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Review of the poem by A. Artistic originality of the poem by A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

Almost the entire "Requiem" was written in 1935-1940, the section "Instead of a Preface" and the epigraph are marked 1957 and 1961. For a long time the work existed only in the memory of Akhmatova and her friends, only in the 1950s. she decided to write it down, and the first publication took place in 1988, 22 years after the death of the poet.

The very word "requiem" (in notebooks Akhmatova - Latin Requiem) means "requiem mass" - Catholic worship for the dead, as well as mourning musical composition. The Latin name of the poem, as well as the fact that in the 1930s - 1940s. Akhmatova was seriously engaged in the study of the life and work of Mozart, in particular his "Requiem" and, suggests the connection of Akhmatova's work with the musical form of the requiem. By the way, in Mozart's "Requiem" there are 12 parts, in Akhmatova's poem - the same number ( 10 chapters + Dedication and Epilogue).

The epigraph and instead of the preface are the original semantic and musical keys of the work. The epigraph (lines from the 1961 poem “So it was not in vain that we were in trouble together ...”) introduces a lyrical theme:

I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.

Instead of a Preface (1957), picking up the theme of "my people", takes us to "then" - the prison queue of Leningrad in the 1930s. Akhmatov's "Requiem", like Mozart's, was written "on order"; but in the role of "customer" - "a hundred millionth people." The lyrical and the epic are merged into one in the poem: talking about her grief (the arrest of her son - L.N. Gumilyov, her husband - N.N. Punin), Akhmatova speaks on behalf of millions of "nameless"; behind her author's "I" is the "we" of all those whose only creativity was life itself.

The dedication continues the theme of the prose Preface. But the scale of the described events changes:

Mountains bend before this grief,

Doesn't flow great river,

But the prison gates are strong,

And behind them are hard labor burrows ...

The first four verses of the poem, as it were, outline the coordinates of time and space. Time is no more, it has stopped (“the great river does not flow”); “The wind is blowing fresh” and “the sunset is basking” - “for someone”, but no longer for us. The rhyme "mountains - burrows" forms a spatial vertical: "involuntary girlfriends" found themselves between heaven ("mountains") and the underworld ("burrows" where they torture their relatives and friends), in earthly hell.

The motif of the "wild capital" and the "rabid years" of the Initiation in the Introduction is embodied in the image of great poetic power and precision:

And dangled with an unnecessary pendant

Near the prisons of their Leningrad.

Here, in the Introduction, a biblical image from the Apocalypse appears, accompanying the heroine throughout her life. way of the cross: "the stars of death stood above us ...", "... and a huge star threatens to die soon", "... the polar star shines."

Numerous variations of similar motifs, characteristic of the Requiem, are reminiscent of musical leitmotifs. In the Dedication and the Introduction, the main motifs and images that will develop further in the poem are outlined.

In Akhmatova's notebooks there are words that characterize the special music of this work: "... a mourning Requiem, the only accompaniment of which can only be Silence and sharp distant strikes of a funeral bell." But the Silence of the poem is filled with sounds: the hateful rattle of the keys, the parting song of the locomotive whistles, the crying of children, the howling of women, the rumble of black marus ("marusi", "raven", "funnel" - as the people called cars for transporting arrested persons), squelching doors and the howl of an old woman ... Through these "hellish" sounds are barely audible, but still audible - the voice of hope, dove cooing, splashing water, censer ringing, hot rustle of summer, words of last consolations. From the underworld (“prison hard labor holes”) - “not a sound - but how many / Innocent lives end there ...” Such an abundance of sounds only enhances the tragic Silence, which explodes only once - in the chapter Crucifixion -.

The choir of angels glorified the great hour,
And the heavens were on fire...

Crucifixion is the semantic and emotional center of the work; for the Mother of Jesus, with whom the lyrical heroine Akhmatova identifies herself, as well as for her son, the "great hour" has come:

Magdalene fought and sobbed,
The beloved student turned to stone,
And to where silently Mother stood,
So no one dared to look.

Magdalene and the beloved disciple, as it were, embody those stages of the Way of the Cross that the Mother has already passed: Magdalene - rebellious suffering, when the lyrical heroine "howled under the Kremlin towers" and "threw at the feet of the executioner", John - the quiet stupor of a man trying to "kill the memory ”, distraught with grief and calling for death.

The terrible ice star that accompanied the heroine disappears in the X chapter - "the heavens melted into fire." The silence of the Mother, whom "so no one dared to look at," is resolved by a lament-requiem, but not only for her son, but for all, "millions killed cheaply, / Who trodden a path in the void" (O.E. Mandelstam). This is her duty now.

The epilogue that closes the poem "switches time" to the present, returning us to the melody and common sense Forewords and Dedications: the image of the prison queue “under the blinded red wall” appears again (in the 1st part).

Again the hour of the funeral approached.
I see, I hear, I feel you.

"Requiem" became a monument in words to Akhmatova's contemporaries - both the dead and the living. She mourned all of them with her "weeping lyre." Akhmatova completes the personal, lyrical theme epic. She gives consent to the celebration of the erection of a monument to herself in this country only on one condition: that it will be a Monument to the Poet near the Prison Wall:

Then, as in blissful death I fear
Forget the rumble of black marus.
Forget how hateful squelched the door
And the old woman howled like a wounded animal.

"Requiem" can be called without exaggeration Akhmatova's poetic feat, a high example of genuine civic poetry.

Critic B. Sarnov called Akhmatova's human and poetic position "manly stoicism." Her fate is an example of a humble and grateful acceptance of life, with all its joys and sorrows. Akhmatova's "royal word" harmoniously connected the local with the unearthly:

And the voice of eternity is calling
With irresistible unearthly,
And over the cherry blossoms
The radiance of the light moon pours.
And it seems so easy
Whitening in the thicket of emerald,
Road, I won't tell you where...
There among the trunks is even lighter,
And everything looks like an alley
At the Tsarskoye Selo pond.

Federal Agency for Education

State educational institution

higher vocational 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

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Conclusion

Literature


Introduction

I know a woman: silence,

Fatigue bitter from words

Lives in a mysterious shimmer

Her dilated pupils.

Her soul is open greedily

Only the measured music of the verse,

Before a distant and gratifying life

Arrogant and deaf.

Inaudible and unhurried,

Her step is so strangely smooth

You can't call her beautiful.

But in it all my happiness. …

I.S. Gumilyov "She"

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is one of the best poets of the Silver Age. But her talent was not fully revealed at the time. The best (as I believe) her work - "Requiem" - was not brought to the reader, like many works of "poets of truth", describing injustices on the part of the authorities and therefore forbidden by it. “The Requiem is one of them, as it describes the repressions of the 1930s. You can study history from the chronicles, but in order to feel it, to understand the feelings, 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 then its lines are not dry, like paper, but filled with feelings, experiences that the author shared with them. And, reading Akhmatova's Requiem, one can feel that time, go through her grief together with the heroine and understand the grief of the people.

It is not for nothing that scientists, studying any historical period, refer 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 the Requiem was written, and to better understand the work itself, it is necessary 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., etc. 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 tasks 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 in chapter 3 its inner world and the significance of the external construction are considered. The fourth chapter reveals the issue of the Requiem genre. The "Conclusion" formulates the main conclusions of the abstract and 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 understanding the essence of this genre, it is impossible to understand the relationship between the title and the work itself. The genre of the requiem is by its nature a musical genre, therefore, for its definition and characteristics, we turn to the musical encyclopedia.

Requiem (from the first word Latin text"Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine" - "Give them eternal rest, Lord") - a funeral mass dedicated to the memory of the dead. 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 Gifts", "Lux aeterna" - "Eternal Light", etc.). The very purpose and content of the requiem determines its mournful and tragic character.

Like the mass, the original requiem consisted of melodies of Gregorian chant, sung in unison; however, there were various local traditions in the choice of melody. Already in the 15th century. many-voiced 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. Dufan (first half of the 15th century), has not been preserved. The requiem of this type that has come down to us belongs to the composer of the second Franco-Flemish school, I. Okegem (second half of the 15th century). written for choir a capella in the tradition of a strict polyphonic style, it also contains "Credo" - a part that fell out 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, in the era of the birth and development of opera and the establishment of a homophonic-harmonious style, the requiem turned into a major cyclical work for choir, soloists and orchestra. The canonized melodies of the Gregorian chant ceased to be its intonational basis, and all its music began to be composed by the composer. Under the dominance of a homophonic-harmonious warehouse, polyphony retained its significance, but in a new quality, entering into a harmonious relationship.

Being textually associated with the Catholic Church memorial service, the requiem in its most outstanding samples has acquired a non-cult significance and, as a rule, sounds 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 last work of the composer, completed by his student F. Süssmeier. In Mozart's Requiem, deep world human experiences with a predominance of mournful lyrics.

Many composers of the 19th century turned to the requiem genre. The most outstanding and 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 in Orthodox tradition- crying. Akhmatova played the role of a weeper in Russian poetry. Appearing as a kind of "Yaroslavna of the 20th century", she mourned in verse her generation - scattered all over the world, crushed and shot. She mourned the tragic fate of her contemporaries - the death of N.S. Gumilyov, death of A.A. Blok, M.A. Bulgakov, M.M. Zoshchenko, B.L. Pasternak. For half a century, Akhmatova responded to the troubles common to the country, with the voice of a mourner she poured out nationwide suffering. In a series of lamentations, the "Requiem", the funeral of the martyrs of Stalin's prisons and camps, occupies a central place.

But one considered question 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 this a poem?

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

History of "Requiem"

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

A.A. Akhmatova

“”Requiem” is a poem by A.A. Akhmatova. A work dedicated to the victims of the Stalinist 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 that it was being published without the knowledge and consent of the author.

Although Anna Akhmatova was elevated to the rank of a classic of Russian literature after her death, “her collections and collections of poems came out for a long time without a 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 of the poem from its very birth.

From Akhmatova’s diary: “In early 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 inserts into both first parts. ... April 8, 1943. Tashkent".

But, having been born suddenly and easily, the poem will go a long and hard way before the reader can get to know her. “In the 30s and 40s. Akhmatova could not even write down these verses on paper (for which one could pay with her life) and trusted their memory only to her closest people. But A. Shilov recalls that back in 1940, in the collection “From Six Books” and in the magazine “Zvezda” (No. only son:

And the stone word fell

On my still living chest.

Nothing, because I was ready

I'll deal with it somehow.

I have a lot to do today:

We must kill the memory to the end,

It is necessary that the soul turned to stone,

We must learn to live again.

But not that ... The hot rustle of summer,

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 poignant lines about her mother's grief and about the nation's misfortune, Akhmatova removed the title of the poem in the book version, and in a magazine publication put a deliberately incorrect date of its creation (1934). And the poem, which was, “as we found out much later,” writes Shilov, the culmination of the Requiem prison cycle, 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 poetry collections).

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” .

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

The death stars shone above us

And innocent Rus' writhed

Under the bloody boots

And under the tires of the black "Marus".

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 one or another fragment on a piece of paper in order to introduce one of her closest and most reliable friends to it. Akhmatova did not dare to pronounce such lines aloud: she felt that "the walls had ears." After the silent interlocutor memorized them, the manuscript was put on fire. In one of the poems, we can read how she herself tells about this mournful rite:

... I am not a mother to poetry -

She was a stepmother.

Oh, white paper

The lines are even!

How many times have I looked

How they burn.

Gossip mutilated,

Bats with a flail,

labeled, labeled

Hard labor 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 bore the poem under her heart, putting feelings, pain, experiences, losses into it ... I. Erokhina, in her article on the Requiem, recalls the fact that “almost 20 years later, by 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 neither of them has a preface.” And at the same time, the author of the article notes that Requiem was then still conceived precisely as a cycle of 14 poems; "Epilogue" was only the name of one of them, and not the structural and semantic part of the whole: in one of the plans of the cycle, this poem goes at number 12, followed by "Crucifixion" and "Sentence". Yermolova 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 funeral date, "again the hour of the memorial approached").

So, for almost two decades, lyrical fragments arose that seemed to have little connection with each other. Until March 1960, the plot interconnection of these "excerpts" was not realized. And only when Akhmatova wrote the Prologue ("Initiation" and "Introduction") and the two-part Epilogue, "Requiem" was formally completed. The main body of texts of the Requiem (prologue; 10 separate fragments, partially titled, and an epilogue) was created from the autumn of 1935 to the spring of 1940. Even later, during the period of the “thaw”, when, apparently, the hope for the publication of the work flickered (in reality it did not take place), important additions were written to the main text: “Instead of a preface” (April 1, 1957) and 4 lines of the epigraph (1961 .) .

External structure and inner world of "Requiem"

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

I. Brodsky

The history of the creation of the work is undoubtedly important for the study of the poem itself, since it is closely connected with the life of Akhmatova. "Requiem" repeats a certain fragment of life in miniature, meaning the main events. This can be seen by comparing the biography of the poet and the work. Here is 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 cover when reading a poem, are achieved by the effect of a combination of many artistic means. "We hear different voices all the time," says Brodsky about the "Requiem," either just a woman, or suddenly a poetess, or Maria in front of us. Here is a "woman's" voice that came from the sorrowful ...

Literally, it creates an image. The reverse of hyperbole is an understatement (litote). An example of hyperbole: A guy can barely fit in a chair. One fist four kilos. Mayakovsky. The main idea of ​​the poem "Requiem" is an expression of 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 a poem, are achieved by the effect of a combination ...

Silently Mother stood, So no one dared to look. Three ancient traditions - folk-song, poetic (it is not for nothing that Pushkin's words are quoted: "convict holes") and Christian help the lyrical heroine of the "Requiem" to withstand an unheard-of test. "Requiem" ends with the overcoming of dumbness 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 a lot of questions, bewilderments and uncertainties, it immediately became clear: "A Poem without a Hero" is a radical experience in transforming the genre of the poem, with which it is perhaps difficult to compare anything in Russian poetry over the past century. It was obvious that for such a fundamentally new text it was necessary to develop and ...

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova informed the reader about the idea of ​​"Requiem" in the preface before the beginning of the poem: "During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. lips, who, of course, had never heard my name in her life, woke up from the stupor characteristic of all of us and asked in my ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper):

Can you describe this? And I said

Then something like a smile flickered across what had once been her face."

On October 22, 1935, Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov, a student of the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University - the son of Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov - was arrested and thrown into prison as "a member of an anti-Soviet terrorist group." Akhmatova managed to break her son out of prison rather quickly, for which she had to turn to Stalin himself with a letter. In November, Lev Gumilyov was released from custody.

Akhmatova considered the arrests of 1935 and 1938 as the revenge of the authorities for the fact that Lev was the son of N. S. Gumilyov.

The second time Gumilyov was arrested in March 1938 and sentenced to ten years in the camps (later reduced to 5 years). In 1949, he was arrested for the third time, sentenced to death, but replaced with exile.

According to A. Akhmatova, the arrest of 1949 was the result of the notorious decision of the Central Committee of 1946. Lev Nikolaevich was in the camp because of her.

In 1956 and 1975, L. N. Gumilyov was completely rehabilitated (on the charges of 1938 and 1949). Finally, the Chief Military Prosecutor's Office established "that LN Gumilyov was convicted unreasonably."

In 1916, Marina Tsvetaeva creates a striking poem, where she foresees tragic fate son (he was then only four years old) of great Russian poets:

The child's name is Leo

Mother - Anna.

His name is anger

In the mother - silence.

……………………

red lion cub

With green eyes

A terrible legacy for you to carry!

Northern Ocean and Southern

And a string of pearls

Black rosary - in your handful!

What Anna Andreevna experienced during these years was reflected not only in the "Requiem", but also in the "Poem without a Hero", in the cycle "Shards" and in a number of lyric poems written in different years:

To me, devoid of fire and water,

Separated from her only son...

…………………………………………

So the furious debater argued

to the Yenisei plains,

To you he is a vagabond, shuang, a conspirator,

He is my only son...

("Shards")

It would be wrong to reduce the content of the poem "Requiem" exclusively to family tragedy. "Requiem" is the embodiment of a folk tragedy, it is a cry of pain of a "hundred-million people" who have fallen to live in a terrible time

When I smiled

Only the dead, happy with peace.

And dangled with an unnecessary pendant

Near the prisons of their Leningrad.

And when, mad with torment,

There were already condemned regiments,

And a short parting song

Locomotive whistles sang,

The death stars were above us

And innocent Rus' writhed

Under the bloody boots

And under the tires of black marus.

The first drafts of "Requiem" date back to 1934. At first, Akhmatova planned to create a lyrical cycle, which after a while was renamed into a poem. She worked most fruitfully on the poem in 1938-1940, and returned to it later, in the 1960s.

In the 1960s, "Requiem" was widely distributed among readers in "samizdat" lists. In the 1940s and 1950s, Anna Andreevna burned the manuscripts of the "Requiem" after she read poems to people she trusted. The poem existed only in the memory of the closest persons who memorized stanzas from it by heart.

In 1963, one of the lists of the poem went abroad, where it was first published in full (Munich edition 1963). An essay by the famous prose writer B.K. Zaitsev, published in the newspaper Russkaya Mysl, tells about the reaction of the Russian diaspora to the Requiem: “The other day I received a book of poems from Munich, 23 pages, called Requiem ... These poems by Akhmatova - a poem, of course. (All poems are connected with each other. The impression of one whole thing.) It came here from Russia, it is printed "without the knowledge and consent of the author" - it is stated on the 4th page, before the portrait. Foreign Writers"(the lists are" man-made ", probably, like Pasternak's writings, in Russia as you like) ...

Yes, this graceful lady from the Stray Dog had to drink a cup, perhaps bitterer than all of us, in these truly "Cursed Days" (Bunin) ... I saw Akhmatova as a "Tsarskoye Selo merry sinner" and "mockery", but Fate brought her an estimate of the Crucifixion. Could it have been imagined then, in this Stray Dog, that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - feminine, maternal, a cry not only about herself, but also about all those who suffer - wives, mothers, brides, in general about all those who are crucified?

Where did male power verse, its simplicity, the thunder of words, as if ordinary, but buzzing with a death bell ringing, breaking the human heart and admirable artistic? Truly, "volumes are much heavier." Written twenty years ago. The silent verdict on atrocities will forever remain." (Paris, 1964)

"The greatness of these 23 pages" finally approved for Anna Andreevna Akhmatova the title of a truly national poet of Russia. The epigraph, taken from a 1961 poem: "I was then with my people // Where my people, unfortunately, were" - more than clearly explains both the idea of ​​the poem and its main idea.

"Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova is our national memory of the mournful, black years of Russia, when our people went through the crucible of inhuman trials. This is a call to us, living now, and future generations to remember.

The history of the creation of A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem"

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova had to go through a lot. The terrible years that changed the whole country could not but affect its fate. The poem "Requiem" was a testament to everything that the poetess had to face.

The inner world of the poet is so amazing and subtle that absolutely all experiences to one degree or another exert their influence on him. A real poet cannot ignore a single detail or phenomenon of the surrounding life. Everything is reflected in poetry: both good and tragic. The poem "Requiem" makes you think about the fate of the brilliant poetess, who had to face a terrible catastrophe.

Anna Akhmatova herself was not a direct victim of the repressions of the second half of the 1930s. However, her son and husband were repeatedly arrested and held long years in prisons and camps (Akhmatova's husband died there). Akhmatova captured these terrible years in Requiem. The poem is really a requiem for those who died in the waves of Stalinist terror. The poetess precedes her with a prosaic introduction, where she recalls the long standing in the Leningrad prison lines.

“Then the woman standing behind me asked me in my ear (there everyone spoke in a whisper):

Can you describe this? And I said: - I can.

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

So, the poem was based on the facts of a personal biography: on October 22, 1935, the son of Anna Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilyov, Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov, was arrested. A student of the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University, he was thrown into prison as a "participant in an anti-Soviet terrorist group." This time, Akhmatova managed to break her son out of prison rather quickly: already in November he was released from custody. To do this, she had to write a letter to Stalin.

The second time, L. N. Gumilyov was arrested in March 1938 and sentenced to ten years in the camps, later the term was reduced to 5 years. In 1949, Leo was arrested for the third time, sentenced to death, which was later replaced by exile.

Vina L.N. Gumilyov has never been proven. In 1956 and 1975 he was fully rehabilitated (on the charges of 1938 and 1949), it was finally “established that L.N. Gumilyov was convicted unreasonably.” Anna Andreevna considered the arrests of 1935 and 1938 as the revenge of the authorities for the fact that Lev was the son of N.S. Gumilyov. The arrest of 1949, according to A. Akhmatova, was the result of the infamous decision of the Central Committee of 1946, now her son was sitting because of her.

Anna's experience during these years was reflected not only in the "Requiem", but also in the "Poem without a Hero", and in the cycle "Shards", and in a number of lyrical poems of different years.

However, it would be wrong to reduce the content of the poem "Requiem" only to a family tragedy. "Requiem" is the embodiment of people's grief, people's tragedy, it is the cry of "a hundred million people" who had to live at that time. Anna Akhmatova felt indebted to those with whom she stood in the prison queues, with whom she "got into trouble together" and "was lying at the feet of the bloody executioner's doll."

Almost the entire "Requiem" was written in 1935 - 1940, section "Instead of a Preface" and " Epigraph" marked 1957 and 1961. At first it was conceived as a lyrical cycle and only later was it renamed into a poem. The first sketches date back to 1934; Anna Akhmatova worked most intensively on the poem in 1938-1940. But the theme did not let her go, and in the 60s Akhmatova continued to add separate stanzas to the poem.

During the life of A.A. Akhmatova in our country, "Requiem" was not published, although in the 60s it was widely distributed among readers in "samizdat" lists.

In the 1940s and 1950s, Anna Andreevna burned the manuscripts of the "Requiem" after she read poems to people she trusted. The poem existed only in the memory of the closest, trusted persons, who memorized the stanzas by heart.

In 1963, one of the lists of the poem went abroad ... there for the first time the "Requiem" was published in full (Munich edition of 1963).

The poem "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova is based on personal tragedy poetesses. An analysis of the work shows that it was written under the influence of the experience during the period when Akhmatova, standing in the prison queues, tried to find out about the fate of her son Lev Gumilyov. And he was arrested three times by the authorities during the terrible years of repression.

The poem was written in different time since 1935. For a long time this work was kept in the memory of A. Akhmatova, she read it only to friends. And in 1950, the poetess decided to write it down, but it was published only in 1988.

According to the genre, "Requiem" was conceived as a lyrical cycle, and later it was already called a poem.

The composition of the work is complex. It consists of the following parts: "Epigraph", "Instead of a preface", "Dedication", "Introduction", ten chapters. Separate chapters have the title: "Sentence" (VII), "To death" (VIII), "Crucifixion" (X) and "Epilogue".

The poem speaks on behalf of lyrical hero. This is the "double" of the poetess, the author's method of expressing thoughts and feelings.

The main idea of ​​the work is an expression of the scale of national grief. Epigraph A. Akhmatova takes a quote from her own poem “So it’s not in vain that we were in trouble together”. The words of the epigraph express the nationality of the tragedy, the involvement of each person in it. And further in the poem this theme continues, but its scale reaches enormous proportions.

Anna Akhmatova, to create a tragic effect, uses almost all poetic meters, different rhythms, as well as different amount stop in lines. This personal technique of hers helps to sharply feel the events of the poem.

The author uses various tropes that help to comprehend the experiences of people. These are epithets: Rus' "innocent", yearning "deadly", capital "wild", sweat "mortal", suffering "petrified", curls "silver". Lots of metaphors: "faces fall off", "weeks fly by", “Mountains bend before this grief”, "The locomotive whistles sang the song of parting". There are also antitheses: "who is the beast, who is the man", "And a stone heart fell on my still living chest". There are comparisons: "And the old woman howled like a wounded beast".

There are also symbols in the poem: the very image of Leningrad is an observer of grief, the image of Jesus and Magdalene is an identification with the suffering of all mothers.

After analyzing the "Requiem", check out other works:

  • "Courage", analysis of Akhmatova's poem
  • “She squeezed her hands under a dark veil ...”, analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
  • "The Gray-Eyed King", analysis of Akhmatova's poem
  • "Twenty first. Night. Monday", analysis of Akhmatova's poem
  • "Garden", analysis of the poem by Anna Akhmatova