Akhmatova's Requiem, what date does the chapter indicate? Research work The tragedy of the “hundred-million people” in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem. Genre, size, direction

1.2 Analysis of the poem “Requiem”

The poem is both a lyrical diary, and an emotional eyewitness testimony of the era, and a work of great artistic power, deep in its content. Over the years, a person becomes wiser, perceives the past more acutely, and observes the present with pain. So Akhmatova’s poetry became deeper and deeper over the years, I would say more acute, more vulnerable. The poetess thought a lot about the ways of her generation, and the result of her thoughts is “Requiem.” In a short poem, you can, and should, look closely at every line, experience every poetic image.

First of all, what does the title of the poem say?

The very word “requiem” (in Akhmatova’s notebooks – the Latin Requiem) means “funeral mass” - a Catholic service for the dead, as well as a mournful piece of music. The Latin title of the poem, as well as the fact that in the 1930s - 1940s. Akhmatova seriously studied the life and work of Mozart, especially his “Requiem,” which suggests a connection between Akhmatova’s work and the musical form of the requiem. By the way, Mozart’s “Requiem” has 12 parts, Akhmatova’s poem has the same number (10 chapters + Dedication and Epilogue).

“Epigraph” and “Instead of a Preface” are the original semantic and musical keys of the work. The “epigraph” to the poem was the lines (from the 1961 poem “So it was not in vain that we suffered together ...”), which, in essence, are a recognition of involvement in all the disasters of our native country. Akhmatova honestly admits that her whole life was closely connected with the fate of her native country, even in the most terrible periods:

No, and not under an alien sky,

And not under the protection of alien wings -

I was then with my people,

Where my people, unfortunately, were.

These lines were written much later than the poem itself. They are dated 1961. Already in retrospect, recalling the events of past years, Anna Andreevna again realizes those phenomena that drew a line in people's lives, separating a normal, happy life from a terrible inhuman reality.

The poem “Requiem” is quite short, but what a powerful effect it has on the reader! It is impossible to read this work with indifference; the grief and pain of a person with whom terrible events occurred force one to accurately imagine the entire tragedy of the situation.

“Instead of a Preface” (1957), picking up the theme of “my people,” takes us to “then” - the prison line of Leningrad in the 30s. Akhmatov's Requiem, like Mozart's, was written “to order”; but in the role of “customer” - “a hundred million people”. The lyrical and epic are fused together in the poem: talking about her grief, Akhmatova speaks on behalf of millions of “nameless”; behind her authorial “I” stands the “we” of all those whose only creativity was life itself.

The poem "Requiem" consists of several parts. Each part carries its own emotional and semantic load.

“Dedication” continues the theme of the prosaic “Instead of a Preface.” But the scale of the events described changes:

Mountains bend before this grief,

The great river does not flow

But the prison gates are strong,

And behind them are “convict holes”

And mortal melancholy.

The first four verses of the poem seem to outline the coordinates of time and space. There is no more time, it has stopped (“the great river does not flow”);

“a fresh wind is blowing” and “the sunset is basking” - “for someone,” but no longer for us. The rhyme “mountains - holes” forms a spatial vertical: “involuntary friends” found themselves between heaven (“mountains”) and hell (“holes” where their relatives and friends are tortured), in an earthly hell.

“Dedication” is a description of the feelings and experiences of people who spend all their time in prison queues. The poetess speaks of “deadly melancholy,” of hopelessness, of the absence of even the slightest hope of changing the current situation. People's entire lives now depended on the verdict that would be passed on a loved one. This sentence forever separates the family of the convicted person from normal people. Akhmatova finds amazing figurative means to convey her own and others’ condition:

For someone the 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

Yes, the soldiers' steps are heavy.

There are also echoes of Pushkin-Decembrist motifs, a echo of the obvious bookish tradition. This is more like some kind of poetic declaration about grief, rather than grief itself. But a few more lines - and we are immersed in the immediate feeling of grief - an elusively all-encompassing element. This is grief that has dissolved in everyday life, in everyday life. And from the boring prosaicness of grief, the consciousness of the ineradicability and incurability of this misfortune, which has covered life with a dense veil, grows:

They rose as if to early mass,

They walked through the wild capital,

We met there, more lifeless dead,

The sun is lower and the Neva is foggy,

And hope still sings in the distance.

“Fresh wind”, “sunset” - all this acts as a kind of personification of happiness and freedom, which are now inaccessible to those languishing in prison lines and those behind bars:

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.

Where are the involuntary friends now?

My two crazy years?

What do they imagine in the Siberian blizzard?

What do they see in the lunar circle?

To them I send my farewell greetings.

Only after the heroine conveys “farewell greetings” to the “unwitting friends” of her “obsessed years” does the “Introduction” to the requiem poem begin. The extreme expressiveness of the images, the hopelessness of pain, the sharp and gloomy colors amaze with their stinginess and restraint. Everything is very specific and at the same time as general as possible: it is addressed to everyone, to the country, its people and to the lonely sufferer, to the human individual. The gloomy, cruel picture that appears before the reader’s mind’s eye evokes associations with the Apocalypse - both in terms of the scale of universal suffering and in the sense of the coming “last times”, after which either death or the Last Judgment is possible:

It was when I smiled

Only dead, glad for peace.

And dangled like an unnecessary pendant

Leningrad is near its prisons.

And when, maddened by torment,

The already condemned regiments were marching,

And a short song of parting

The locomotive whistles sang.

The death stars stood above us.

And innocent Rus' writhed

Under bloody boots

And under the tires of “black Marus”.

How sad it is that a most talented person had to face all the hardships of a monstrous totalitarian regime. The great country of Russia allowed itself to be subjected to such mockery, why? All lines of Akhmatova’s work contain this question. And when reading the poem, it becomes harder and harder to think about the tragic fate of innocent people.

The motif of the “wild capital” and “frenzied years” of “Dedication” in the “Introduction” is embodied in an image of great poetic power and precision.

Russia is crushed and destroyed. The poetess with all her heart feels sorry for her native country, which is completely defenseless, and mourns for it. How can you come to terms with what happened? What words to find? Something terrible can happen in a person’s soul, and there is no escape from it.

In Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” there is a constant shift in plans: from the general to the particular and concrete, from the horizon of many, all, to the horizon of one. This achieves a striking effect: both the wide and narrow grip of eerie reality complement each other, interpenetrate, and combine. And as if at all levels of reality there is one incessant nightmare. So, following the initial part of the “Introduction” (“It was when he smiled...”), majestic, looking at the scene of action from some superstellar cosmic height (from which Leningrad is visible - like a giant swinging pendulum;

moving “shelves of convicts”; all of Rus', writhing under the boots of the executioners), is given an almost intimate, family scene. But this makes the picture no less heartbreaking - extremely specific, grounded, filled with signs of everyday life, and psychological details:

They took you away at dawn

I followed you, as if on a takeaway,

Children were crying in the dark room,

The goddess's candle floated.

There are cold icons on your lips,

Death sweat on the brow... Don't forget! –

I will be like the Streltsy wives,

Howl under the Kremlin towers.

These lines contain enormous human grief. It went “as if it were being taken out” - this is a reminder of the funeral. The coffin is taken out of the house, followed by close relatives. Crying children, a melted candle - all these details are a kind of addition to the painted picture.

The interwoven historical associations and their artistic analogues (“Khovanshchina” by Mussorgsky, Surikov’s painting “The Morning of the Streltsy Execution”, A. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter 1”) are quite natural here: from the late 20s to the late 30s, Stalin was flattered by the comparison of his tyrannical rule since the time of Peter the Great, who eradicated barbarism by barbaric means. The cruelest, merciless suppression of opposition to Peter (the Streltsy riot) was transparently associated with the initial stage of Stalin’s repressions: in 1935 (the “Introduction” to the poem dates from this year) the first, “Kirov” flow into the Gulag began; rampant Yezhov meat grinder 1937 - 1938 was still ahead... Akhmatova commented on this place in the Requiem: after the first arrest of her husband and son in 1935, she went to Moscow; Through L. Seifullina she contacted Stalin’s secretary Poskrebyshev, who explained that in order for the letter to fall into the hands of Stalin himself, you need to be under the Kutafya Tower of the Kremlin at about 10 o’clock, and then he will hand over the letter himself. That’s why Akhmatova compared herself to the “streltsy wives.”

1938, which brought, along with new waves of violent rage of the soulless State, the repeated, this time irreversible arrest of Akhmatova’s husband and son, is experienced by the poet in different colors and emotions. A lullaby sounds, and it is unclear who and to whom can sing it - either a mother to an arrested son, or a descending Angel to a woman distraught from hopeless grief, or a month to a devastated house... The point of view “from the outside” imperceptibly enters the soul of Akhmatov’s lyrical heroines; in her mouth, the lullaby is transformed into a prayer, no, even into a request for someone’s prayer. A clear feeling of the heroine’s split consciousness, the splitting of Akhmatova’s lyrical “I” itself is created: one “I” vigilantly and soberly observes what is happening in the world and in the soul; the other one indulges in madness, despair, and hallucinations that are uncontrollable from within. The lullaby itself is like some kind of delirium:

The quiet Don flows quietly,

The yellow moon enters the house,

He walks in with his hat tilted.

Sees the yellow moon shadow.

This woman is sick

This woman is alone.

Husband in the grave, son in prison,

Pray for me.

And - a sharp interruption in the rhythm, becoming nervous, choking in a hysterical patter, interrupted along with a spasm of breathing and clouding of consciousness. The poetess's suffering has reached its climax; as a result, she practically does not notice anything around her. My whole life became like an endlessly terrible dream. And that's why the lines are born:

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...

The theme of the heroine's duality develops in several directions. Then she sees herself in the serene past and compares herself with her present self:

I should show you, mocker

And the favorite of all friends,

To the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoye Selo,

What will happen to your life -

Like a three hundredth, with transmission,

You will stand under the Crosses

And with your hot tears

Burn New Year's ice.

The transformation of events of terror and human suffering into an aesthetic phenomenon, into a work of art, gave unexpected and contradictory results. And in this regard, Akhmatova’s work is no exception. In Akhmatova’s “Requiem” the usual correlation of things is shifted, phantasmagoric combinations of images, bizarre chains of associations, obsessive and frightening ideas are born, as if going beyond the control of consciousness:

I've been screaming for seventeen months,

I'm calling you home

I threw myself at the feet of the executioner,

You are my son and my horror.

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?

And only lush flowers,

And the censer ringing, and the traces

Somewhere to nowhere.

And he looks straight into my eyes

And it threatens with imminent death

A huge star.

Hope glimmers, although stanza after stanza, that is, year after year, the image of great sacrifice is repeated. The appearance of religious imagery is internally prepared not only by the mention of saving appeals to prayer, but also by the whole atmosphere of the suffering of the mother, who gives her son to the inevitable, inevitable death. The suffering of the mother is associated with the state of the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary; the suffering of a son - with the torment of Christ crucified on the cross:

The lungs fly for weeks.

I don’t understand what happened

How do you like going to jail, son?

The white nights looked

How they look again

With the hot eye of a hawk,

About your high cross

And they talk about death.

Maybe there are two lives: a real one - with queues at the prison window with a transfer, to the reception areas of officials, with silent sobs in solitude, and a fictional one - where in thoughts and memories everyone is alive and free?

And the stone word fell

On my still living chest.

It's okay, because I was ready

I'll deal with this somehow.

The announced verdict and the gloomy, mournful forebodings associated with it come into conflict with the natural world, the surrounding life: the “stone word” of the verdict falls on the “still living breast.”

Parting with her son, pain and anxiety for him dry up a mother's heart.

It is impossible to even imagine the whole tragedy of a person who suffered such terrible trials. It would seem that there is a limit to everything. And that is why you need to “kill” your memory so that it does not interfere, does not press like a heavy stone on your chest:

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.

All the actions taken by the heroine are unnatural, sick in nature: killing memory, petrifying the soul, trying to “learn to live again” (as if after death or a serious illness, i.e. after “having forgotten how to live”).

Everything Akhmatova experienced takes away from her the most natural human desire - the desire to live. Now the meaning that supports a person in the most difficult periods of life has already been lost. And therefore the poetess turns “Towards death”, calls her, hopes not for her quick arrival. Death appears as liberation from suffering.

You will come anyway - why not now?

I'm waiting for you - it's very difficult for me.

I turned off the light and opened the door

To you, so simple and wonderful.

Take any form for this<…>

I don't care now. The Yenisei swirls,

The North Star is shining.

And the blue sparkle of beloved eyes

The final horror is overshadowing.

However, death does not come, but madness does. A person cannot withstand what befalls him. And madness turns out to be salvation, now you can no longer think about reality, so cruel and inhuman:

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

Already like someone else's delirium.

And won't allow anything

I should take it with me

(No matter how you beg him

And no matter how you bother me with prayer...)

The numerous variations of similar motifs characteristic of the Requiem are reminiscent of musical leitmotifs. The “Dedication” and “Introduction” outline the main motifs and images that will develop further in the poem.

In Akhmatova’s notebooks there are words that characterize the special music of this work: “... a funeral Requiem, the only accompaniment of which can only be Silence and the sharp distant sounds of a funeral bell.” But the Silence of the poem is filled with sounds: the hateful grinding of keys, the song of separation of locomotive whistles, the crying of children, a woman’s howl, the rumble of black marusi (“marusi”, “raven”, “funnel” - this is what people called cars for transporting prisoners), the squelching of doors and the howl of an old woman... Through these “hellish” sounds are barely audible, but still audible - the voice of hope, the cooing of a dove, the splash of water, the ringing of censers, the hot rustle of summer, the words of the last consolations. From the underworld (“prison convict holes”) - “not a sound - oh, how many innocent lives are ending there...” Such an abundance of sounds only enhances the tragic Silence, which explodes only once - in the chapter “Crucifixion”:

The choir of angels praised the great hour,

And the skies melted in fire.

He said to his father: “Why did you leave me!”

And to the mother: “Oh, don’t cry for Me...”

Here we are not talking about the upcoming resurrection from the dead, the ascension into heaven and other miracles of gospel history. Tragedy is experienced in purely human, earthly categories - suffering, hopelessness, despair. And the words spoken by Christ on the eve of his human death are completely earthly. Those turned to God - a reproach, a bitter lament about one’s loneliness, abandonment, helplessness. The words spoken to the mother are simple words of consolation, pity, a call for calm, in view of the irreparability, irreversibility of what happened. God the Son is left alone with his human destiny and death; what he said

The divine parents - God the Father and the Mother of God - are hopeless and doomed. At this moment of his destiny, Jesus is excluded from the context of the Divine historical process: he suffers and dies before the eyes of his father and mother, and his soul “grieves mortally.”

The second quatrain is dedicated to experiencing the tragedy of the crucifixion from the outside.

Jesus is already dead. At the foot of the Crucifixion there are three: Mary Magdalene (beloved woman or lover), beloved disciple - John and the Virgin Mary, mother of Christ. Just as in the first quatrain the focus is on the “triangle” - the “Holy Family” (understood unconventionally): God the Father, the Mother of God and the Son of Man, the second quatrain has its own “triangle”: the Beloved, the beloved Disciple and the loving Mother. In the second “triangle”, as in the first, there is no harmony.

“The 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 cried,

The beloved student turned to stone,

And where Mother stood silently,

So no one dared to look.

The beloved’s grief is expressive, visual – it is the hysteria of a woman’s inconsolable grief. The grief of a male intellectual is static, silent (which is no less understandable and eloquent). As for the Mother’s grief, it is impossible to say anything at all about it. The scale of her suffering is incomparable to either a woman’s or a man’s: it is boundless and inexpressible grief; her loss is irreplaceable, because this is her only son and because this son is God, the only Savior for all time.

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 is rebellious suffering, when the lyrical heroine “howled under the Kremlin towers” ​​and “threw herself at the feet of the executioner,” John is the quiet numbness of a man trying to “kill memory ", mad with grief and calling for death.

The terrible ice star that accompanied the heroine disappears in Chapter X - “the heavens melted in fire.” The silence of the Mother, whom “no one dared to look at,” but also for all, “the millions killed cheaply, / Who trampled the path in the void.” This is her duty now.

The “Crucifixion” in “Requiem” is a universal verdict on the inhuman System, dooming the mother to immense and inconsolable suffering, and her only beloved son to oblivion. In the Christian tradition, the crucifixion of Christ is the path of humanity to salvation, to resurrection through death. This is the prospect of overcoming earthly passions for the sake of eternal life. For Akhmatova, the crucifixion is hopeless for the Son and Mother, just as the Great Terror is endless, how innumerable is the string of victims and the prison line of their wives, sisters, mothers... “Requiem” does not provide a way out, does not offer an answer. It doesn’t even open up the hope that this will come to an end.

Following the “Crucifixion” in “Requiem” - “Epilogue”:

I learned how faces fall,

How fear peeks out from under your eyelids,

Like cuneiform hard pages

Suffering appears on the cheeks,

Like curls of ashen and black

They suddenly become silver,

The smile fades on the lips of the submissive,

And fear trembles in the dry laugh.

The heroine bifurcates between herself, lonely, abandoned, unique, and a representative of the “hundred-million people”:

And I’m not praying for myself alone,

And about everyone who stood there with me

And in the bitter cold and in the July heat

Under the red blinding wall

The “Epilogue” that closes the poem “switches time” to the present, returning us to the melody and general meaning of “Instead of the Preface” and “Dedication”: the image of the prison queue “under the red blinding wall” appears again (in the 1st part).

Once again the funeral hour approached.

I see, I hear, I feel you.

It is not the description of the tortured faces that turns out to be the finale of the funeral mass in memory of the millions of victims of the totalitarian regime. The heroine of Akhmatov’s funeral poem sees herself at the end of her poetic narrative again in a prison camp line - stretching throughout long-suffering Russia: from Leningrad to the Yenisei, from the Quiet Don to the Kremlin towers. She merges with this queue. Her poetic voice absorbs thoughts and feelings, hopes and curses, it becomes the voice of the people:

I would like to call everyone by name,

Yes, the list was taken away, and there is no place to find out,

For them I wove a wide cover

From the poor, they have overheard words.

I remember them always and everywhere,

I will not forget about them even in a new trouble.

May they remember me in the same way

On the eve of my funeral day.

Finally, Akhmatova’s heroine is at the same time a suffering woman - a wife and mother, and a poet, capable of conveying the tragedy of the people and the country that have become hostages of a perverted democracy, rising above personal suffering and fear, and her unhappy, twisted fate. A poet called upon to express the thoughts and feelings of all victims of totalitarianism, to speak in their voice, without losing his own - individual, poetic; the poet, who is responsible for ensuring that the truth about the great terror becomes known to the whole world, reaches subsequent generations, and turns out to be the property of History (including the history of culture).

But as if for a moment, forgetting about the faces falling like autumn leaves, about the fear trembling in every look and voice, about the silent universal submission, Akhmatova foresees a monument erected to herself. World and Russian poetry knows many poetic meditations on the theme of the “monument not made by hands.” The closest to Akhmatova is Pushkin’s, to whom “the people’s path will not grow,” rewarding the poet posthumously for the fact that he “glorified freedom” in his not so, compared to the twentieth, “cruel century” and “called for mercy for the fallen.” The Akhmatova monument was erected in the middle of the people's path leading to the prison (and from the prison to the wall or to the Gulag):

And if ever in this country

They are planning to erect a monument to me,

I give my consent to this triumph,

But only with the condition - do not put it

Not near the sea where I was born:

The last connection with the sea is severed,

Not in the royal garden near the treasured stump,

Where the inconsolable shadow is looking for me...

“Requiem” became a monument in words to Akhmatova’s contemporaries – both dead and alive. She mourned all of them with her “weeping lyre.” Akhmatova completes the personal, lyrical theme in an epic way. She gives consent to the celebration of erecting a monument to herself in this country only on one condition: that it will be a Monument

To the poet at the Prison Wall:

...here where I stood for three hundred hours

And where they didn’t open the bolt for me.

Then, even in the blessed death I am afraid

Forget the thunder of the black marus.

Forget how hateful the door squelched

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.

It sounds like the final indictment in a case of terrible atrocities. But it is not the poet who blames, but time. That is why the final lines of the poem sound so majestic - outwardly calm, restrained - where the flow of time brings to the monument to all those who died innocently, but also to those in whose lives their death was sadly reflected:

And even from the still and bronze ages,

Melted snow flows like tears,

And let the prison dove drone in the distance,

And the ships sail quietly along the Neva.

Akhmatova is convinced that “in this country” there will be people alive who will openly condemn the “Yezhovshchina” and exalt those few who resisted terror, who readily created an artistic monument to the exterminated people in the form of a requiem, who shared with the people their fate, hunger, hardships, slander...

Section 2. Critics about the poem "Requiem"

One of Akhmatova’s “friends of the last call,” the future Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky, gave a wonderful analysis of “Requiem” - not only as a literary scholar or critic, but as a poet and thinker, largely formed under the influence of Akhmatova. He manages to reveal the inner “spring”, the pain “nerve” of “Requiem” - like no one else:

“For me, the most important thing in Requiem is the theme of duality, the theme of the author’s inability to react adequately. It is clear that Akhmatova describes in “Requiem” all the horrors of the “Great Terror”. But at the same time she always talks about how close she is to madness. Here is the biggest truth told<...>Akhmatova describes the position of the poet, who looks at everything that happens to him as if from the outside. Because when a poet writes, for him this is no less an incident than the event he describes. Hence the self-reproach, especially when it comes to such things as the imprisonment of a son or, in general, any kind of grief. It begins, the creepy covering itself: what kind of monster are you if you still see all this horror and nightmare from the outside.

But really, such situations - arrest, death (and in "Requiem" there is a smell of death all the time, people are always on the verge of death) - and so, such situations generally exclude any possibility of an adequate reaction. When a person cries, it is a personal matter for the person crying. When a person writing cries, when he suffers, it is as if he has gained some benefit because he suffers. A person who writes can experience his or her grief in an authentic way. But the description of this grief is not real tears, it is not real gray hair. This is just an approximation of the real reaction. And the awareness of this detachment creates a truly crazy situation.

“Requiem” is a work constantly balancing on the brink of madness, which is brought about not by the disaster itself, not by the loss of a son, but by this moral schizophrenia, this split - not of consciousness, but of conscience.

Of course, Akhmatova’s “Requiem” unfolds like a real drama: like a real polyphony. We still hear different voices - now a simple woman, now suddenly a poetess, now Mary is in front of us. This is all done as it should be: in accordance with the laws of the requiem genre. But in fact, Akhmatova did not try to create a people's tragedy. “Requiem” is still the poet’s autobiography, because everything described happened to the poet. The rationality of the creative process also implies some rationality of emotions. If you like, a certain coldness of reactions. This is what drives the author crazy.”

Let us listen to another judgment about Akhmatova’s “Requiem” on behalf of her “friends of the last call” - Anatoly Naiman:

“As a matter of fact, “Requiem” is Soviet poetry, realized in the ideal form that all its declarations describe. The hero of this poetry is the people. Not a greater or lesser number of people called so out of political, national and other ideological interests, but the whole people: every single one of them participates on one side or the other in what is happening. This position speaks on behalf of the people, the poet is with them, part of them. Her language is almost newspaper-like, simple, understandable to the people, her methods are straightforward. And this poetry is full of love for the people.

What distinguishes it and thereby contrasts it even with ideal Soviet poetry is that it is personal, just as deeply personal as “Clenched hands under a dark veil.” Of course, many other things distinguish it from real Soviet poetry: firstly, the initial Christian religiosity that balances the tragedy, then the anti-heroism, then the sincerity that sets no restrictions on itself, calling forbidden things by their names. But all this is a lack of qualities: recognition of a person’s self-sufficiency and self-will, heroism, restrictions, prohibitions. And a personal attitude is not something that does not exist, but something that exists and testifies to itself with every word in the poetry of the Requiem. This is what makes “Requiem” poetry - not Soviet, just poetry, because Soviet poetry on this topic should have been state: it could be personal if it concerned individuals, their love, their moods, them, according to the officially permitted formula, “ joys and troubles." In a couplet:

And if they shut my exhausted mouth,

To which a hundred million people shout,

“mine”, huddled in an unstressed crack, weighs as much as the loud “hundred-millionth” one. Those who condemned Akhmatova’s poetry for being “intimate” gave, without knowing it, the beginning of a tragic pun: it became the poetry of prison cells.”

It is worth considering another important opinion about the poem “Requiem”. Its author was art historian V.Ya. Vilenkin:

“Akhmatova’s Requiem least of all needs scientific commentary. Is it necessary to comment or analyze “They took you away at dawn ...”, “I have been screaming for seventeen months ...”, “To death”, “Crucifixion”, amazing, no matter how many times you listen to it or re-read it, “Epilogue”, and everything else, from what did this cycle of poems emerge as if by itself?..

Its folk origins and its folk poetic scale are in themselves obvious. Personally experienced, autobiographical things drown in it, preserving only the immensity of suffering.

Or else - about “unwitting friends” in the Leningrad prison queues of the terrible period of the “Yezhovshchina”.

A detailed analysis of folklore elements will not add anything significant to this. The lyrics in this cycle (Akhmatova, they say, sometimes called it a poem, but the word “cycle” appears more than once in the lists she compiled) automatically turns into an epic, so completely is it fused with the common tragic lot of millions, with the most terrible page our history. And there is no need to remember either the “Requiems” of Mozart, Cherubini or Verdi, or the pathetic church service, in order to appreciate the legitimacy of the name of this cycle of poems and to feel the inescapable pain that these immortal stanzas now cause in each of us. No wonder they are so easy to remember by heart.

How vain the fears that once so tormented her now seem to us that her poems will remain only “past” for new generations of readers. Starting with intimate lyrics, Anna Akhmatova walked her difficult and steady path, which became increasingly broader in its spiritual and civic significance. For the modern reader, she became a poet of two eras in the life of her “Native Land”, a poet who is still close today.

Now everyone knows the epilogue of “Requiem”, they know with what “condition” Akhmatova, looking into the distant future, “gave consent” to the monument if it was ever destined to be in a place other than her homeland.

There may not be a monument - who knows? One thing is certain: the immortality of the poet. And if it’s a monument, then it’s also one of those not made by hands, stronger than copper.”

Another literary scholar and critic, E.S. Dobin, wrote that since the 30s, “Akhmatova’s lyrical hero completely merges with the author” and reveals “the character of the poet himself,” but also that “the craving for close , lying next to him,” which distinguished Akhmatova’s early work, is now replaced by the principle of “approaching the distant. But the distant one is not extra-mundane, but human.”

Critic B. Sarnov called Akhmatova’s human and poetic position “courageous stoicism.” Her fate, reflected in the poem “Requiem,” is an example of a humble, grateful acceptance of life, with all its joys and sorrows.

The opinion of the writer and critic Yu. Karyakin about the poem “Requiem”:

“This is truly a national requiem: a cry for the people, the concentration of all their pain. Akhmatova’s poetry is the confession of a person who lives with all the troubles, pains and passions of his time and his land.

People who come into this world are not given the opportunity to choose their time, homeland, or parents. A. Akhmatova experienced the most difficult years in the most incredible country in the world: two revolutions, two wars, the terrible era of Stalin’s tyranny. Back in 1917, the poetess responded to those who left Russia and invited her abroad: “I closed my ears indifferently and calmly with my hands, so that the sorrowful spirit would not be defiled by this unworthy speech.” Talent, devotion to her native land, asceticism, courage and loyalty to the precepts of great literature - these are the qualities for which the people awarded A. Akhmatova with their love.

The poem “Requiem” is a stunning document of the era, based on the facts of one’s own biography, evidence of the trials our people have gone through. The repressions of the 30s, which fell on Akhmatova’s friends and like-minded people, also destroyed her family home. She herself lived in constant anticipation of a knock on the door. Created between 1935 and 1940 the lines of “Requiem” could not even lie on paper. They were memorized by the poetess's friends, so that the strangled cry of a hundred million people would not sink into the abyss of time.

“Emma, ​​what have we been doing all these years? We were just afraid!?” - A. Akhmatova once said to her friend. Yes, they were just people, not made of stone or steel. And they were afraid not only for themselves, but for their children and parents, wives and husbands, relatives and friends.

It was in such hell, during the most difficult period of her life, that Anna Andreevna wrote her outstanding work - the mournful “Requiem”, a furious denunciation of Stalin’s lawlessness.

You read, and the era of mass repressions, general numbness, fear, and whispered conversations comes to life. A. Akhmatova was a small part of her, a bubbling stream flowing into the clouded river of people's grief.

“No, and not under the black firmament, and not under the protection of alien wings, I was then with my people, where my people, unfortunately, were.”

These lines are from the poem “So it was not in vain that we suffered together...”. A. Akhmatova makes the epigraph to the poem. Her fate is inseparable from the fates of those unfortunate women with whom she stood in prison lines for 17 months in the hope of sending a message or finding out something about their son.

“And I pray not for myself alone, but for everyone who stood there with me both in the bitter cold and in the July heat under the blinding red wall.”

Re-reading “Requiem”, you see the ambiguity of this work. If earlier in the last quote I saw the image of a wall red with blood and blinded by the tears shed by the victims and their loved ones, now it seems to me cold, stone, not seeing the grief of those who stood next to it. This also includes the image of the Kremlin towers: “I will howl, like the Streltsy wives, under the Kremlin towers.”

These are the walls behind which those who, like blind people, do not see the people's grief are hiding. These are blank walls that fence off rulers and people. And maybe the star on the Kremlin tower is the same huge star that looks straight into my eyes and threatens me with imminent death? The epithets used by Akhmatova in the poem “bloody boots”, “mortal melancholy”, “petrified suffering”, “stone word” evoke horror and disgust at violence, emphasize torment, and show the desolation of the city and country. Everything in “Requiem” is enlarged, expanded within boundaries (Neva, Don, Yenisei), causing a general idea everywhere. This is the misfortune of this people, and the same stars of death shine for everyone.

In the epilogue of “Requiem”, as if cast from metal, such bitter and solemnly proud words stand dense and heavy: “again the funeral hour has approached, I see, I hear, I feel you, I would like to name everyone by name, but the list was taken away and there is nowhere to find out. I remember them always and everywhere, and I will not forget about them even in a new trouble.” Probably this list would be endless. And the fact that Akhmatova fulfilled her promise was the best memory of those innocent victims, of the immeasurable grief that befell thousands of people in our country during the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina.

I listen to the first lines of the “Requiem”: “before this grief the mountains bend, the great river does not flow. But the prison gates are strong, and behind them are “convict holes” and mortal melancholy.” The dominant rolling letter “P” sounds here, as if a funeral bell is ringing. And our hearts begin to beat in time with him: “It won’t happen again, it will never happen again!” “Every poet has his own tragedy, otherwise he is not a poet. Without tragedy there is no poet; poetry lives and breathes above the very abyss of the tragic,” the poetess wrote. But in “Requiem” A. Akhmatova was able to expand personal suffering into the suffering of an entire people, into a huge petrified sculpture of grief, ingeniously created from the simplest words. “Whoever hides the past jealously is unlikely to be in harmony with the future,” said Tvardovsky. It's good that we find out the truth. Maybe this is the key to our future?

“Requiem” has become a single whole, although you can hear a folk song there, and Lermontov, and Tyutchev, and Blok, and Nekrasov, and - especially in the finale - Pushkin: “... And let the prison dove hum in the distance, And quietly walk along the Neva ships." All the lyrical classics magically united in this, perhaps the tiniest great poem in the world.

The same Akhmatova, who was considered an apolitical poet, heard in the prison queue - like a voice from above - the whisper of a neighbor with blue lips who had woken up from her stupor: “Can you describe this?” Akhmatova risked her life by writing poems about terror. But scrupulousness did not allow her to heroize herself. She did not want to rise above others, placing conscientiousness in the category of strict rules.

They talked about Akhmatova - regal, majestic. There is so much contemptuous venom in even the word “this” from “Requiem”: “And if someday in this country they plan to erect a monument to me...”. Even Pasternak, Akhmatova once gave only a “B” for behavior. Solid, but a four. She did not favor Chekhov and called Tolstoy a “garbage old man.” But wasn’t it she who, as Mandelstam so subtly remarked, “brought into Russian lyric poetry all the enormous complexity and psychological richness of the Russian novel of the nineteenth century”?

In a letter of 1916, Blok dropped some non-random advice to Akhmatova: “... we need to be even tougher, more unsightly.” She followed his advice. That’s why I was able to fulfill the order of that woman with blue lips.

Conclusion, generalization and conclusions

Time, as we know, puts everything and everyone in its place. Life confirms this idea - the poetry of A.A. Akhmatova has stood the test of time.

Empathy for human grief, anger and melancholy cover when reading the poem.

How else!?

Can a person endure everything that befell the poetess? And even a hundredth part of all the trials would be enough to lose his mind and die of grief. But she's alive!

It seems that the poetess has exhausted her entire supply of tears, anger, suffering, crying...

But I don’t want to end the conversation about Akhmatova’s poem on this note.

It seems to me that we need it now, in our time more than ever, as a warning, as a reminder...

She wrote a poem about the life and fate of a person, about what his soul experiences in our hectic mortal world, about the losses of life, about the torment and happiness of existence.

And, comprehending the world of the poetess, it becomes possible to discover in oneself the ability to respond not only to joy, but also to grief and sadness, which are diffused in many moments of life. Again and again we learn to accept life with all its sorrows and tragedies as a priceless gift and a miracle that must be carefully preserved.

Anna Akhmatova is a brilliant representative of one of the meaningful periods of Russian literature, which is commonly called the “Silver Age,” and opened a new significant chapter of modern poetry. Without realizing it, writing poems about simple earthly love, the poetess was doing a “good deed” - purifying and enlightening - and she did it really like a woman, simply and without self-reflection, with the truth of her whole soul and conscience. And for this reason, ultimately, she had the right to say that she created it:

Not for passion

Not for fun

For great earthly love...(2, I, 75)

To the greatest extent, the name of A. Akhmatova is associated with poetry, which even to this time has not ceased to interest us. Akhmatova’s lyrics were nourished by earthly, everyday feelings, and were not taken beyond the boundaries of “worldly vanity.” Somewhere in the diversity of everyday life, right next to the masonry, in the dust of everyday existence, the origins of Akhmatov’s poetry arose. Somewhere in the pores of existence, the drops connected, merged and gave life to feelings that were in full swing. Akhmatova’s poetry was close to the life that went alongside her. Nothing soaring above the everyday, elevated above the ordinary flow of life. No nebulae, ethereal heights, elusive visions, sleepy haze. Akhmatova sought - and found - new poetic values ​​in the most authentic life, which surrounds us on all sides with countless things and structures, colorful heaps of everyday life, and a multitude of everyday circumstances. Perhaps it was precisely this real situation that A. Akhmatova shocked her reader, who was not deceived by the sublime, unearthly, inaccessible poetry. He was captivated by the wonderful description of the distinct poetry of the real world, where the reader found himself and recognized his feelings. What connects Akhmatova’s lyrics with us, people of the 21st century, and everything is also an unforgettable, bright, tender feeling of love. Just as then in the era of A. Akhmatova, people loved, adored, parted and returned, and everything is happening now.

Love in A. Akhmatova’s poems is a living and genuine feeling, deep and humane, although for real life reasons it is usually touched by the sadness of ennobling suffering. In Akhmatova’s love lyrics there is no romantic cult of love with its ups and downs and boyfriends. This is most of all love - pity, love - longing, which is so similar to real love.

Akhmatova’s lyrics combined sublime principles: slightly earthly touches, the finest psychological features - and collisions brought to the brink, to storms.

But above all the dramas, sorrows of “love torture,” disappointments and separations, there was a shining note, almost a hymn of “great earthly love.”

List of used literature

1. A.N. Petrov “Legends of Love” - A. Akhmatova and N. Gumilyov, “Modern Literary” publishing house, 1999, Minsk.

2. S.I. Kormilov “The poetic work of Anna Akhmatova”, publishing house “Educational Literature” 2004, Samara.

3.L.Ya.Schneyberg, I.V.Kondakov “From Gorky to Solzhenitsyn”, publishing house “Higher School” 1995, Moscow.

4. V.M. Zhirmunsky “The Work of Anna Akhmatova”, publishing house “Science” 1973, Leningrad. “About Anna Akhmatova: poems, essays, memories, letters,” Nauka publishing house, 1990, Leningrad.

5.V.Ya.Vilenkin “In the hundred and first mirror”, publishing house “Soviet Writer” 1990, Moscow.

6.V.Ya.Vilenkin, V.A. Chernykh “Memories of Anna Akhmatova”, publishing house “Soviet Writer” 1991, Moscow.

7. V.V. Vinogradov “On the poetry of Anna Akhmatova”, “Selected works. Poetics of Russian literature”, 1976, Moscow.

8. B. Eikhenbaum “Anna Akhmatova”, 1969, Leningrad.

9. A. Pavlovsky “Anna Akhmatova. Life and creativity", 1991, Moscow.

10. N. Ilyin “Roads and Fates”, 1988, Moscow.

11. L. Ginzburg “The Man at the Desk”, 1989, Leningrad.

12. A. Kazintsev “Facing History”, 1989, Moscow.

Typical features and, albeit indirectly, indicate who, in the author’s opinion, holds the future of Russia. (6-8) The theme of human destiny in one of the works of Russian literature In the January issue of 2001, V. Astafiev’s story “The Pioneer is an Example to Everything” was published. The date the story was written is designated by the author as “late 50 - August 2000.” As in many of the latest works of the famous...

In one of the works of literature of the 20th century. 7. The originality of the problems of M. Gorky’s early prose. (Using the example of one of the stories.) 8. The theme of heroism in one of the works of Russian literature. No. 10 1. Pechorin and the “water society” in M.Yu. Lermontov’s novel “A Hero of Our Time.” 2. “Scary world! It’s too small for the heart!” (According to the lyrics of A. Blok.) 3. Duel of Pierre with Dolokhov. (Analysis of an episode from the novel by L.N. ...

Dedication

Mountains bend before this grief,
The great river does not flow
But the prison gates are strong,
And behind them are “convict holes”
And mortal melancholy.
For someone the wind is blowing fresh,
For someone basking in the sunset -
We don't know, we're the same everywhere
We only hear the hateful grinding of keys
Yes, the soldiers' steps are heavy.
They rose as if to early mass,
They walked through the wild capital,
There we met, more lifeless dead,
The sun is lower and the Neva is foggy,
And hope still sings in the distance.
The verdict... And immediately 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...
Where are the involuntary friends now?
My two crazy years?
What do they imagine in the Siberian blizzard?
What do they see in the lunar circle?
To them I send my farewell greetings.

Introduction

It was when I smiled
Only dead, glad for the peace.
And swayed with an unnecessary pendant
Leningrad is near its prisons.
And when, maddened by torment,
The already condemned regiments were marching,
And a short song of parting
The locomotive whistles sang,
Death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the black tires there is marusa.

They took you away at dawn
I followed you, as if on a takeaway,
Children were crying in the dark room,
The goddess's candle floated.
There are cold icons on your lips,
Death sweat on the brow... Don't forget!
I will be like the Streltsy wives,
Howl under the Kremlin towers.

The quiet Don flows quietly,
The yellow moon enters the house.

He walks in with his hat on one side,
Sees the yellow moon shadow.

This woman is sick
This woman is alone.

Husband in the grave, son in prison,
Pray for me.

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.

I should show you, mocker
And the favorite of all friends,
To the cheerful sinner of Tsarskoye Selo,
What will happen to your life -
Like a three hundredth, with transmission,
You will stand under the Crosses
And with my hot tears
Burn through New Year's ice.
There the prison poplar sways,
And not a sound - but how much is there
Innocent lives are ending...

I've been screaming for seventeen months,
I'm calling you home
I threw myself at the feet of the executioner,
You are my son and my horror.
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?
And only dusty flowers
And the censer ringing, and the traces
Somewhere to nowhere.
And he looks straight into my eyes
And it threatens with imminent death
A huge star.

Lungs fly for weeks,
I don’t understand what happened.
How do you like going to jail, son?
The white nights looked
How they look again
With the hot eye of a hawk,
About your high cross
And they talk about death.

Sentence

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.

To death

You will come anyway - why not now?
I'm waiting for you - it's very difficult for me.
I turned off the light and opened the door
To you, so simple and wonderful.
Take any form for this,
Burst with a poisoned shell
Or sneak up with a weight like an experienced bandit,
Or poison with typhus child.
Or a fairy tale invented by you
And sickeningly familiar to everyone, -
So that I can see the top of the blue hat
And the building manager, pale with fear.
I don't care now. The Yenisei swirls,
The North Star is shining.
And the blue sparkle of beloved eyes
The final horror is overshadowing.

Madness is already on the wing
Half of my soul was covered,
And drinks fiery wine
And beckons to the black valley.

And I realized that he
I must concede victory
Listening to your
Already like someone else's delirium.

And won't allow anything
I should take it with me
(No matter how you beg him
And no matter how you bother me with prayer):

Nor the son's terrible eyes -
Petrified suffering
Not the day when the thunderstorm came,
Not an hour of prison visiting,

Not the sweet coolness of your hands,
Not a single linden shadow,
Not a distant light sound -
Words of last consolation.

Crucifixion

Don't cry to me, Mati,
in the tomb of those who see.

The choir of angels praised the great hour,
And the skies melted in fire.
He said to his father: “Why did you leave me!”
And to the Mother: “Oh, don’t cry for Me...”

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

Epilogue

I learned how faces fall,
How fear peeks out from under your eyelids,
Like cuneiform hard pages
Suffering appears on the cheeks,
Like curls of ashen and black
They suddenly become silver,
The smile fades on the lips of the submissive,
And fear trembles in the dry laugh.
And I’m not praying for myself alone,
And about everyone who stood there with me,
And in the bitter cold and in the July heat
Under the blinding red wall.

Once again the funeral hour approached.
I see, I hear, I feel you:

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,
She said: “Coming here is like coming home.”

I would like to call everyone by name,
Yes, the list was taken away, and there is no place to find out.

For them I wove a wide cover
From the poor, they have overheard words.

I remember them always and everywhere,
I won’t forget about them even in a new trouble,

And if they shut my exhausted mouth,
To which a hundred million people shout,

May they remember me in the same way
On the eve of my memorial day.

And if ever in this country
They are planning to erect a monument to me,

I give my consent to this triumph,
But only with the condition - do not put it

Not near the sea where I was born:
The last connection with the sea is severed,

Not in the royal garden near the treasured stump,
Where the inconsolable shadow is looking for me,

And here, where I stood for three hundred hours
And where they didn’t open the bolt for me.

Then, even in the blessed death I am afraid
Forget the rumble of the black marus,

Forget how hateful the door slammed
And the old woman howled like a wounded animal.

And let from the still and bronze ages
Melted snow flows like tears,

And let the prison dove drone in the distance,
And the ships sail quietly along the Neva.

Analysis of the poem "Requiem" by Akhmatova

A lot of scientific research has been written about the terrible period of Stalin’s repressions. Many works of art are dedicated to him. Among them, the most vivid are personal memories and impressions of direct witnesses of these events. A. Akhmatova felt all the pain and fear produced by this “bloody meat grinder.” The poem “Requiem” conveys all the horror of those years through the poetess’s personal experience.

The poem was created over a long period of time. The introduction and the first part were written in 1935, immediately after the first arrest of Akhmatova’s only son, Lev. The poetess, with the help of Pasternak, wrote a letter personally to Stalin and achieved the release of her son, but the punitive authorities did not leave them alone. In 1938 there was a second arrest. This time, Akhmatova’s humiliating plea did not bring results. Lev was sentenced to exile in Siberian camps. For two years, the poetess continued to create a poem, which became her intimate diary, reflecting all her feelings and experiences. Under conditions of total control, Akhmatova did not dare to write down the poem. She memorized the lines and read them only to those closest to her.

The plot of the poem “Requiem” is based on Akhmatova’s time in the prison line. She spent almost a year and a half in such queues. In this humiliated expectation there were many mothers and wives thrown out of society for the trumped-up crimes of their men. In the preface to the poem, Akhmatova recalls that one woman recognized her in the queue and asked her to describe what was happening.

In the “Dedication” that precedes the poem, the poetess describes her heavy, stone-like grief that gripped her soul immediately after the verdict was pronounced. She greets her “unwitting friends” in the prison line, who now find themselves forever bound by a common misfortune.

"Requiem" does not have a clear chronology. Parts are marked with dates, but they are inconsistent. It doesn't matter much. Two terrible years are perceived as a holistic picture of a personal tragedy against the backdrop of nationwide grief. Some main motives of the work can be identified.

Akhmatova emphasizes the enormous scale of repression through the number (“convicted regiments”) and historical parallels (“Rus writhed,” “streltsy wives”). The poetess uses religious symbolism. In a country of triumphant atheism, faith acts as another victim of the regime. Part of the poem “The Crucifixion” is completely devoted to this, in which the suffering of all mothers is touchingly compared with the grief of the Virgin Mary.

Towards the end, the motive of doom and the impossibility of any resistance grows in the poem. Akhmatova sees salvation only in death, but suspects that it will not provide final deliverance from all-consuming fear. The poetess believes that the best recognition of her services to Russian poetry will be a monument near the prison walls, which will be an eternal reminder to those living of that terrible and merciless time.

In previous years, there was a fairly widespread idea of ​​the narrowness and intimacy of Akhmatova’s poetry, and it seemed that nothing foreshadowed its evolution in a different direction. Compare, for example, B. Zaitsev’s review of Akhmatova after he read the poem “Requiem” in 1963 abroad: “I saw Akhmatova as a “merry sinner of Tsarskoye Selo” and a “mocker”... Was it possible to assume then, in this Stray Dog, that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - feminine, maternal, a cry not only for herself, but also for all those who suffer - wives, mothers, brides... Where did the male power of the verse come from, its simplicity, the thunder of words as if ordinary, but ringing like a funeral bell, striking the human heart and arousing artistic admiration?”

The basis of the poem was the personal tragedy of A. Akhmatova: her son Lev Gumilyov was arrested three times during the Stalin years. The first time he, a student at the Faculty of History of Leningrad State University, was arrested in 1935, and then he was soon rescued. Akhmatova then wrote a letter to I.V. Stalin. For the second time, Akhmatova’s son was arrested in 1938 and sentenced to 10 years in the camps; later the sentence was reduced to 5 years. Lev was arrested for the third time in 1949 and sentenced to death, which was then replaced by exile. His guilt was not proven, and he was subsequently rehabilitated. Akhmatova herself viewed the arrests of 1935 and 1938 as revenge from the authorities for the fact that Lev was the son of N. 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 in prison because of her.

But "Requiem" is not only a personal tragedy, but a national tragedy.

The composition of the poem has a complex structure: it includes an Epigraph, Instead of a Preface, Dedication, Introduction, 10 chapters (three of which have the title: VII - Sentence, VIII - To Death, X - Crucifixion) and Epilogue (consisting of three parts).

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

At first, "Requiem" was conceived as a lyrical cycle and only later renamed into a poem. The Epigraph and Instead of the Preface are the semantic and musical keys of the work. The epigraph (an autoquote from Akhmatova’s 1961 poem “So it was not in vain that we suffered together...”) introduces a lyrical theme into the epic narrative of the people’s tragedy:

I was then with my people,

Where my people, unfortunately, were.

Instead of the Preface (1957), the part that continues the theme of “my people” takes us to “then” - the prison line of Leningrad in the 1930s. Akhmatov's "Requiem", like Mozart's, was written "to order", but the role of "customer" in the poem is played by "a hundred million people". The lyrical and epic are fused together in the poem: talking about her grief (the arrest of her son, L. Gumilyov, and her husband, N. Punin), Akhmatova speaks on behalf of millions of “nameless” “we”: “In the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. Once someone “identified" me. Then the woman standing behind me with blue lips, who, of course, had never heard my name in her life, woke up from the stupor that is characteristic of us all and 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 slid across what had once been her face.”

The Dedication continues the theme of the prose Preface. But the scale of the events described changes, reaching a grandiose scale:

Mountains bend before this grief,

The great river does not flow

But the prison gates are strong,

And behind them are convict holes...

Here the time and space in which the heroine and her random friends are located in prison queues are characterized. There is no more time, it has stopped, has become numb, has become silent (“the great river does not flow”). The harsh-sounding rhymes “mountains” and “holes” reinforce the impression of the severity and tragedy of what is happening. The landscape echoes the paintings of Dante's "Hell", with its circles, ledges, evil stone crevices... And prison Leningrad is perceived as one of the circles of Dante's famous "Hell". Further, in the Introduction, we meet an image of great poetic power and precision:

And dangled like an unnecessary pendant

Leningrad is near its prisons.

Forex without investing money

The numerous variations of similar motifs in the poem are reminiscent of musical leitmotifs. The Dedication and Introduction outline the main motifs and images that will develop further in the work.

The poem is characterized by a special sound world. In Akhmatova's notebooks there are words that characterize the special music of her work: "... a funeral requiem, the only accompaniment of which can only be Silence and the sharp distant sounds of a funeral bell." But the silence of the poem is filled with disturbing, disharmonious sounds: the hateful grinding of keys, the song of separation of locomotive whistles, the crying of children, a woman’s howl, the rumble of black marus, the squelching of doors and the howl of an old woman. Such an abundance of sounds only enhances the tragic silence, which explodes only once - in the chapter Crucifixion:

The choir of angels praised the great hour,

And the skies melted in fire...

The crucifix 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 cried,

The beloved student turned to stone,

And where Mother stood silently,

So no one dared to look.

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 is rebellious suffering, when the lyrical heroine “howled under the Kremlin towers” ​​and “threw herself at the feet of the executioner,” John is the quiet numbness of a man trying to “kill memory ", mad with grief and calling for death. The silence of the Mother, whom “no one dared to look at,” is resolved by a cry-requiem. Not only for his son, but for all those who were destroyed.

The Epilogue that closes the poem “switches time” to the present, returning us to the melody and the general meaning of the Preface and Dedication: the image of a prison line “under a blinding red wall” appears again. The voice of the lyrical heroine grows stronger, the second part of the Epilogue sounds like a solemn chorale, accompanied by the blows of a funeral bell:

Once again the funeral hour approached.

I see, I hear, I feel you.

"Requiem" became a monument in words to Akhmatova's contemporaries: both dead and alive. She mourned them all, ending the personal, lyrical theme of the poem in an epic way. She gives consent to the celebration of erecting a monument to herself in this country only on one condition: that it will be a Monument to the Poet at the Prison Wall. This is a monument not so much to the poet as to the people's grief:

Then, even in the blessed death I am afraid

Forget the thunder of the black marus.

Forget how hateful the door squelched

And the old woman howled like a wounded animal.

Analysis of Tsvetaeva's poem "Rails"

In a certain lined sheet music

Lying like sheets -

Railway tracks,

Rail cutting blue!

Pushkinskoye: how many there are, where to go

He's driving! (it’s passed - they don’t sing!)

They are leaving - they are leaving,

They are cooling down - falling behind.

These remain. Pain like a note

Towering... Above love

Tallest...Lot's Wife

Frozen pillars in a heap...

The hour when despair, like a matchmaker,

The sheets are spread out. - Yours! -

Cries like the last seamstress.

Cry of resignation! Cry of the swamp

Herons... Algae - crying! Glubok

Railway tracks

Scissors cutting buzzer.

Spread in vain dawn,

Red, vain spot!

Young women sometimes

They are flattered by such a canvas.

Tsvetaeva argued: “...reading is participation in creativity.” In the case of Tsvetaeva, this is especially important to keep in mind, since she is characterized by an unprecedented structural and semantic (semantic) compression of poetic writing, omission of the self-evident, unpredictability, originality of metaphors, reference to world and domestic poetic classics. Ideally, Tsvetaeva demands a reader equal in erudition and poetic imagination1.

Fully aware that “any attempt at an analytical approach to a synthetic phenomenon is obviously doomed” (I. Brodsky), that is, it is impossible to verify harmony with algebra, we will try, as far as possible, to expand and decipher the figurative structure of M. Tsvetaeva’s poem.

The poem "Rails" was written on July 10, 1923. In May 1922, M. Tsvetaeva, together with her daughter Ariadna, was forced to leave Russia. The years in a foreign land were difficult: Berlin, Prague, Paris... Relations with the Russian emigration were very difficult, the attitude of criticism was rather hostile: the fate of outstanding poets was the same everywhere...

The poem "Rails" reflected homesickness, a bitter feeling of hopelessness, and a sense of common fate with those who were forced to leave their home...

“Sheet”, “canvas”, “seamstress”, “scissors” (“scissors cut a buzzer”), “matchmaker” - this everyday vocabulary (traditional women’s household items) in Tsvetaeva’s poem takes on a metaphorical meaning and is filled with tragic content. Despair and matchmaker here are perceived as identical to fate (“The sheets are spread out. - Yours!”), as spreading the canvas of fate in front of unfortunate women. Feminine tenderness and the drama of the circumstances offered by fate - the first stanza is built on this collision. "Rail Cutting Blue!" - and the coldly gleaming steel rails cutting through space, and the cutting blue (it hurts the eyes from tears, from the pain of parting) of the native Russian sky.

And then the poetic thought in the poem develops not linearly (not analytically), but crystal-like (synthetically), that is, a number of associations appear - metaphorical images that develop the theme of women's separation from their homeland. Moreover, the maximum increase in meaning occurs due to the poetess’s appeal to a broad literary context. Including to Pushkin: “Pushkin: how many of them, where are they // Driving them! (it’s passed - they don’t sing!)” - a reminiscence from a poem by A.S. Pushkin "Demons". Tsvetaeva is important to the motive of exile, submission to fate, an unknown force, submission, silent from the powerlessness to change anything (“it’s passed - they don’t sing”), from powerlessness in the face of a historical blizzard. See Pushkin in “Demons”:

Endless, ugly,

In the muddy game of the month

Various demons began to spin,

Like leaves in November...

How many of them! where are they being driven?

Why are they singing so pitifully?

Do they bury the brownie?

Do they marry off a witch?

Biblical plots are also involved in the metaphorical context of the poem: “Lot’s wife // the frozen pillars in a mound...” According to the biblical legend, the wife of the righteous Lot turned into a pillar of salt, as she looked back - at the walls of the sinful, but dear to her city of Sodom, at her native hearth . How could Russian women leaving their homeland not look back to their dear past? “The frozen pillars in a mound” are, apparently, railway mile markers, but these are also innumerable women exiles of Russia, petrified from grief and despair. In a similar vein, sympathizing with Lot’s wife, he develops the biblical motif of A. Akhmatov in the 1924 poem “Lot’s Wife.” Akhmatova also sympathizes with Lot’s wife, who, unlike her husband, could not help but look back “at the red towers of her native Sodom, // at the square where she sang, at the courtyard where she spun, // at the empty windows of the tall house, // where dear She gave birth to children for her husband...” That’s why Tsvetaeva’s “they leave - they leave,... they cool down - they lag behind // ... they stay”2.

The image of the ancient Greek poetess from the island of Lesbos Sappho (Sappho) gives the tragedy of Russian women a universal human content: “The voiceless Sappho cries like the last seamstress...” - Sappho was also forced to leave her hometown. Sappho was extremely famous, her images were minted on coins, her enchanting voice was compared to the singing of a nightingale. It is impossible to imagine Sappho losing her poetic voice, devoicing her: the poetic word is her way of existence. But since this happened, it means that her despair and grief were boundless. Before fate and the power of fate, everyone turns out to be equal, because exile and the loss of their homeland are difficult for both the brilliant poetess and the “last seamstress.” The despair of exile, repeated over the centuries, unites all women.

“Rails” by M. Tsvetaeva also brings to mind A. Blok’s poem “On the Railway,” especially its opening and closing lines:

Under the embankment, in the unmown ditch,

Lies and looks as if alive,

In a colored scarf thrown on her braids,

Beautiful and young...

Don't approach her with questions

You don't care, but she's satisfied:

With love, mud or wheels

She is crushed - everything hurts.

Tsvetaeva concludes her poem with a metaphor that is engaged, but interrupted at the very beginning, extinguished before the dawn of life:

Spread in vain dawn,

Red, vain spot!

Young women sometimes

They are flattered by such a canvas.

And again, Tsvetaeva’s metaphor is original, unpredictable3: women are usually flattered by the canvas-fabric, but not by the canvas of death - suicide.

The fifth stanza encourages us to evaluate the validity of the poet I. Brodsky’s remark about the peculiarities of M. Tsvetaeva’s style: for the poet “phonetics and semantics, with few exceptions, are identical.” They are identical because the very sound of the word becomes significant. The lines "The cry of resignation! The cry of the swamp // Herons... Algae - a cry!" - vary (crystallinely increasing) the theme of suffering, resigned despair. Genuine grief is silent (there is no strength to scream and wring hands), the seaweed (a figurative parallel to women suffering silently) seems to have drowned in the water - in a sea of ​​tears. Here the phraseological unit “drown in tears” returns its literal meaning, the exposure of the internal form of the phraseological unit updates and enriches its content. There is no more silent, resigned and bitter cry! Alliteration on sonorants, primarily on “l” (which is typical for Tsvetaeva in general) brings the poem closer to folklore genres - ancient lamentations, crying, giving primacy, “authenticity”, universality (archetypalness) to the experiences of women leaving their homeland.

In 1987, Soviet readers first became acquainted with A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”.

For many lovers of the poetess’s lyrical poems, this work became a real discovery. In it, a “fragile... and thin woman” - as B. Zaitsev called her in the 60s - let out a “feminine, maternal cry”, which became a verdict on the terrible Stalinist regime. And decades after it was written, one cannot read the poem without a shudder in the soul.

What was the power of the work, which for more than twenty-five years was kept exclusively in the memory of the author and 11 close people whom she trusted? This will help to understand the analysis of the poem “Requiem” by Akhmatova.

History of creation

The basis of the work was the personal tragedy of Anna Andreevna. Her son, Lev Gumilyov, was arrested three times: in 1935, 1938 (given 10 years, then reduced to 5 forced labor) and in 1949 (sentenced to death, then replaced with exile and later rehabilitated).

It was during the period from 1935 to 1940 that the main parts of the future poem were written. Akhmatova first intended to create a lyrical cycle of poems, but later, already in the early 60s, when the first manuscript of the works appeared, the decision was made to combine them into one work. And indeed, throughout the entire text one can trace the immeasurable depth of grief of all Russian mothers, wives, brides who experienced terrible mental anguish not only during the years of the Yezhovshchina, but throughout all times of human existence. This is shown by the chapter-by-chapter analysis of Akhmatova’s “Requiem”.

In a prosaic preface to the poem, A. Akhmatova spoke about how she was “identified” (a sign of the times) in a prison line in front of the Crosses. Then one of the women, waking up from her stupor, asked in her ear - then everyone said so -: “Can you describe this?” The affirmative answer and the created work became the fulfillment of the great mission of a real poet - to always and in everything tell people the truth.

Composition of the poem "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova

The analysis of a work should begin with an understanding of its construction. An epigraph dated 1961 and “Instead of a Preface” (1957) indicate that thoughts about her experience did not leave the poetess until the end of her life. Her son’s suffering also became her pain, which did not let go for a moment.

This is followed by “Dedication” (1940), “Introduction” and ten chapters of the main part (1935-40), three of which have the title: “Sentence”, “To Death”, “Crucifixion”. The poem ends with a two-part epilogue, which is more epic in nature. The realities of the 30s, the massacre of the Decembrists, the Streltsy executions that went down in history, finally, an appeal to the Bible (chapter “Crucifixion”) and at all times the incomparable suffering of women - this is what Anna Akhmatova writes about

"Requiem" - title analysis

A funeral mass, an appeal to higher powers with a request for grace for the deceased... The great work of V. Mozart is one of the poetess’s favorite musical works... Such associations are evoked in the human mind by the name of the poem “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova. Analysis of the text leads to the conclusion that this is grief, remembrance, sadness for all those “crucified” during the years of repression: the thousands who died, as well as those whose souls “died” from suffering and painful experiences for their loved ones.

"Dedication" and "Introduction"

The beginning of the poem introduces the reader into the atmosphere of the “frenzied years”, when the great grief, before which “the mountains bend, the great river does not flow” (hyperboles emphasize its scale) entered almost every home. The pronoun “we” appears, focusing attention on the universal pain - “involuntary friends” who stood at the “Crosses” awaiting the verdict.

An analysis of Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem” draws attention to an unusual approach to depicting her beloved city. In the “Introduction”, bloody and black Petersburg appears to the exhausted woman as just an “unnecessary appendage” to the prisons scattered throughout the country. Scary as it may be, “death stars” and harbingers of trouble “black marusi” driving around the streets have become commonplace.

Development of the main theme in the main part

The poem continues the description of the scene of the son's arrest. It is no coincidence that there is a similarity here with popular lament, the form of which Akhmatova uses. “Requiem” - analysis of the poem confirms this - develops the image of a suffering mother. A dark room, a melted candle, “deathly sweat on the brow” and a terrible phrase: “I was following you like I was being taken out.” Left alone, the lyrical heroine is fully aware of the horror of what happened. External calm gives way to delirium (part 2), manifested in confused, unsaid words, memories of the former happy life of a cheerful “mocker”. And then - an endless line under the Crosses and 17 months of painful waiting for the verdict. For all the relatives of those repressed, it became a special facet: before - there is still hope, after - the end of all life...

An analysis of the poem “Requiem” by Anna Akhmatova shows how the heroine’s personal experiences are increasingly acquiring the universal scale of human grief and incredible resilience.

The culmination of the work

In the chapters “Sentence”, “To Death”, “Crucifixion” the mother’s emotional state reaches its climax.

What awaits her? Death, when you no longer fear a shell, a typhoid child, or even a “blue top”? For a heroine who has lost the meaning of life, she will become a salvation. Or madness and a petrified soul that allows you to forget about everything? It is impossible to convey in words what a person feels at such a moment: “... it’s someone else who is suffering. I couldn’t do that...”

The central place in the poem is occupied by the chapter “Crucifixion”. This is the biblical story of the crucifixion of Christ, which Akhmatova reinterpreted. “Requiem” is an analysis of the condition of a woman who has lost her child forever. This is the moment when “the heavens melted in fire” - a sign of a catastrophe on a universal scale. The phrase is filled with deep meaning: “And where the Mother stood silently, no one dared to look.” And the words of Christ, trying to console the closest person: “Don’t cry for me, Mother...”. “Crucifixion” sounds like a verdict to any inhuman regime that dooms a mother to unbearable suffering.

"Epilogue"

The analysis of Akhmatova’s work “Requiem” completes the determination of the ideological content of its final part.

The author raises in the “Epilogue” the problem of human memory - this is the only way to avoid the mistakes of the past. And this is also an appeal to God, but the heroine asks not for herself, but for everyone who was next to her at the red wall for 17 long months.

The second part of the “Epilogue” echoes the famous poem by A. Pushkin “I erected a monument to myself...”. The theme in Russian poetry is not new - it is the poet’s determination of his purpose on Earth and a certain summing up of creative results. Anna Andreevna's desire is that the monument erected in her honor should not stand on the seashore where she was born, and not in the garden of Tsarskoye Selo, but near the walls of the Crosses. It was here that she spent the most terrible days of her life. Just like thousands of other people of an entire generation.

The meaning of the poem "Requiem"

“These are 14 prayers,” A. Akhmatova said about her work in 1962. Requiem - the analysis confirms this idea - not only for his son, but for all the innocently destroyed, physically or spiritually, citizens of a large country - this is exactly how the poem is perceived by the reader. This is a monument to the suffering of a mother's heart. And a terrible accusation thrown at the totalitarian system created by “Usach” (the poetess’s definition). It is the duty of future generations to never forget this.