BIOGRAPHY:

One of the brightest, most original and talented poets of the Silver Age, Anna Akhmatova, lived a long life full of tragic events. This proud and at the same time fragile woman witnessed two revolutions and two world wars. Her soul was seared by repression and the death of her closest people. Akhmatova’s biography is worthy of a novel or film adaptation, which was repeatedly undertaken by both her contemporaries and playwrights, directors and writers of a later generation.

Childhood and youth:

Anna Gorenko (real name of the poetess) was born in the summer of 1889 in the family of a hereditary nobleman, retired naval mechanical engineer Andrei Andreevich Gorenko and Inna Erazmovna Stogova, who belonged to the creative elite of Odessa. The girl was born in the southern part of the city, in a house located in the Bolshoi Fontan area. She turned out to be the third oldest of six children.

As soon as the baby was one year old, the parents moved to St. Petersburg, where the head of the family received the rank of collegiate assessor and became an official for special assignments in the State Control. The family settled in Tsarskoe Selo, with which all Akhmatova’s childhood memories are connected. The nanny took the girl for a walk to Tsarskoye Selo Park and other places that still remembered Alexander Pushkin. Children were taught social etiquette. Anya learned to read from Leo Tolstoy’s alphabet, and mastered the French language in early childhood, listening to the teacher teach it to older children.

The future poetess received her education at the Mariinsky Women’s Gymnasium. Anna began writing poetry, according to her, at the age of 11. It is noteworthy that she discovered poetry not with the works of Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov, whom she fell in love with a little later, but with the majestic odes of Gabriel Derzhavin and the poem “Frost, Red Nose” by Nikolai Nekrasov, which her mother recited.

Young Gorenko fell in love with St. Petersburg forever and considered it the main city of her life. She really missed its streets, parks and Neva when she had to leave with her mother for Evpatoria, and then for Kyiv. Her parents divorced when the girl turned 16.

She completed her penultimate grade at home, in Evpatoria, and finished her last grade at the Kyiv Fundukleevskaya gymnasium. After completing her studies, Gorenko became a student at the Higher Courses for Women, choosing the Faculty of Law. But if Latin and the history of law aroused a keen interest in her, then jurisprudence seemed boring to the point of yawning, so the girl continued her education in her beloved St. Petersburg, at N.P. Raev’s historical and literary women’s courses.

Early creativity:

No one in the Gorenko family studied poetry, “as far as the eye can see.” Only through Inna Stogova’s mother’s side was a distant relative, Anna Bunina, a translator and poetess. The father did not approve of his daughter’s passion for poetry and asked her not to disgrace his family name. Therefore, Anna Akhmatova never signed her poems with her real name. In the family tree, she found her Tatar great-grandmother, who supposedly descended from the Horde Khan Akhmat, and thus turned into Akhmatova.

After her wedding to Nikolai Gumilyov, Anna Andreevna went to Paris to celebrate her honeymoon. This was Akhmatova’s first meeting with Europe. Upon his return, the husband introduced his talented wife into the literary and artistic circles of St. Petersburg, and she was immediately noticed. At first everyone was struck by her unusual, majestic beauty and regal posture. Dark-skinned, with a distinct hump on her nose, the “Horde” appearance of Anna Akhmatova captivated literary bohemia.

Soon, St. Petersburg writers found themselves captivated by the creativity of the original beauty. Anna Andreevna wrote poems about love, and it was this great feeling that she sang all her life, writing during the crisis of symbolism. Young poets tried themselves in other trends that had come into fashion – futurism and acmeism. Gumileva-Akhmatova gained fame as an Acmeist.

1912 was the year of a breakthrough in her biography. In this memorable year, not only was the poetess’s only son, Lev Gumilyov, born, but also the first collection entitled “Evening” was published in a small edition. In her declining years, a woman who experienced all the hardships of the time in which she had to be born and create, called these first creations “the poor poems of an empty girl.” But then Akhmatova’s works found her first admirers and brought her fame.

Anna Andreevna’s poetry was influenced by the mentorship of Alexander Blok. The authors exchanged letters and rarely met in person, but always in front of strangers. Therefore, the romance that was attributed to them was out of the question. The poetess deeply respected her teacher and considered her a brilliant representative of the pre-revolutionary generation. She dedicated 6 poems to him.

Another talented person with whom Akhmatova met in her youth was Amedeo Modigliani, at that time still a poor artist. He painted several portraits and sketches of Anna Andreevna. Most of the drawings were lost in the fire of her Tsarskoye Selo house; the poetess kept only one until her death. He, like rare photographs of the author, later appeared on the covers of her collections.

2 years after the first, Akhmatova’s second collection, called “The Rosary,” was published, and it was already a real triumph. Fans and critics spoke enthusiastically about her work, elevating her to the rank of the most fashionable poetess of her time. Akhmatova no longer needed her husband’s protection. Her name sounded even louder than Gumilyov’s name.

In the revolutionary year of 1917, Anna Andreevna published her third book, “The White Flock.” It was published in an impressive circulation of 2 thousand copies.

In the turbulent year of 1918, the creative couple separated. And in the summer of 1921, Nikolai Gumilyov was shot. Akhmatova was grieving the death of her son’s father and the man who introduced her to the world of poetry.

In the USSR in the mid-1920s, difficult times came for the poetess. She came under the close attention of the NKVD, they stopped publishing her, Akhmatova wrote poems on the table, many of them were lost when moving. The last collection was published in 1924. “Provocative”, “decadent”, “anti-communist” poems – such a stigma on creativity cost Anna Andreevna dearly.

Akhmatova received warm support and admiration from her colleagues. Among them were Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva, who were much more enthusiastic about her work than she was about their works. By the way, both authors died before Anna Andreevna, whose life, although tragic, was long.

The new stage of creativity was closely connected with soul-exhausting worries for loved ones – first of all, for his son Levushka. In the late autumn of 1935, the first alarm bell rang for the woman: her second husband Nikolai Punin and son were arrested at the same time. They were released a few days later, but there was no more peace in the life of the poetess. From that moment on, Akhmatova began to feel the ring of repression tightening around her.

Three years later, my son was arrested. He was sentenced to 5 years in forced labor camps. The exhausted mother carried parcels for Lev. In the same terrible year of 1938, the marriage of Anna Andreevna and Nikolai Punin ended.

To make life easier for her son and get him out of the camps, the poetess, just before the war, in 1940, published the collection “From Six Books.” Here were collected old censored poems and new ones, “correct” from the point of view of the ruling ideology. That same year, the famous autobiographical poem “Requiem,” on which Akhmatova had been working since 1934, was completed.

Anna Andreevna met the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War in the city on the Neva, and was later evacuated to Tashkent. Immediately after the victory, she returned to liberated and destroyed Leningrad, from there she soon moved to Moscow.

But the clouds that had barely parted overhead (the son was released from the camps) soon thickened again. In 1946, her work was destroyed at the next meeting of the Writers’ Union, and in 1949, Lev Gumilyov was arrested again. This time he was sentenced to 10 years. The unfortunate woman was broken. She wrote requests and letters of repentance to the Politburo, but received no response.

After Lev’s release from yet another imprisonment, the relationship between mother and son remained tense for many years: he believed that Akhmatova put poetry in first place, which she loved more than him.

The fate of the famous but deeply unhappy woman changed for the better only at the end of her life. In 1951, she was reinstated in the Writers’ Union, and her poems began to be published again. In the mid-1960s, Anna Andreevna received a prestigious Italian prize and published the collection “The Running of Time.” Oxford University also awarded the famous poetess a doctorate.

By that time, Akhmatova herself had become a mentor for aspiring authors. So, she was the person who saw a unique natural gift in Joseph Brodsky. Their meeting took place in 1961, when the latter was only 21 years old.

At the end of his years, the world-famous poet and writer finally had his own home. The Leningrad Literary Fund gave her a modest wooden dacha in Komarovo – a tiny house that consisted of a veranda, a corridor and one room. All the furniture was a hard bed with bricks instead of a leg, a table made from a door, a Modigliani drawing on the wall and an old icon that once belonged to the first husband.

Personal life:

Anna Akhmatova had amazing power over men. In her youth, the poetess was fantastically flexible. They say she could easily bend over backwards, her head touching the floor. Even the Mariinsky ballerinas were amazed by this incredible natural movement. She also had amazing eyes that changed color. Some said that Akhmatova’s eyes were gray, others claimed that they were green, and still others claimed that they were sky blue.

Marriage to Nikolai Gumilyov:

In her early youth, when the girl was studying at the Mariinsky Gymnasium, she met a talented young man, later the famous poet Nikolai Gumilyov.

Gumilev fell in love with Anna Gorenko at first sight. But the girl was crazy about Vladimir Golenishchev-Kutuzov, a student who did not pay any attention to her. The young schoolgirl suffered and even tried to hang herself with a nail. Luckily, he slipped out of the clay wall.

In Evpatoria and Kyiv, the girl corresponded with Gumilyov, the communication captured her and distracted her from the heartfelt drama. In the spring of 1910, the lovers decided to get married. They got married in the St. Nicholas Church, which still stands today in the village of Nikolskaya Slobodka near Kiev. At that time, Nikolai Stepanovich was already an accomplished poet, famous in literary circles.

After the wedding, the poetess wrote the poem “The Gray-Eyed King.” It is unknown to whom it is dedicated, but literary scholars considered that the work expressed the collapse of girlish dreams in connection with marriage, believing that the author did not love her husband.

The first husband carried his love for Anna Andreevna throughout his short life, but at the same time, in addition to his common son Lev with Akhmatova, he had an illegitimate child, about whom everyone knew. In addition, Nikolai Gumilyov did not understand why his beloved wife, in his opinion, was not at all a brilliant poetess, evoked such delight and even exaltation among young people. Anna Akhmatova’s poems about love seemed too long and pompous to him. Eventually they broke up.

Other men in Akhmatova’s life:

It seems that Inna Erasmovna’s daughter inherited her mother’s failures. Marriage to none of the three official husbands did not bring happiness to the poetess. Anna Akhmatova’s personal life was chaotic and somehow disheveled: they cheated on her, she cheated on her.

After breaking up with Gumilyov, Anna Andreevna had no end to fans. Count Valentin Zubov gave her armfuls of expensive roses and was in awe of her mere presence, but the beauty gave preference to Nikolai Nedobrovo. However, he was soon replaced by Boris Anrepa.

Her second marriage to Vladimir Shileiko exhausted Anna so much that she said:

A year after the death of her first husband, she separated from her second. And six months later she got married for the third time. Nikolai Punin was an art critic. But Anna Akhmatova’s family life did not work out for him either.

Deputy People’s Commissar of Education Anatoly Lunacharsky Punin, who sheltered the homeless Akhmatova after a divorce, also did not make her happy. The new wife lived in an apartment with Punin’s ex-wife and his daughter, donating money for food into a common pot. Son Lev, who came from his grandmother, was placed in a cold corridor at night and felt like an orphan, always deprived of attention.

Anna Akhmatova’s fate could have changed after meeting with pathologist Vladimir Garshin, but just before the wedding, he allegedly dreamed of his late mother, who begged him not to take a witch into the house. The wedding was cancelled.

Death:

The death of Anna Akhmatova on March 5, 1966 seemed to shock everyone, although she was already 76 years old at that time, and she had been ill for a long time and seriously. The poetess died in a sanatorium near Moscow in Domodedovo, the cause of death was named heart failure. On the eve of her death, she asked to bring her the New Testament, the texts of which she wanted to compare with the texts of the Qumran manuscripts.

They rushed to transport Akhmatova’s body from Moscow to Leningrad: the authorities did not want dissident unrest. The poetess was buried at the Komarovskoye cemetery. Before their death, the son and mother were never able to reconcile: they did not communicate for several years.

At his mother’s grave, Lev Gumilyov laid out a stone wall with a window, which was supposed to symbolize the wall in the “Crosses”, where she carried parcels for him. At first there was a wooden cross on the grave, as Anna Andreevna requested, but in 1969 a stone one appeared.

Memory Akhmatova’s work touched many hearts, and after her death, the memory of Anna Andreevna was imprinted not only in books. Monuments and plaques were erected in different cities of Russia; streets, courts, parks and libraries were named after her.

The Akhmatova Museum appeared in St. Petersburg, on Avtovskaya Street. Another one was opened in the Fountain House, where she lived for 30 years. Later, memorial signs and bas-reliefs appeared in Moscow, Tashkent, Kyiv, Odessa and many other cities where the poetess lived.

Bibliography:

1912 – “Evening”
1914 — “Rosary”
1922 – “White Flock”
1921 – “Plantain”
1923 – Anno Domini MCMXXI
1940 – “From six books”
1943 – “Anna Akhmatova. Favorites”
1958 – “Anna Akhmatova. Poems”
1963 – Requiem
1965 — “The Running of Time”

Interesting Facts:

It was a shock for Akhmatova that her younger sister Rika (Irina) died of tuberculosis as a child. And although the parents tried to hide the tragedy from the other children, Anna understood what had happened. As a girl, she thought that the same fate would befall her, but she fell ill with tuberculosis only in adulthood and managed to overcome the disease.
The poetess was twice nominated for the Nobel Prize; this became known only 50 years later. According to the rules, the names of the nominees are kept secret for just that long.
Anna Andreevna kept diaries throughout her life; they became public knowledge only after her death.