Time in Akhmatova's Requiem poem. The theme of the judgment of time and historical memory in the poem "Requiem". Assessment of the Stalin era
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is one of the greatest poets of the 20th century. A woman whose tenacity and devotion were admired in Russia. The Soviet government first took her husband, then her son, her poetry was banned, and the press persecuted her. But no sorrows could break her spirit. And Akhmatova embodied the trials that befell her in her works. “Requiem,” the history of creation and analysis of which will be discussed in this article, became the poetess’s swan song.
The idea of the poem
In the preface to the poem, Akhmatova wrote that the idea for such a work arose during the years of the Yezhovshchina, which she spent in prison queues, seeking a meeting with her son. One day they recognized her, and one of the women asked if Akhmatova could describe what was happening around her. The poetess replied: “I can.” From that moment on, the idea of the poem was born, as Akhmatova herself claims.
“Requiem,” the creation of which is connected with very difficult years for the Russian people, was suffered through the writer’s suffering. In 1935, the son of Akhmatova and Nikolai Gumilev, Lev Gumilev, was arrested for anti-Soviet activities. Then Anna Andreevna managed to quickly free her son by writing a letter to Stalin personally. But in 1938 a second arrest followed, then Gumilyov Jr. was sentenced to 10 years. And in 1949, the last arrest was made, after which he was sentenced to death, which was later replaced by exile. A few years later he was completely rehabilitated, and the charges were declared unfounded.
Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem” embodied all the sorrows that the poetess endured during these terrible years. But not only family tragedy is reflected in the work. It expressed the grief of all the people who suffered at that terrible time.
First lines
The sketches appeared in 1934. But this was a lyrical cycle, the creation of which was originally planned by Akhmatova. “Requiem” (the history of whose creation is our topic) became a poem later, already in 1938-40. The work was completed already in the 50s.
In the 60s of the 20th century, the poem, published in samizdat, enjoyed enormous popularity and was passed from hand to hand. This is due to the fact that the work was banned. Akhmatova suffered a lot to preserve her poem.
"Requiem": history of creation - first publication
In 1963, the text of the poem went abroad. Here in Munich, the work is officially published for the first time. Russian emigrants appreciated the poem; the publication of these poems confirmed the opinion of Anna Andreevna’s poetic talent. However, the full text of “Requiem” saw the light only in 1987, when it was published in the magazine “October”.
Analysis
The theme of Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem” is the suffering of a person for his loved ones, whose life hangs in the balance. The work consists of poems written in different years. But they are all united by a mournful and mournful sound, which is already included in the title of the poem. A requiem is something intended for a funeral service.
In her prosaic preface, Akhmatova states that the work was written at someone else’s request. Here the tradition laid down by Pushkin and Nekrasov manifested itself. That is, fulfilling the order of a common man, who embodies the will of the people, speaks of the civic orientation of the entire work. Therefore, the heroes of the poem are all those people who stood with her under the “red blind wall.” The poetess writes not only about her own grief, but also about the suffering of the entire people. Therefore, her lyrical “I” is transformed into a large-scale and all-encompassing “we”.
The first part of the poem, written in three-foot anapest, speaks of its folklore orientation. And the images (dawn, a dark room, an arrest similar to the removal of a body) create an atmosphere of historical authenticity and lead to the depths of centuries: “I am like the Streltsy’s wives.” Thus, the suffering of the lyrical heroine is interpreted as timeless, familiar to women even in the years of Peter the Great.
The second part of the work, written in trochaic tetrameter, is designed in the style of a lullaby. The heroine no longer laments or cries, she is calm and restrained. However, this humility is feigned; real madness grows inside her from the grief she is experiencing. At the end of the second part, everything in the thoughts of the lyrical heroine is confused, madness takes possession of her completely.
The culmination of the work was the chapter “Towards Death”. Here main character ready to die in any way: at the hands of a bandit, illness, “shell.” But there is no deliverance for the mother, and she literally turns to stone from grief.
Conclusion
Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem” carries the pain and suffering of the entire Russian people. And not only those experienced in the 20th century, but also over all the past centuries. Anna Andreevna does not describe her life with documentary accuracy; she talks about Russia’s past, its present and future.
The era that Anna Akhmatova describes in her work “Requiem” surprises with the number of life difficulties, tragedies, and trials that befell the common people. The country experienced a lot of events in the 1930s and 1940s. They are reflected in various types art.
In the poem "Requiem" the signs of that time are clearly visible. A.A. Akhmatova skillfully selects piercing words that make you feel the atmosphere of the work. “Everyone there spoke in a whisper,” writes the poetess. This indicates people's fear. Fear of speaking loudly. Fear to speak. “...the numbness characteristic of us all,” notes A. Akhmatova. People felt confused and in a daze. The capital of our country, according to the author, has become wild. The image of this significant sign of the times develops; in the finale of the work, not only the capital, but also the women are wild, because their “Smile withers on the lips of the submissive, // And fear trembles in a dry laugh.”
One of the clearly visible signs of that time were prisons.
There were a lot of them, as A. Akhmatova emphasizes: “And Leningrad hung like an unnecessary hanger, // Near its prisons.”
The 1930s-1940s appear in the reader’s imagination as scary, gloomy, and frightening. A. Akhmatova excellently carried the tense mood throughout the entire poem. In her every word one can feel pain, anguish, suffering, and this is also a sign of that time. The construction of the new cannot be accomplished without the destruction of the old. However, how difficult, bloody and painful the destruction of the old system turned out to be! The signs of the times that permeate the poem make it possible to recreate the life and feelings of people of a given time. I admire A. Akhmatova's work "Requiem". She was able to display the signs of the times, create the image of a woman in those years and create a masterpiece of Russian poetry.
Assessment of the Stalin era.
Even today, there is quite a lot of debate about what impact the Stalin era had on our country: positive or negative?
In my opinion, despite the fact that during the reign of Joseph Stalin a great leap was made in the development of industry, construction and education, this period of time still, it seems to me, is negative, since it entailed a lot of blood and troubles for the population of the USSR.
Firstly, At the XV Congress of the All-Union Communist Party of Bolsheviks in 1927, a decision was made to carry out the collectivization of agricultural production in the USSR - the liquidation of individual peasant farms and their unification into collective farms. The background for the transition to collectivization was the grain procurement crisis of 1927. The idea that peasants were holding back grain became widespread.
Collectivization was accompanied by the so-called “dekulakization.” The authorities' measures to carry out collectivization led to massive resistance among the peasants. Mass slaughter of livestock began and refusal to join collective farms began. Already on the first day of the event, the OGPU arrested about 16 thousand kulaks. In total, in 1930-1931, 381,026 families with a total number of 1,803,392 people were sent to special settlements. During the years 1932-1940, another 489,822 dispossessed people arrived in special settlements. Hundreds of thousands of people died in exile. In March 1930 alone, the OGPU counted 6,500 riots, 800 of which were suppressed using weapons.
Secondly, in 1932, a number of regions of the USSR were struck by famine, called “Stalin’s worst atrocity.” The victims of hunger were the simplest workers, for whose sake social experiments were carried out. The death toll was 6-8 million people.
According to a number of historians, the famine of 1932-1933 was artificial: as A. Roginsky stated, the state had the opportunity to reduce its scale and consequences, but did not do so. The root cause of the famine was the strengthening of the collective farm system and political regime through repressive methods.
Third, 1937-1938 was the period of mass repressions (“Great Terror”). The campaign was initiated and supported by Stalin personally and caused extreme damage to the economy and military power Soviet Union. Entire groups of the population came under suspicion: former “kulaks”, former participants in various internal party oppositions, persons of a number of nationalities foreign to the USSR, suspected of “double loyalty”, and even the military.
Together with those who died during this period in the Gulag, correctional labor institutions and prisons, as well as political prisoners executed under criminal charges, the number of victims for 1937-1938 was about 1 million people.
Thus, during the period 1921-1953, up to 10 million people passed through the GULAG, and in total from 1930 to 1953, according to various researchers, from 3.6 to 3.8 million people were arrested on political charges alone, of which 748 were shot. 786 thousand people. Also during this period, the USSR lost many talented figures of culture, art and science. Based on all this, we can conclude that the Stalin era caused damage to the population and, to some extent, to the development of the USSR.
Igor Vasilyevich Kurchatov - Soviet physicist, creator of the Soviet atomic bomb. Born on January 8, 1903 in the city of Sim.
He is the founder and first director of the Institute of Atomic Energy from 1943 to 1960, and one of the founders of the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Simultaneously with his studies at the Simferopol men's state gymnasium, he graduated from an evening vocational school, received a specialty as a mechanic and worked in a small mechanical plant Thyssen.
In September 1920 he entered the Tauride University, Faculty of Physics and Mathematics.
Since 1930, head of the physics department of the Leningrad Institute of Physics and Technology.
In February 1960, Kurchatov came to the Barvikha sanatorium to visit his friend Academician Khariton. Sitting down on a bench, they started talking, suddenly there was a pause, and when Khariton looked at Kurchatov, he was already dead. Death was due to cardiac embolism with a thrombus.
After his death on February 7, 1960, the scientist’s body was cremated, and the ashes were placed in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.
Igor Kurchatov– soviet physicist, founder of the Soviet atomic bomb. He was born on January 8, 1903 in of Shem.
He is the founder and first director of the Institute of Atomic Energy from 1943 to 1960, as well as one of the founders of the use of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Along with his studies at the Simferopol gymnasium breech men he graduated from the evening craft school, got a locksmith profession and worked in a small mechanical factory Thyssen.
In September 1920, he entered the Tauride University in the Physics and Mathematics Faculty.
Since 1930, the head of the physical department of the Leningrad Physico-Technical Institute.
In February 1960, Kurchatov arrived to the Barvikha sanatorium to visit his friend Academician Khariton. Sitting on the bench, they started talking, all of a sudden there was a pause, and when looked at Chariton Kurchatov, he was already dead. Death was due to thrombus embolism heart.
After the death of 7 February 1960 the scientist's body was cremated and the ashes placed in the Kremlin wall on Red Square in Moscow.
The theme of the judgment of time and historical memory in the poem "Requiem".
All times have their chroniclers. Anna Akhmatova was just such a poet-chronicler. She left behind unique and sincere poetry. Her best poem “Requiem” represents an emotional diary and the most truthful chronicle of time.
“Requiem” is a work about the death of people, a country, and the foundations of existence. The most common word in the poem is “death.” It is always close, but never accomplished. A person lives and understands that he must move on, live and remember.
The last words of the text for the poem written in 1957 (“Instead of a preface”) are a direct quote from this poem. When one of the women standing next to A. Akhmatova in line barely audibly asked: “Can you describe this?” She replied: “I can.”
Gradually, poems were born about the terrible time that was experienced together with all the people. It was they who composed the poem “Requiem,” which became a tribute to the mournful memory of the people killed during the years of Stalin’s tyranny.
Reading the great pages, you are amazed at the courage and perseverance of a woman who managed not only to survive all this with dignity, but also to melt her own and other people’s suffering into poetry.
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.
Sentence...
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...
Not a single true document of history gives such emotional intensity as the work of Anna Akhmatova.
I've been screaming for seventeen months, 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?
The poem was written intermittently for twenty-six years, life changed, Akhmatova became older and wiser. The work, like a patchwork quilt, is collected from the most acute episodes of Russian reality. Years of repression have left an indelible pain on the country and the souls of the people.
And the stone word fell
On my still living chest.
Nothing, because I was ready
I'll deal with this somehow.
I have a lot to do today:
We must kill the memory to the end,
It is necessary for the soul to turn to stone,
We must learn to live again.
In a short poem, Anna Andreevna managed to philosophically comprehend and convey the mood of the most tragic episode of Russian history, when the destinies and lives of millions of citizens of the country were broken. Thanks to the courage of A. Akhmatova and others like her, we know the truth about that terrible time.
It was when I smiled
Only the dead, happy with peace.
And an unnecessary appendage, dangling
Near the prisons of their Leningrad.
And when, maddened by torment,
The already condemned regiments were marching,
And a short song of parting
The locomotive whistles sang,
Stars and death stood above us,
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the black Marus tires.
LESSON SUMMARY
The theme of the judgment of time and historical memory in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem"
The purpose of the lesson
The personal result is to realize the tragedy of the country in the era of Stalinist repressions, the need to preserve the memory of the terrible years in the country’s history, the value of a democratic society.
The meta-subject result is to be able to analyze textual information, independently formulate and solve cognitive problems based on information analysis, and establish logical connections.
The objective result is to know the history of the creation of A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”, the genre and compositional features of the work associated with the features of the narrative, to see the connection of the poem with works of oral folk art, to correlate the critics’ assessment with one’s own assessment, to construct a detailed coherent statement.
Purpose of the stage:
Creating a working environment in the lesson, formulating topics and goals.
Teacher activities
Lesson topic message.
Good afternoon. Continuing to study the work of A.A. Akhmatova, today we are getting acquainted with another of her works - the poem “Requiem”. So, the topic of the lesson is the theme of the judgment of time and historical memory in the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem". Try to formulate the purpose of the lesson.
Student activities
Formulating the purpose of the lesson based on the announced topic.
Possible student answers
Since the poem is called “Requiem”, the theme indicates the concepts of “court of time”, “historical memory”, it is necessary to use an example literary text show the great importance of moral guidelines for a person, especially in tragic years
2. Check homework(find out the meaning of the word “requiem” and determine the role of the toponym Fountain House in Akhmatova’s life)
Purpose of the stage:
Checking homework allows you to create a problematic situation in the lesson, which helps to increase student motivation and increase interest in the personality of A. Akhmatova, in the events described in the poem.
Teacher activities
A story about the history of the creation and publication of the poem "Requiem". Student assignment: Why is the final title of the poem “Requiem”? It is important that students are able to understand the broad historical, socially significant aspect of Akhmatova’s poem.
She worked on the lyrical cycle “Requiem”, which Akhmatova would later call a poem, in 1934-40. and in the early 60s. “Requiem” was learned by heart by people whom Akhmatova trusted, and there were no more than ten of them. Manuscripts, as a rule, were burned, and only in 1962 Akhmatova transferred the poem to the editorial office of Novy Mir. By this time, the poem was already widely circulated among readers in samizdat lists (in some lists the poem bore a competing name - “Fountain House”). One of the lists went abroad and was first published as a separate book in 1963 in Munich.
With the publication of “Requiem,” Akhmatova’s work takes on a new historical, literary and social meaning.
Explain why in the final version the poem is called “Requiem” (not “Requiem”, not “Fountain House”)?
Student activities
Students' activities are based on homework - working with a dictionary and reference books.
Possible student answers
Requiem is a Catholic service for the dead, as well as a piece of mourning music. Akhmatova often calls the poem in Latin “Requiem”.
Latin text: “Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine” (“Eternal rest grant them, O Lord!”)
Fountain House - this was the name of the estate of Count Sheremetev (to distinguish it from others in St. Petersburg), this is Akhmatova’s place of residence in Leningrad. Now this is Akhmatova's house-museum. The Fountain House was perceived by contemporaries not as Akhmatova’s real habitat, but as an image directly related to her poetry. This concept is not so much geographical as poetic. Probably used as a symbol of creativity for the poetess. "Requiem" was written here.
The Latin title of the poem could evoke literary and musical associations (“Requiem” by Mozart, “Mozart and Salieri” by Pushkin).
Obviously, the name “Fountain House” would contain a lot of personal things, which means it would be unclear to the reader. There is a lot of detachment in the Latin version. The Russian version, without violating broad cultural associations, contains a generalization, a symbol of Death and Memory.
The epigraph to the poem was added in 1961. Thus, the content of the poem cannot be reduced to a personal tragedy, it is a “folk” poem, historical.
Teacher activities
If the class could not find information at home, it is proposed to work with a dictionary in the class - to determine the meaning of the word "requiem", to recall the material of previous lessons about the life of Akhmatova, which indicated her place of residence in Leningrad - the Fountain House.
3. Studying new educational material.
Purpose of the stage:
Development of skills in analyzing poetic text.
Student activities
Students are invited to study Akhmatova’s poem in groups.
Consider in which chapters the problem of historical memory and the judgment of time is most acute (in the chapters written on behalf of the mother, on behalf of the historian, on behalf of the poet). Think about why the author needed such polyphony. What literary traditions does Akhmatova continue in her poem? Solve the problem: is it really, according to A.I. Solzhenitsyn “It was a tragedy of the people, but in your case it is only a tragedy of mother and son”?
At this stage of the lesson, while working with the text, the reader's competence of students is formed (the ability to choose material that corresponds to the tasks, analyze, highlight the main thing). In addition, working in groups, students communicate with each other, process information, convey it to each member of the group (the formation of students' communicative competence).
For more successful completion of the task, students are encouraged to record the results of observations in a notebook.
Each group is given supporting questions.
1 group
Whose traditions does A. Akhmatova continue when speaking about the role of the poet in the life of society?
What are the names of the place and time in these chapters? Why indirectly?
What general cultural images appear in these chapters? What is the role of these images?
The angry voice of the poet - a suffering citizen of his country - is heard in six chapters of the poem. Akhmatova, continuing the Pushkin tradition (the role of the poet is “to burn the hearts of people with the verb”), already in the epigraph declares her position - “I was then with my people, where my people, unfortunately, were.” Akhmatova does not name the exact place and time in the epigraph - “I was Then with my people there, where my people, unfortunately, were.” “Then” - “in the terrible years of Yezhovshchina”, “there” - in the camp, behind barbed wire, in exile, in prison - means together; does not say "at home" - creates an image through the negation of "not under an alien firmament."
“Instead of a preface” is a kind of testament to the poet, an order to “write.” Testament - because everyone standing in this line is desperate, living in their own world of fear. And only a poet, sharing the fate of the people, can loudly declare what is happening. This part of the poem ideologically echoes Pushkin’s lines: “Then the woman standing behind me asked me in my ear:
- Can you describe this?
And I said
- Can." To truthfully reflect the realities of life, even in a situation where people are afraid to talk about it - this is the task of the poet.
This voice, describing events as if “from the outside,” will sound in chapter 10, which is a poetic metaphor: the poet, seeing as if from the outside, conveys the whole tragedy happening to the Mother. Each of the mothers who have lost their son is like the Mother of God, and there are no words that can convey her condition, her feeling of guilt, her powerlessness at the sight of her son’s suffering and death. The poetic parallel continues: if Jesus died, atoning for all the sins of mankind, then why does the son die, whose sins he must atone for? Are they not their own executioners? The Mother of God has been mourning every innocent child who dies for many centuries, and any mother who loses her son is close to her in the degree of her pain.
And in the “Epilogue” (in part 1), the mother again cedes the right to the poet to narrate: “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 red, blinding wall ." It’s difficult to change something - all you can do is pray.
Second group
What is the genre feature of the chapters written from the mother’s point of view?
What lexical feature of the chapters can you note?
Which literary associations can you name it?
Possible group response:
The mother's voice is heard in seven chapters (1,2, 5-9). This story about the past, about one’s fate, about the fate of one’s son is monotonous, like a prayer, reminiscent of lamentation or crying: “I will, like the Streltsy wives, howl under the Kremlin towers” (written in accordance with the traditions of folklore genres: the abundance of repetitions is proof of this: “quiet” - “quiet”, “yellow month” - “yellow month”, “enters” - “enters”, “this woman” - “this woman”; the appearance of images of a river, a month). The verdict of fate has already been realized: madness and death are perceived as the highest happiness and salvation from the horror of life. Natural forces predict the same outcome.
Each chapter of the mother’s monologue becomes more and more tragic. The laconicism of the ninth is especially striking: death does not come, memory lives on. She becomes the main enemy: “We must completely kill the memory.” And neither the poet nor the historian comes to the rescue - the mother’s grief is very personal, she suffers alone.
Third group
How is the era described by the historian presented? In what chapters?
What realities emphasize the authenticity of the events described?
Possible group answer
Historical realities are dissolved in many chapters. When does everything happen? "In the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina." Where? “Where my people, unfortunately, were” - in Russia, in Leningrad. The historian’s voice is heard directly in two chapters - in the “Introduction” and in the second part of the “Epilogue”.
The era in which the people are destined to suffer is described quite figuratively and visibly, very harshly: “... innocent Rus' writhed under the bloody boots and under the tires of the “black marus”.” Who is the victim? All the people, “condemned regiments.” Who is the executioner? It is only named once: “Throwing himself at the feet of the executioner.” He's alone. But there are his assistants driving around in “black Marussia”. They are defined by only one detail - “the top of the cap is blue.” Since they are non-humans, there is nothing more to say about them. The executioner is not named, but it is clear: he is the Master of the country.
The last chapter presents the story of the tormented soul of the people: one half of it in prisons are husbands and sons, the other half is in prison queues, these are mothers and wives. All of Russia is in this queue.
The result of observing all groups could be as follows:
There is a noticeable contradiction in the poem: the mother dreams of oblivion - this is the only opportunity to stop suffering, the poet and historian call on memory for help - without it it is impossible to remain faithful to the past for the sake of the future.
4. Reinforcement of educational material
Purpose of the stage:
Consolidation of material, formation of value-semantic competencies.
Students are invited to draw a conclusion based on the observations made, to express their agreement or disagreement with the words of A.I. Solzhenitsyn. The answer is to motivate.
In which chapters does the problem of historical memory and the judgment of time sound most acute (in chapters written on behalf of the mother, on behalf of the historian, on behalf of the poet). Why did the author need such polyphony? What literary traditions does Akhmatova continue in her poem? Solve the problem: is it really, according to A.I. Solzhenitsyn “It was a tragedy of the people, but in your case it is only a tragedy of mother and son”?
It may be difficult for students to answer unequivocally: whose “voice” in the poem is decisive, and this fact once again proves: the poem is not about the personal tragedy of a woman, as A.I. claims. Solzhenitsyn. A poem about the tragedy of the entire people. And it was decided in accordance with the traditions of literature (similar to Pushkin’s poetry and oral folk art). Memory is the determining factor.
Two thousand years ago, the people condemned the son of God to execution, betraying him. And now the whole people, betraying each other, is in a hurry to execute. In fact, the executioners are the people themselves. They are silent, they endure, they suffer, they betray. The poet describes what is happening, feeling guilty for the people.
The words of “Requiem” are addressed to all fellow citizens. To those who planted and to those who sat. And in this sense, this is a deeply folk work. The short poem shows a bitter page in the life of the people. The three voices heard in it are intertwined with the voices of an entire generation, an entire people. The autobiographical line only makes the picture of the universal global more heartfelt and personal.
5. Homework
Purpose of the stage:
To update students’ knowledge of previously studied material, to correlate the material discussed in class with the Unified State Exam assignments in Russian language and literature.
Students are asked to recall works of Russian literature that raise the same problem as the poem by A.A. Akhmatova’s “Requiem”, comment on this problem, explain its relevance.
Biblical images and motifs in A. Akhmatova’s poem “Requiem”
Almost everyone who wrote about “Requiem” drew attention to the fact that modernity is conveyed in the poem with the help of biblical analogies, that the images and motifs of Holy Scripture become for Akhmatova a means of artistic comprehension of reality, and paintings of the Apocalypse are a symbol of her era.
Only taking into account the sinister essence of Stalinist totalitarianism, the true meaning of the events that Akhmatova happened to be a witness, one can understand how difficult it was for the poet to choose an adequate scale for what was happening for the artistic embodiment of these events. The choice made by Akhmatova in "Requiem" was dictated by the era - the tragic era of the thirties. Did Akhmatova herself recognize herself as a creator, the author of a new Apocalypse? Or the realization of this came to her later: “In 1936, I start writing again, but my handwriting has changed, but my voice already sounds different. horse from then unborn poems..."1.
The very title of the poem, offering a certain genre key to the work, simultaneously sets that specific coordinate system in which it is only possible to comprehend the artistic image of the world created by the poet. Let us remember that a “requiem” is a funeral Catholic service, a funeral mass for the deceased; the more general meaning of this word is the remembrance of the dead, a memorial prayer. From this point of view, the confession that Akhmatova once made one day seems highly symbolic: “Requiem” is fourteen prayers.”2 Despite the fact that the metaphorical meaning of this author’s “late assessment” is obvious, the echoes and coincidences of Akhmatova’s text with the Bible are those that are deliberately emphasized , and those that may seem random - amaze and make you think. The entire "Requiem" is literally permeated with biblical imagery. And to reconstruct, "revive" the chain leading to the most ancient ancestral texts of our culture, to decipher the "biblical secret writing" (R. Timenchik) of the poem - very important.
The true scale of the events discussed in the poem is indicated by the first lines of the “Dedication”: “Before this grief the mountains bend, / The great river does not flow...”3
Recreating the image of a world in which all the usual and stable parameters have shifted and distorted, these lines introduce the work into the space of the biblical text, making one recall apocalyptic pictures and images: “The mountains will move and the hills will be shaken...” (Isa. 54, 10); “And the heaven was hidden, rolled up like a scroll; and every mountain and island was removed from its places...” (Rev. 6:14)
A sign of the Apocalyptic world is also the image of a frozen “great river” that has stopped the flow of its waters. Despite the fact that both the image of the Don and the image of the Yenisei appear in the poem, the “great river” is, of course, the Neva, the image of which frames the poem and encloses it in a ring. The Neva in the poem is both a sign of the apocalyptic world and an image of the “Leta-Neva”, a “pass to immortality” - a signal of connection to eternal time.
The biblical context, clearly manifested in the poem, clearly highlights another semantic facet of the image of the “great river”. Behind the image of the Neva in the "Requiem" one can also guess the biblical image of the "Babylonian River", on the banks of which the devastated people sit and cry, remembering their past. Such associations do not arise by chance: it sounds piercing and tragic in "Requiem" main topic Psalm 136 "On the rivers of Babylon ..." - the theme of the "captivity" of the godless people by godless power: "By the rivers of Babylon, we sat there and wept when we remembered Zion; on the willows, in the middle of it, we hung our harps. There they captivated they demanded from us words of song, and our oppressors demanded joy..." (Ps. 136: 1-3)
If the Neva in the "Requiem" is perceived as the Babylonian River, then it is natural that Leningrad can be comprehended in the semantic space of the poem as a devastated land, a "foreign land". Refracted in the poem, these biblical images are actualized in the "Requiem" and another theme that sounds distinctly in the psalm "On the Rivers of Babylon ..." - forced silence, or otherwise - "hung lyre": "... on the willows ... they hung we are our harps" (Ps. 136:3). The theme of forced silence, which came from the psalm, acquires a special poignancy in Akhmatova's poem. The question put into the mouth of King David, who speaks on behalf of the ancient Jews: "How can we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land?" they will clamp my exhausted mouth, / With which a hundred million people scream ... "(3, 29) Lines from the Book of Genesis could become an epigraph, if not to all of Akhmatova's work, then at least to her two tragic decades: first - a period of forced silence, then the inability to speak out loud. "How can we sing the song of the Lord in a foreign land?..." This question fits into the context of the "Requiem" especially organically.
The image of the captive city, in which it is impossible to sing, merges in the "Requiem" with the image of the "wild" city. The epithet "wild" ("... We walked through the capital wild"), the use of which in relation to the capital, the city, seems unexpected, also refers to the Bible. Fitting into the context of Psalm 136, the image of the wild city at the same time goes back to the "Book of the prophet Zephanin": "Woe to the unclean and defiled city, the oppressor! ...
Its princes in its midst are roaring lions, its judges are wolves of the evening, not leaving a single bone until the morning...
I have destroyed the nations, their strongholds have been destroyed; He made their streets empty, so that no one walked on them anymore; their cities are devastated: there is not a single man, there is no inhabitant" (Zeph. 3: 1-6)
The years spent by the heroine in prison queues are called “frenzied” in “Requiem.” It must be said that this adjective did not appear by chance in the poem about the bloody years of Stalin’s repressions. It not only expresses here an extreme degree of emotional assessment of modern reality and is to some extent synonymous with the adjective “wild,” but also, echoing the entire figurative system of the poem, turns out to be conditioned by its biblical context. In the poem, the “terrible years of the hedgehog” are also rabid, and, of course, Leningrad itself is a captive and ruined city, a “wild” city. In the semantic space of the poem, the image of the frantic years and, more broadly, the frenzied city correlates with one of the main images of the poem - the image of a star, which is certainly central in the picture of the apocalyptic world that Akhmatova artistically builds. It is interesting that the very closeness of these images turns out to be determined by the biblical text: the star in the Apocalypse is understood as Satan, who is thrown from heaven to earth. If the Angels in the biblical text are likened to the stars (Job 38:7; Rev. 12:4), then Satan, being an archangel, is the “star of the stars”, i.e. bright star (Isa. 14:12).
The image of a star, huge, frozen and bright, being the main symbol of the coming Apocalypse in the poem, is directly correlated by Akhmatova with death and is rigidly inscribed in the picture of a universal catastrophe4. The fact that the star in the poem is an apocalyptic image, an ominous symbol of death, is eloquently indicated, first of all, by the context in which it appears in the poem:
Death stars stood above us
And innocent Rus' writhed
Under bloody boots
And under the black tires there is marusa.
(3, 23)
And looks straight into my eyes
And threatened with imminent death
Huge star.
(3, 25)
In addition, the appearance of the image of a star, or more precisely, “death stars,” is prepared in the poem by images that model the picture of an apocalyptic world: a river that has stopped its flow, displaced mountains, a “darkened” sun. By the way, the line “The sun is lower and the Neva is foggy...” itself is perceived as a hidden quote from the Apocalypse: “... and the sun and the air were darkened by the smoke from the well” (Rev. 9: 3).
Akhmatova’s image of a star, bright and falling, goes back to the Bible, its symbolism turns out to be directly correlated with the biblical understanding of the image, and the poem’s echoes with the Book of Genesis are sometimes quite expressive: “... And suddenly, after the sorrow of those days, the sun will darken, and the moon will not will give his light, and the stars will fall from heaven..." (Matthew 24:29). The image of a star appears especially often in the Apocalypse: “The third angel sounded, and a great star fell from heaven, burning like a lamp, and fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water” (Rev. 8:10). “The fifth angel sounded, and I saw a Star fall from heaven to the Earth, and the key to the pit of the deep was given to her. She opened the pit of the deep, and smoke came out of the pit like smoke from a great furnace; and the sun was darkened and the air from the smoke from locusts came out of the smoke onto the earth..." (Rev. 9:1-3)
The image of the star appears in “Requiem” and again in the chapter “Towards Death”:
I don't care now. The Yenisei flows,
The polar star is shining.
And the blue sparkle of beloved eyes
The final horror eclipses.
(3, 27)
The title of the chapter confirms: and this time the “eternal image” of the Holy Scripture fits into the general semantics of the Apocalypse of the poem, and this time the star is an ominous symbol of death, a sign of a different reality. The quoted lines inevitably explicate the image of Mandelstam, about tragic fate which Akhmatova by this time, if she didn’t know exactly, then guessed: “the blue sparkle of her beloved eyes...”. And the echoes that arise in the context of the chapter with Mandelstam’s 1922 poem “The wind brought us comfort...” actualize, additionally highlight the “biblical” sound of Akhmatova’s image, force us to read it here, in the “Requiem”, first of all, as a biblical :
There is a blind corner in the azure,
And always on blissful afternoons,
Like a hint from the thickening night,
The fatal star trembles5.
It is quite natural to assume that the image of a star in the space of Akhmatova’s text could also be associated with the Kremlin stars, which became a universal symbol of the era of Stalin’s terror. This kind of allusion did not deny the biblical context prominently displayed in the poem as the main one, decisive in the interpretation of the image; rather, they also contributed to its identification. The Kremlin stars, being a symbol of the Kremlin - the place where the tyrant “nestled”, in the era of the 30s were directly associated with death and the threat of the Apocalypse. Understandable and close to Akhmatova’s contemporaries, these “external”, at first glance, associations organically fit into the biblical context of the poem.
An analysis of the cultural memory of “Requiem” convincingly shows how the associative series directly related to the theme of death is actualized in the poem, what is the function of the “eternal images” of culture in the text of the work. The role of biblical images and motifs is especially great in the artistic comprehension and embodiment of the idea of death. As we have seen, it is this layer of cultural memory that reconstructs the apocalyptic picture of the world in “Requiem” and helps to recognize the space of death as the main and only reality of the work. “Requiem” is included in the semantic field of death not only by the image-symbols of the Apocalypse discussed above, and not only by the image-details that create a kind of “biblical” background: the goddess, the candle, the cold icon II, etc.; all of them, in the context of Akhmatova’s work, can also be read as attributes of a funeral rite. Among the biblical images, “archetypal for the situation of the Requiem” (L. Kikhney), the main place, of course, is occupied by the images of the crucified Son and the Mother present at the execution.
The appearance in the text of the poem about death of the painting of the Crucifixion, the central episode of the New Testament, receives - on an external, plot level - a completely “realistic” explanation: paintings and images of the New Testament tragedy appear in the heroine’s mind like a vision, a revelation - on the brink of life and death, when “ madness has covered half of the soul..." However, the chapter “Crucifixion” is soldered into the text of “Requiem” much more firmly. All the main semantic lines of the work are concentrated in it.
It is unlikely that one can completely agree with E.G. Etkind, confident that both paintings of the “Crucifixion” “are more likely to go back to generalized pictorial samples than to the gospel source”6. The text of "Requiem" convinces us of the opposite.
The closeness of the “Crucifixion” to its source - the Holy Scriptures is already confirmed by the epigraph to the chapter: “Do not weep for Me, Mother, see in the tomb” (3, 28). Akhmatova’s epigraphs always connect new semantic contexts to the work, actualize the “eternal images” of culture, introduce the text of modernity into the cultural tradition, and often turn out to be the key to reading the entire work. By making the epigraph the words from Irmos IX of the canon of the service on Holy Saturday, Akhmatova, in essence, combines the suffering of the crucified Son and the Mother present at the execution into a single capacious and piercing artistic image. Thus, the composition of the chapter receives its justification: the object of its first fragment is the Son, the object of the second is the Mother.
How great the role of semantic impulses coming from the cited source is, can be fully felt by the first miniature of the chapter:
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...”
(3, 28)
The orientation towards the biblical text is felt already in the first lines of the fragment - in the description of the natural disasters accompanying the execution of Christ. In the Gospel of Luke we read: “...and darkness came over all the earth until the ninth hour: and the sun was darkened, and the curtain of the temple was torn in the middle” (Luke 23:44-45). Jesus' question to the Father, "Why has he forsaken me?" also goes back to the Gospel, being an almost quotative reproduction of the words of the crucified Christ: “At the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice: Elon! Eloi! Lamma Savachthani? - which means: My God! My God! why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34). The words “Oh, don’t cry for Me...” addressed to the mother make one remember the epigraph to the chapter, turning out to be at the same time an inaccurate quotation from the Gospel. Jesus says to the women who accompanied him to execution and to the women who sympathize with him: “...daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for Me, but weep for yourselves and for your children...” (Luke 23:27-28). In other words, the fourth line of the poetic fragment is a contamination of the Gospel text and a quote from the Irmos of the Easter canon, which became the epigraph to the chapter “The Crucifixion”.
It is noteworthy that in the text of the Gospel the words of Jesus are addressed not to his mother, but to the women accompanying him, “who wept and lamented for Him” (Luke 23:27). By addressing the words of the Son directly to the Mother, Akhmatova thereby rethinks the Gospel text. A deliberate discrepancy with tradition, a deviation from the model - with a general clear orientation towards the Biblical source - is intended to reveal the author's intention and emphasize the most essential things in it. This is how the second fragment of the chapter is prepared - the scene of the Crucifixion. By illuminating, or rather building, the space around the Calvary cross in a new way, changing places of stable spatial parameters: the center of the gospel picture and its periphery, Akhmatova, too, here focuses her attention on her mother and her suffering:
Magdalene fought and cried,
The beloved student turned to stone,
And where Mother stood silently,
So no one dared to look.
(3, 28)
So, the understanding of the New Testament tragedy proposed in “Requiem” does not completely fit into the framework of the canon. “In the new, Akhmatova tragedy, the death of the son entails the death of the mother,”7 and therefore the “Crucifixion” created by Akhmatova is the Crucifixion not of the Son, but of the Mother. This is exactly how this climactic scene of the Gospel is read in the Requiem. If we talk about orientation to the Holy Scriptures, then in her interpretation of the central episode of the Gospel, Akhmatova is closer to the Gospel of John. It's the only one! - attention is drawn to the fact that “at the cross of Jesus stood His Mother...” (John 19:25), and it is told how the Son of Man, in the moment of terrible torment, did not forget about his Mother: “Jesus, seeing the Mother and the disciple here standing, whom he loved, says to His Mother: Woman, behold, your son. Then he says to the disciple, behold, your Mother! " (John 19:26-27). One cannot help but be struck by the fact that Mark, Matthew, and Luke, listing by name some of the women present at the execution: “among them was Mary Magdalene, and Mary the mother of James the less, and of Josiah, and of Salom” (Mk. 15, 40), - they didn’t say a word about the Mother.
Akhmatova turns to the highest, most piercing of all that humanity has ever known, an example of maternal suffering - the suffering of the Mother. Maternal love is the earthly analogue of the archetype of the Mother of God, deeply rooted in the human soul.
Despite the fact that Akhmatova, as a believing Christian, revered the Virgin Mary, the image of the Mother of God is not often found in Akhmatova’s work. It first appears in Akhmatova’s poetry in 1912, the year of her son’s birth: “The needles of the corolla caught fire / Around the cloudless forehead...” (1, 105). Having appeared two years later in the prophetic poem "July 1914", the image of the Mother of God will appear only in the early 20s - in the funeral lamentation "Lamentation" (1922) and the lamentation "And now the Smolensk birthday girl..." (1921) , and then leave Akhmatova’s work for a long time. All the more remarkable is his appearance in Requiem. The central opposition of "Requiem" "mother-son" inevitably had to be correlated in Akhmatova's mind with the gospel plot, and the suffering of the mother, who was "separated from only son", - with the suffering of the Mother of God. Therefore, the image of the Mother of God in the "Requiem" is not just one of the "faces" of the heroine, it requires its understanding as one of the main, and perhaps the main, image of the poem. Appeal to the image of the Mother of God helped Akhmatova to indicate the true scale of what was happening, the true depth of grief and suffering that befell the Mother of a Gulag prisoner - and thus create a monumental epic generalization. It is significant that in the "Requiem" the image of the Virgin Mary appears not only in the scene of the Crucifixion, i.e. then, when the poet turns directly to the gospel) plot. This image crowns the poem. Its appearance in the “Epilogue” is symbolic: “For them I wove a wide cover / From the poor, their overheard words” (3, 29).
The mention of the “wide cover” in the “Epilogue” of the poem makes us recall another image - from the 1922 poem “Lamentation”:
The Mother of God sees off,
He wraps his son in a scarf,
Dropped by an old beggar woman
At the Lord's Porch.
(1,387)
But even earlier, the image of the Mother of God, spreading a “wide cover” “over great sorrows,” appears in the finale of the poem “July 1914”: “The Mother of God will spread a white cloth / Over great sorrows” (4, 107).
In the poem “July 1914,” written on the second day after the declaration of war in 1914, the author’s hopes for intercession and deliverance from the troubles caused by the enemy’s invasion of his native country were associated with the image of the Virgin Mary. In the “Lamentation” the meaning of the appearance of the image of the Mother of God is different: this “mournful lament for those who suffered for the faith, for the abandonment of God by the Russian people”8 appeared, as L.G. believes. Kikhney, a response to the seizure of church valuables from churches in 1922. That is why, among other saints, the Mother of God leaves the temple. Both lines of meaning: the idea of the Russian people being forsaken by God and the hope of delivering the country from the power of a tyrant - are united in the “Requiem” in the image of the Mother of God. In all three texts, the image of the Mother of God - the one who spreads “robes over great sorrows”, and the one who “wraps her son in a scarf”, and the one who wove a “wide veil” - also appears as a reminder of the Orthodox holiday of the Intercession Holy Mother of God, “the religious meaning of which is the prayerful intercession of the Mother of God for peace”9.
The figurative echoes of the “Epilogue” and Akhmatova’s earlier works finally convince us that behind the final lines of the poem the image of the Mother of God appears, but this time - and this is the logical conclusion of the main idea of the “Requiem” - the heroine herself appears in the role of the Mother of God: “For them I have woven a wide cover..." Of course, the semantic space of the poem also actualizes the contexts of the named works. Particularly important from this point of view is the dialogical interaction of "Requiem" with the poem "July 1914". Connecting the main semantic impulses of the poem to the poem forces us to read it in the aspect of “fulfilled prophecies” and “last deadlines.” Note: if in 1914 the words of the “one-legged passerby” could still be perceived as a prophecy: “terrible times are approaching...”, then in 1940 Akhmatova already had every reason to bitterly and doomedly state the obvious: “The days predicted have come” ( 1917). The apocalyptic motifs of the “last dates”, “overturned” into the space of the 30s, take on a new meaning in “Requiem”, becoming a direct projection of reality.
Thus, it is impossible to overestimate the role of the “biblical” layer in “Requiem”. Projecting the entire work into the space of death, the “eternal images” of culture convey the basic feeling of the era of the 30s - a feeling of illusoryness, unreality of what is happening, the border between life and death, doom and spiritual catastrophe - a tragic premonition of the end of an era, the death of a generation, one’s own death. Through the symbolism of the Apocalypse, through images of absurd and inverted existence, the “eternal images” of Holy Scripture led Akhmatova to reconstruct a holistic picture of the tragic era bloody terror, to the embodiment of the image of a world that is irrational and catastrophic, but most importantly - doomed to be unsaveable. This is exactly how Akhmatova saw modern reality - “an apocalyptic era that sounded the battle signal for the hunt for humans”10.
Notes
1. Height A. Anna Akhmatova. Poetic journey. Diaries, memoirs, letters of A. Akhmatova. M., 1991. P. 243.
2. Kushner A.S. Akhmatova // Akhmatova Readings. M., 1992. Issue. 3. “I still left my shadow between you…” P. 136.
3. Akhmatova A. Sobr. op. At 6t. M., 1998. T.Z. P. 22. Further references to this publication are given in the text, indicating the volume and page in brackets.
4. The iconic nature of the image of a star in Akhmatova manifests itself quite clearly already in her early work, where this image can least of all be perceived as a landscape detail. Included in a stable semantic field, in the stable symbolism of death, it, as a rule, overturns the entire work into the field of death:
"I am visiting white death
On the road to darkness.
Evil, my affectionate, do not
Nobody in the world."
And there is a big star
Between two trunks
So calmly promising
Fulfillment of words.
(1, 245)
5. Mandelstam O. Works. In 2 vols. M., 1990. T.1. P. 144.
6. Etkind E. G. Immortality of memory. Anna Akhmatova's poem "Requiem" // There, inside. About Russian poetry of the 20th century. St. Petersburg, 1997. P. 358.
7. Leiderman N.L. The burden and greatness of sorrow ("Requiem" in context creative path Anna Akhmatova) // Russian literary classics of the 20th century. Monographic essays. Ekaterinburg, 1996. P. 211.
8. Kikhney L.G. Poetry of Anna Akhmatova Secrets of craft. M., 1997. P. 62.
9. Ibid.
S. V. Burdina
Permian
Philological sciences. - 2001. - No. 6. - P. 3-12.
