer:“And I’m not praying for myself alone...”

− Who is she praying for? (About those who stood in prison lines with parcels, who did not renounce, who voluntarily shared suffering with loved ones, about everyone who was with her in these trials, for whom she wove a “broad cover”).

− What syntactic devices help create this prayer? (Anaphora - repetition of any similar sound elements at the beginning of adjacent rhythmic series)

How fear peeks out from under your eyelids...

Hard pages like cuneiform...

Like curls of ash and black...

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 who shook her beautiful head...

I remember them always and everywhere,

I won’t forget about them even in a new trouble...

Not near the sea, where I was born...

Not in the royal garden...

Forget the thunder of the black marus...

To forget how hateful the door slammed...

And let the prison dove drone in the distance,

And the ships sail quietly along the Neva.

− Conclude what role they play? (They create a special rhythm of the verse. They add tragedy and pain to the speech. They help express grief).

− What theme is heard in the second part of the epilogue? In the works of which Russian poets have you encountered this theme? (Pushkin has a poem “Monument”, in which he says that the “folk path” to the “miraculous” monument will not be overgrown, because “I awakened good feelings with my lyre”; secondly, “in my cruel age I glorified freedom”; thirdly, with the defense of the Decembrists (“and I called for mercy for the fallen”))

− What unusual meaning does this topic acquire under Akhmatova’s pen? (This monument should stand at the request of the poet. Akhmatova does not describe the monument itself. She determines the place where it should stand. She gives consent to the celebration of erecting a monument to herself in this country only on one condition: it will be a monument to the poet near the prison wall. )

− Why is he asking to erect a monument where it stood for 300 hours? (This monument should not stand in places dear to her heart, where she was happy, because the monument is not only to the poet, but also to all the mothers and wives who stood in prison lines in the 30s. This is a monument to the people's grief:

“Because even in the blessed death I am afraid

Forget the thunder of the black Marus »).

Teacher: A few years ago (2006), a monument to Anna Akhmatova appeared in St. Petersburg, opposite the notorious Kresty prison. She indicated its place herself: “Where I stood for three hundred hours and where the bolt was not opened for me.” Thus, the poetic testament was finally brought to life: “If someday in this country they plan to erect a monument to me...”. The three-meter sculpture stands on a pedestal made of dark red granite. Frozen in bronze, Akhmatova looks at the “Crosses”, where her son Lev Gumilyov was imprisoned, from the opposite bank of the Neva. Internal suffering, hidden from prying eyes, is expressed in her fragile and thin figure, in the tense turn of her head.

Now let’s return to the epigraph, which was written 20 years after the poem.

− Why do you think the word people appears twice in the epigraph to the poem about personal grief? (Already in the epigraph, Akhmatova openly declares her main role in life - the role of a poet who shared the tragedy of the country with her people.

“I was then with my people, where my people, unfortunately, were” .

She does not specify where, it is “there” - in a camp, behind barbed wire, in exile, in prison; “there” means together, in the broadest sense of the word. Thus, Requiem is not only a personal tragedy, but also a national tragedy).

− What does Akhmatova see as her poetic and human mission?

(To express and convey the grief and suffering of the “hundred million” people).

“Requiem” became a monument in words to Akhmatova’s contemporaries: both dead and alive. “Requiem” for a son could not help but be perceived as a requiem for an entire generation. Having created “Requiem”, Akhmatova served a memorial service for those innocently convicted. A memorial service for my generation. A memorial service for my own life.

III . Consolidation of educational material.

1. Solving a problematic issue.

Let's return to the problematic issue. What answer can we give to this based on the analysis of the poem? To do this, use notes in your notebook. A.I. Solzhenitsyn: “It was a tragedy of the people, and for you it was a tragedy of mother and son.”

2. Continue reflection.

Re-reading Requiem, I thought...

I understand...

I realized...

I looked it up...

IV. Homework .

Prepare for an essay on the works of A. Akhmatova. Suggested essay topics:

- “The image of the mother in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”.”

- “The stars of death stood above us...” (Based on the poem “Requiem” by A. Akhmatova).

- “Means of artistic expression in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”.

- “The theme of memory in A. A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem.”

- “I was then with my people...” (based on A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”).

The tragedy of the individual, family, and people in Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem.”

Lessons of courage in A. A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”.

Federal Agency for Education

State educational institution

higher professional education

"Chelyabinsk State University"

Miass branch

Department of Russian Language and Literature

Poem "Requiem" by A.A. Akhmatova

Completed by: Mironova M.A.

Group: MR-202

Checked by: Ph.D., Associate Professor

Shakirov S.M.

Introduction

Chapter 1. Requiem as a genre

Chapter 2. History of "Requiem"

Chapter 3. External construction and internal world of “Requiem”

Chapter 4. The genre of “Requiem”

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

I know a woman: silence,

Fatigue is bitter from words,

Lives in a mysterious flicker

Her dilated pupils.

Her soul is open greedily

Only the measured music of verse,

Before a distant and joyful life

Arrogant and deaf.

Silent and unhurried,

Her step is so strangely smooth

You can't call her beautiful

But all my happiness is in her. ...

I.S. Gumilyov "She"

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is one of the best poets of the “Silver Age”. But her talent was not fully realized at the time. Her best work (in my opinion), “Requiem,” was not brought to the attention of the reader, like many works of “poets of truth” that describe injustices on the part of the authorities and are therefore prohibited by them. “Requiem is one of them, as it describes the repressions of the 1930s. You can study history from chronicles, but in order to feel it, to understand the feelings and consciousness of the people of that time, you need to study it with the help of fiction. Maybe not all the facts in it are reliable, but its lines are not dry, like paper, but filled with feelings and experiences that the author shared with them. And, reading Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” you can feel that time, experience her grief with the heroine and understand the people’s grief.

It is not for nothing that scientists, when studying any historical period, turn not only to documents and archaeological excavations, but also to literature that characterizes this period in their understanding.

Therefore, in order to better understand the era in which “Requiem” was written, and to better understand the work itself, you need to study not only its content, but also the structure and genre, and the idea and other elements that make up the image.

To study the material, I used articles and books by such authors as Boguslavsky M.B., Vilenkin V.Kh., Erokhina I., Kormilov S. and others. Also, for easier understanding of the information, the abstract is divided into four chapters, introductions, conclusions .

The “Introduction” shows the purpose of the abstract, its objectives and the relevance of the topic of the abstract. The first chapter tells about the history of the requiem as a genre, the second chapter tells about the difficult history of the consciousness of the work itself, and chapter 3 examines its inner world and the significance of its external structure. The fourth chapter reveals the issue of the Requiem genre. The “Conclusion” states the main conclusions of the abstract and the general conclusion.

Requiem as a genre

Before considering and understanding “Requiem” by A.A. Akhmatova, it is necessary to understand the title of the work, namely, to find out what the requiem genre is. Without an idea of the essence of this genre, it is impossible to understand the relationship between the name and the work itself. The requiem genre is by its nature a musical genre, so for its definition and characteristics we turn to the music encyclopedia.

Requiem (from the first word of the Latin text “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine” - “Give them eternal rest, O Lord”) is a funeral mass dedicated to the memory of the deceased. It differs from the solemn Catholic Mass in the absence of some parts (“Gloria” - “Glory”, “Credo” - “I Believe”), instead of which others are introduced (first “Requiem”, then “Dies irae” - “Day of Wrath”, “Tuba mirum” " - “Wonderful trumpet", “Lacremosa” - “Tearful”, “Offertorio” - “Offering of gifts”, “Lux aeterna” - “Eternal light”, etc.). The very purpose and content of the requiem determines its mournful and tragic character.

Like the mass, the requiem was originally composed of Gregorian chant melodies, sung in unison; At the same time, there were various local traditions in the choice of melody. Already in the 15th century. Polyphonic arrangements of these melodies began to appear. The first such requiem, created by the composer of that time of the first Franco-Flemish school G. Dufant (first half of the 15th century), has not survived. The requiem of this type that has come down to us belongs to the composer of the second Franco-Flemish school, I. Ockeghem (second half of the 15th century). written for an a capella choir in the tradition of a strict polyphonic style, it also contains the “Credo” - a part that appeared in the requiem of subsequent eras. Many composers of the 16th century, led by O. Lasso and Palestrina, worked in the requiem genre. In 1570, the composition of the requiem was strictly regulated by the Roman Church. In the 17th and 18th centuries, during the era of the birth and development of opera and the establishment of a homophonic-harmonious style, the requiem turned into a large cyclic work for choir, soloists and orchestra. The canonized melodies of the Gregorian chant ceased to be its intonation basis, and all its music began to be composed by the composer. Under the dominance of the homophonic-harmonious structure, polyphony retained its significance, but in a new quality, entering into a harmonious relationship.

Being textually associated with the Catholic church funeral service, the requiem in its most outstanding examples acquired non-cult significance and, as a rule, is performed not in churches, but in concert halls. In the 18th century, the most significant works of this genre were written by the Italians A. Lotti, F. Durante, N. Iommelli, A. Hasse (German by birth), and the Pole M. Zwieschowski. The greatest is Mozart's Requiem (1791) - the composer's last work, completed by his student F. Süssmayer. Mozart's requiem expresses a deep world of human experiences with a predominance of mournful lyrics.

Many composers of the 19th century turned to the requiem genre. The most outstanding, widespread requiems of this time belong to G. Berlioz (1837) and G. Verdi (1873).

Thus, the meaning of the title of Akhmatova’s poem becomes clearer. The analogue of the Catholic ritual is crying in the Orthodox tradition. Akhmatova played the role of a mourner in Russian poetry. Appearing as a kind of “Yaroslavl of the 20th century,” she mourned in poetry her generation - scattered throughout the world, crushed and shot. She mourned the tragic fate of her contemporaries - the death of N.S. Gumilev, death of A.A. Bloka, M.A. Bulgakova, M.M. Zoshchenko, B.L. Pasternak. Over the course of half a century, Akhmatova responded to the country’s common troubles and poured out the people’s suffering with the voice of a mourner. Among the series of lamentations, “Requiem”, a funeral service for the martyrs of Stalin’s prisons and camps, occupies a central place.

But one question considered gives rise to others. For example, why did Akhmatova name the poem “Requiem”, because this is a genre of the Catholic religion; What did the author want to convey to us through the feelings of the heroine, through the poem, and in general, is it a poem?

But let's consider everything in order. To understand the soul of a people, you need to know its history. It’s the same with a work: in order to fully understand its meaning and idea, you need to learn about its creation history.

History of "Requiem"

I am happy that I lived during these years and saw events that had no equal..."

A.A. Akhmatova

“Requiem” - poem by A.A. Akhmatova. A work dedicated to the victims of Stalin’s terror” - this is how the Encyclopedia of World Literature immediately indicates the reason that the poem was published in the Soviet Union only in 1987. But this was not the first publication of the poem. In 1963, “Requiem” was published in Munich as a separate book with a note stating that it was being published without the knowledge or consent of the author.

Although after her death Anna Akhmatova was elevated to the rank of a classic of Russian literature, “her collections and collections of poems were published for a long time without the Requiem.” To explain the reason for such secrecy, let us again turn to the Encyclopedia of World Literature, where it is said that “a poetic story about the suffering of a mother who lost her son seemed dangerous to society.”

But let's start the story about the poem from its very birth.

From Akhmatova’s diary: “At the beginning of January, almost unexpectedly for myself, I wrote “Tails,” and in Tashkent (in two steps) I wrote “Epilogue,” which became the third part of the poem and made several significant insertions into both first parts. ...April 8, 1943 Tashkent".

But, having been born suddenly and easily, the poem will go through a long and difficult journey before the reader can get to know it. “In the 30s and 40s. Akhmatova could not even write down these poems on paper (for which you could pay with your life) and trusted their memory only to those closest to her.” But A. Shilov recalls that back in 1940, in the collection “From Six Books” and in the magazine “Zvezda” (No. 3-4), the poem “The Verdict” was published about the inescapable grief of a mother who learned about the merciless reprisal of her only son:

And the stone word fell

On my still living chest.

It's okay, because I was ready

I'll deal with this somehow.

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.

Otherwise... The hot rustle of summer,

It's like a holiday outside my window.

I've been anticipating this for a long time

Bright day and empty house.

In order to disguise the true meaning of these piercing lines about her mother’s grief and the nation’s misfortune, Akhmatova removed the title of the poem in the book version, and in the magazine publication she deliberately put the wrong date of its creation (1934). And the poem, which was, “as we learned much later,” writes Shilov, the culmination of the prison cycle “Requiem,” was perceived by censorship, criticism, and almost all readers as a story about some kind of love drama (the real date - 1937 - was restored by Akhmatova only in later collections of poetry).

Like other authors, Shilov says that “only a few of Akhmatova’s most faithful, most devoted friends understood the true meaning of this poem, knew her other “seditious” lines, for any of which in those years one could pay with freedom, or even life.” .

“It was an apocalyptic time,” Akhmatova later wrote about this, saying that even when giving books to friends, she did not sign some, since at any moment such a signature could become evidence, and in the “Requiem about those terrible years it was said:

Death stars were shining above us

And innocent Rus' writhed

Under bloody boots

And under the black Marus tires.

There was only one way to preserve such poems in a house where search after search was going on, in a city where one apartment after another was empty: not to trust them on paper, but to keep them only in memory. Akhmatova did just that. Until 1962, she did not write down a single such line on paper for more than a few minutes: sometimes she wrote down this or that fragment on a piece of paper in order to introduce it to one of her closest and most trusted friends. Akhmatova did not dare to say such lines out loud: she felt that “the walls had ears.” After the silent interlocutor memorized them, the manuscript was consigned to fire. In one of the poems we can read how she herself talks about this mournful rite:

...I am not a mother to poetry -

She was a stepmother.

Eh, the paper is white,

The lines are in an even row!

How many times have I looked

How they burn.

Gossip mutilated

Beats with a flail,

Marked, marked

Convict brand.

But the difficulties and dangers associated with the poem for Akhmatova were not reasons not to bring the work to life. Like her own child, she carried the poem under her heart, putting into it feelings, pain, experiences, losses... I. Erokhin in her article about “Requiem” recalls the fact that “almost 20 years later, for the cycle of 1935 - 1940, Akhmatova writes prose "Instead of a preface." It is dated April 1, 1957, but most likely written later: in Akhmatova’s notebooks of 1959–1960 we can twice find the outline of the Requiem cycle, but in neither of them is there a preface.” And at the same time, the author of the article notes that Requiem was still thought of as a cycle of 14 poems; “Epilogue” was only the name of one of them, and not a structural and semantic part of the whole: in one of the plans of the cycle, this poem is number 12, and is followed by “Crucifixion” and “Sentence”. Ermolova wonders why April 1, 1957, and immediately ventured to suggest that this emphasized the retrospective look - the poet was able to fulfill the “order” after everything: on May 15, 1956, Lev Gumilyov returned from prison (perhaps this is also some kind of memorial date, “again the funeral hour has approached”).

So, over the course of almost two decades, lyrical fragments appeared that seemed to have little connection with each other. Until March 1960, the plot relationship between these “passages” was not realized. And only when Akhmatova wrote the Prologue (“Dedication” and “Introduction”) and the two-part Epilogue, “Requiem” received formal completion. The main body of Requiem texts (prologue; 10 separate fragments, partially titled, and epilogue) was created from the autumn of 1935 to the spring of 1940. Even later, during the “thaw” period, when, apparently, there was a glimmer of hope for the publication of the work (in reality it did not happen), important additions to the main text were written: “Instead of a preface” (April 1, 1957) and 4 lines of an epigraph (1961 .) .

External construction and internal world of "Requiem"

There are times in history when only poetry is able to cope with reality, incomprehensible to the simple human mind, and to fit it into a finite framework.

I. Brodsky

The history of the creation of the work is undoubtedly important for studying the poem itself, since it is closely connected with Akhmatova’s life. “Requiem” repeats a certain passage of life in miniature, signifying the main events. This can be verified by comparing the biography of the poet and the work. Here's how I. Erokhina does it in her article:

“October 22, 1935 - the first arrest of L. Gumilyov and M. Punin (“They took you away at dawn,” November 1935, Moscow);

Under the protection of other people's wings, - I was then with my people, Where my people, unfortunately, were. The reader's empathy, anger and melancholy, which are felt when reading the poem, are achieved through the effect of a combination of many artistic means. “We hear different voices all the time,” Brodsky says about “Requiem,” “then just a woman’s voice, then suddenly a poetess, then Mary is in front of us.” Here is a "woman's" voice that came from the sorrowful...

Literally, it creates an image. The opposite of hyperbole is understatement (litote). Example of 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...

The Mother stood silently, so no one dared to look. Three ancient traditions - folk song, poetry (it’s not for nothing that Pushkin’s words are quoted: “convict holes”) and Christian help the lyrical heroine of “Requiem” to withstand an unheard-of test. "Requiem" ends with the overcoming of muteness and madness - a solemn and heroic poem. The poem echoes the famous "

... "Poems", and the whole process turns out to be perpetuum mobile. The approach to the “Poem” began with the fact that, with many questions, bewilderments and uncertainties, it became immediately clear: “A Poem without a Hero” is a radical experiment in transforming the genre of the poem, with which it is perhaps difficult to compare anything in Russian poetry over the last century. It was obvious that for such a fundamentally new text it was necessary to develop...

I was then with my people,

Where my people, unfortunately, were.

The poem “Requiem” expresses the immense grief of the people, the defenselessness of people, and the loss of moral guidelines:

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?

Madness is already on the wing

Half of my soul was covered,

And he drinks fiery wine,

And beckons to the black valley.

And I realized that he

I must concede victory

Listening to your own

Already like someone else's delirium.

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 the lanterns be taken away...

And I’m not praying for myself alone,

And about everyone who stood there with me

And in severe hunger, and in the July heat

Under the blinding red wall.

In the poem, Akhmatova uses religious symbolism, for example, the image of the mother of Christ, the Virgin Mary, who also suffered for her son.

Having experienced such grief, Akhmatova cannot remain silent, she testifies. The poem creates the effect of polyphony, as if different people are speaking, and the lines hang in the air:

This woman is sick

This woman is alone

Husband in the grave, son in prison,

Pray for me.