Requiem and Poem without a Hero

Anna Akhmatova, D. M. Thomas

• Publisher: Swallow Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780804011952
• eBook ISBN:
  9780804040884
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

With this edition Swallow Press presents two of Anna Akhmatova's best-known works that represent the poet at full maturity, and that most trenchantly process the trauma she and others experienced living under Stalin's regime.

Akhmatova began the three-decade process of writing "Requiem" in 1935 after the arrests of her son, Lev Gumilev, and her third husband. The autobiographical fifteen-poem cycle primarily chronicles a mother's wait—lining up outside Leningrad Prison every day for seventeen months—for news of her son's fate. But from this limbo, Akhmatova expresses and elevates the collective grief for all the thousands vanished under the regime, and for those left behind to speculate about their loved ones' fates. Similarly, Akhmatova wrote "Poem without a Hero" over a long period. It takes as its focus the transformation of Akhmatova's beloved city of St. Petersburg—historically a seat of art and culture—into Leningrad. Taken together, these works plumb the foremost themes for which Akhmatova is known and revered. When Ohio University Press published D. M. Thomas's translations in 1976, it was the first time they had appeared in English. Under Thomas's stewardship, Akhmatova's words ring clear as a bell.

Poem without a Hero

a triptych
1940–1962
Leningrad – Tashkent – Moscow

Di rider finirai

Pria dell’aurora

Don Giovanni

Foreword

Deus conservat omnia

motto on the coat of arms of the House on the Fontanka

Some are no more, others are distant . . .

The poem first came to me, in the House on the Fontanka, on the night of 27 December 1940, though I had been forewarned by a brief fragment the previous autumn. I did not summon it, I did not even expect it, on that cold and dark day of my last winter in Leningrad.

That night I wrote ‘1913’ and a dedication. Early in January I wrote, almost to my surprise, ‘Obverse’; and later, in Tashkent, ‘Epilogue’, which was to become part three, together with some important additions to the first two parts. I continued to work on the poem after my return to Leningrad on 1 June 1944.

I frequently hear of certain absurd interpretations of Poem without a Hero. And I have been advised to make it clearer. This I decline to do. It contains no third, seventh, or twenty-ninth thoughts. I shall neither explain nor change anything. What is written is written.

I dedicate the poem to the memory of its first audience—my friends and fellow citizens who perished in Leningrad during the siege. Their voices I hear, and I remember them, when I read my poem aloud, and for me this secret chorus has become a permanent justification of the work.

Dedicatory Poems

1

in memory of Vs.K.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Having run out of paper,

I am writing on your rough draft.

And a word which is not mine

Occasionally shows through

Only to melt, trustingly, without reproach,

As snowflakes, once, on my hand.

And the dark eyelashes of Antinoüs

Lifted suddenly—and the green smoke

[10] And our native breeze gently blew . . .

Isn’t it the sea?

No, it’s only graveyard

Pine-needles, and in a boiling of foam,

Still closer, closer . . .

Marche funèbre . . .

Chopin . . .

2

to O.A.G-S.

Is it you, my blundering Psyche,

Waving your black-and-white fan,

Who lean over me?

[20] Do you wish to tell me in secret

You’ve already crossed the Lethe

And are breathing another spring?

You needn’t tell me, I can hear it:

A warm downpour is pressing on the roof,

I hear whispering in the ivy.

Someone small has made up his mind to live,

Has turned green—tomorrow, fluffed up,

Will try to strut in a new cloak.

I sleep—

[30] She alone leans over me,

She whom people call spring

I call loneliness.

I sleep—I dream

Of our youth.

That cup which passed him by

I’ll give you, if you wish, as a keepsake:

Like a pure flame in clay,

Like a snowdrop in a grave.

3

I have frozen enough with terror,

[40] Better summon up a Bach chaconne,

And behind it will come a man

Who won’t become my husband, yet together

We shall deserve such things

That the twentieth century will stand agape.

He will be late, this foggy night,

Coming to drink the new year wine

In the palace on the Fontanka.

And he will remember the epiphany,

Maple at the window, wedding candles,

[50] A poem’s deathly flight . . .

But he will bring me, not a ring,

The first lilac nor that other sweetness, prayer—

Doom is the gift he’ll bring.

RAISED HIGH, THE NINETEEN-FORTIETH YEAR

IS A TOWER. I CAN SEE ALL.

I’M SAYING GOODBYE, AS IT WERE,

TO WHAT I HAVE LONG ABANDONED;

CROSSING MYSELF, AND DES...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Poem in a Strange Language
• Introduction
• Requiem
• Poem without a Hero
• Notes
• Appendix: Three lyrics from the time of the ‘Petersburg masquerade’