Anna Akhmatova's "Requiem"

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Anna Akhmatova is known as one of the greatest poet in Russia who has written a various amount of literature during her lifetime. Her interest in poetry began as she was a young child, yet her father did not agree with her decision of becoming a poet (Poets). Eventually, Akhmatova attended school, married Nikolai Gumilev, and gave birth to her first son.
She always believed that she was not worthy of motherhood. As a result, her son lived with his grandmother and she would visit him occasionally (Poets). After her book of poetry, Evening, was published, she became very active in the literary scene of St. Petersburg, Russia and was known as the greatest woman poet in the West (Lowe). Soon after, Akhmatova and Gumilev divorced in 1918 and she remarried to two other men. However, one husband died in a gulag and the other one she divorced. Her first husband, Gumilev was executed by the Bolsheviks in 1921 which affected her significantly, even though they were divorced (Poets). Additionally, her son was imprisoned during the Yezhov terror, a time period where Stalin was in power and led a mass terror in Russia. During her son’s imprisonment she wrote, "Requiem", which she dedicated to those who waited alongside her outside the prison to see their loved ones yet didn’t understand what was going on. Akhmatova expresses numerous personal experiences and historical events through "Requiem" which affects the point of view of the poem. Akhmatova wrote her poem, "Requiem", in regard to the “17 months she stood outside [her son’s prison], vainly seeking news of him” (Brooks). Requiem is defined as a song of mourning which honors the life or past of one who has died. As she wrote the poem, she mourns those who have either been imprisoned or ...

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...". The poem was dedicated to all Stalin’s victims, either those who were jailed, executed or waited outside the jails hoping to see their loved ones. Through her personal experiences and past, her first person point of view was exhibited in the poem. Towards the end of Akhmatova’s life, she was known as a woman who was “still beautiful and powerful, but wounded by the tyranny and the war” (Brooks).

Works Cited
"Anna Akhmatova." Poets.org. Academy of American Poets, n.d. Web. 29 Apr. 2014.
Akhmatova, Anna. “"Requiem".” Trans. Stanley Kunitz & Max Hayward. Whole Wide World. Web. 15 Apr 2014.
Brooks, David. “Love Story.” New York Times. 1 May 2104. Web 5 My 2014.
Lowe, B and Dino Mahoney. “The Muse of Keening.” Youtube. 27 Nov 2011. Web 7 Apr 2014.
"Of Russian origin: Stalin's Purges." Stalin's Purges Russiapedia Of Russian origin. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 May 2014.

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