Requiem Comments

This poem and all the others have a power that no other poet can even approach. They are the most moving poems that have ever been written. If they don't bring tears to your eyes you are already dead.

Why is there no translator credited?

deeply touchy, depicting the afflictions of the common man

Very moving, deeply sad

Akhmatova's poetry could be known for the simplest description depicting the complicated concepts :)

Very good poem to read.

...is the translator? It matters.

Although it was composed in large part prior to 1940, Akhmatova considered Requiem too dangerous to be written down, much less published, at the time, so until the mid-1960s it remained unpublished, and existed only as individual verses memorized by the poet and a handful of her most trusted confidants.

'' Requiem is a cycle of fifteen short poems introduced with a paragraph of prose that, taken as a whole, constitutes an epic of grief and remembrance. Although the work possesses no conventionally defined plot, the ten internal numbered poems form a chronological revelation that documents the suffering of the Russian people during the years of Stalinist terror. Through the eyes of the women—who stood outside prisons for days, hoping for word about their loved ones, hoping to deliver a hat or a pair of salvaged gloves or shoes, hoping for one last glimpse before the inevitable sentence of death or exile for a beloved son or husband—Akhmatova plumbs the depths of unimaginable suffering, and charts the journey of mourning and memorial. The poem opens with a declaration of the pain of one woman, an individual circumstance but recognizable to all who lived through the era. With each successive poem, the central figure experiences a new stage of suffering: mute grief, growing disbelief, rationalization, raw mourning, steely resolve. Sometimes writing in the first person, sometimes in the third person, Akhmatova becomes the voice of the people as she universalizes her personal pain over the repeated imprisonment of her son and the loss of friends and literary peers to execution and exile. Throughout much of the cycle the suffering Russian woman, one yet universal, is the central figure. At the climax of the cycle of grief, however, three figures of Christian religious significance appear: Mary Magdalene, Mary the Mother of Christ, and John, the beloved disciple. Critics hold various opinions about why Akhmatova incorporated these personages who are closely associated with Catholic religious beliefs, and about whom significant people in the poet's life each figure represents. Within the work as a whole, however, these religious figures, placed outside the context of their New Testament roles, reinforce the poet's subtext of the inevitability of suffering. Akhmatova allows the central figure to transcend her personal circumstances in an almost mystical, supernatural way—not to mitigate her pain or allow her a measure of peace, but to dignify and honor the ability of this woman, and all women, to confront their deepest grief and fear and survive. In Requiem, writes Amanda Haight, Akhmatova “has taken suffering to its limit and so there is nothing to fear.” '' [Anna Andreyevna Gorenko]

Nikolai Yezhov as head of the NKVD from 1936 instituted a savage purge, akin to the Cultural Revolution in China, involving denunciations and show trials. He was in turn denounced in 1938 by Molotov, executed, and replaced by Beria. People in the Soviet Union came to call the Great Terror: Yezhovshchina (the time of Yezhov) .

a great POEM OF WITNESS - one of the greatest in the XX century poetry

I really like Akhmatova, probably because I found her writing style extremely close to my own! Notice how she moves from the personal to the universal and then concludes on an intense note of personal suffering. Interestingly, she adopts a conventional rhyme scheme while speaking about the suffering of the other women who waited with her outside prison and also about national suffering and trauma, perhaps suggesting the inevitability of the crisis and also creating a relationship between the general and the personal that is what every individual woman faces is not unique to her but is shared with numerous other women-it is a recurrent story. Further universalisation is achieved by evoking traditional peronas from Christianity such as Mary seeking salvation and also to create a contrast between idealized peace and happiness and the brutality that Russia was faced with during Stalinist terror. What also appealed to me was a certain solemnity and sobriety that entered the sections that were distinctively personal, which emphasized that while suffering is common, everystory is unique.