Россия и Запад

Akhmatova reached full poetic maturity in the awful years of the Russian Civil War, especially at the end, when her estranged husband, the poet Nikolai Gumilev, was shot August 1921 as a White counterrevolutionary. In one of her greatest books, «A

In contrast to Mayakovsky’s irreverent, aggressive Christ, Akhmatova describes the Russian saints emerging from their icon covers and returning to their village homes:

The figure of the Mother of God offers a transition to Akhmatova’s ensuing biblical poems that bring alive three Old Testament women characters: «The Mother of God sees them off, / Wraps her son in a scarf, / An old beggar’s one / Dropped by the Lord’s porch»[342]. In «Lamentation» we see that Akhmatova is already moving from her earlier conscribed role as «poet of the private chamber» into the public sphere[343]. This milestone is best captured in «Lot’s Wife», written 1922–1924, in which Akhmatova foregrounds the wife. Lot’s wife is pictured following her husband and an angel away from Sodom, when she starts to feel anxious:

But uneasiness shadowed his wife and spoke to her:

The poet then speaks up for this minor, almost non-existent, Old Testament figure:

«Lot’s Wife» is often read as an allegory for Akhmatova’s sorrow at the loss of her vanished world of St. Petersburg, in which, as she would put it in Requiem, she was the «merry si

To convey the impression these poems made on the people who heard them at a time, in which Scripture was forced inexorably into oblivion, we recall the words of the great memoirist and friend to both Akhmatova and Pasternak, Lidiya Chukovskaya The Bible, she wrote in her memoirs, was «dead to me — but Akhmatova’s „Biblical Verses“: „Lot’s Wife“… resurrect the Bible [Bibliiu voskreshaiut]»[346]. In contrast, in 1924, when the poems appeared, the not very approving Formalist critic, Iurii Tynianov wrote that in these poems «the Bible, which used to lie on her table, an accessory to the room, has become the source of her imagery»[347]. In his view, Akhmatova’s poetry thereby became tendentious and flat.

Publishing these poems was a bold move on Akhmatova’s part, a gesture of non-acceptance to a regime that increasingly demanded unerring fealty. It was partly this open animation of biblical figures that made Akhmatova suspect in the eyes of the Bolshevik authorities, an act for which she would be condemned to public silence for nearly two decades. After a 1924 resolution of the Central Committee of the Communist Party not to arrest Akhmatova but also not to publish her, Akhmatova «threw herself into reading, or to be more exact, into the study of the Bible, the ancients, Dante, Shakespeare, French and English poets of the 19th century, and contemporary European and American literature»[348]. Out of this long silence and serious study would come an altered Akhmatova, no longer the «nun who crosses herself as she kisses her beloved» but the moral voice of her people and witness to the horrors of her time[349]. Hers became «people’s poetry» without ever becoming officially accepted, and certainly had much greater truth value because it was never officially accepted[350].

Pasternak’s journey to the status of national poet passed by another route — first embracing the revolution, until he began to reflect on the misfortune sown by the new regime. He shot to fame in 1922 with the appearance of his first book of poems, «My Sister Life». Iurii Tynianov, who had disliked Akhmatova’s biblical poems, hailed Pasternak for giving Russians a new «literary thing»; in these poems, Tynianov wrote, a «downpour starts to be verse» and the «thing comes alive»[351]. Although Pasternak’s would later become a powerful dissenting voice, in part through engaging the perspective offered by the modern Orthodoxy of the Russian religious renaissance and the new biblical themes of Tsvetaeva and Akhmatova, now he was a voice of ecstasy, celebrating the chaotic forces of life.

342

Akhmatova A. The Complete Poems of A

343

Naiman A. A Guest upon the Earth. P. 19.

344

Citations from Akhmatova’s poems see: Ахматова А. Сочинения: В 2 т. М., 1990. This one: Т. 1. С. 147–148.

345

See: Ivanova N. Peresekaiuschiesia paralleli. Boris Pasternak i A

346

Чуковская Л. Записки об Анне Ахматовой. Paris: YMCA-Press, 1980. Т. 2. 1952–1962. С. 391.

347

Тынянов Ю. Промежуток (1924) // Поэтика. История литературы. Кино. М.: Наука, 1977. С. 175.

348

Naiman A. A Guest upon the Earth. P. 17.

349

Reeder R. Introduction // The Complete Poems of A

350

Naiman A. A Guest upon the Earth. P. 19.

351

Тынянов Ю. Промежуток. С. 183.