The life of this Russian poetess is inextricably linked with the fate of her country. From her poems it is easy to see how the noose tightened and the horror grew more and more intense. It is during these terrible years and a poem was created where the whole of Anna Akhmatova was revealed - “Requiem”. The analysis of this work must begin with when it was written. From 1935 to 1940. It took six whole years to finish the poem, and every year, month and day was filled with sorrow and suffering.

The poem consists of diverse chapters, and each of them carries its own idea. There is also an epigraph that prefaces Akhmatova’s Requiem. Analysis of these few lines reveals why Anna abandoned the idea. The words “I was with my people, where my people, unfortunately, were” brilliantly sparsely outline the entire tragedy of that era. It is interesting that the epigraph was written twenty-one years after the poem, in 1961, after the death of the “father of nations.”

The chapter "Instead of a Preface" also dates from 1957. The poetess felt that for the new generation, which had not seen the horrors of the Yezhovshchina and the terror of the times of Beria, the story would remain incomprehensible. Anna's son was arrested three times over the years. But Akhmatova is not talking about her personal grief. “Requiem,” the analysis of which must be carried out in order to reveal the deep layers of the poetics of those years, tells the story of grief, “to which a hundred million people are screaming.”

Akhmatova, in strong, measured lines, like the roar of a funeral bell, paints a portrait of the entire Soviet Union: countless mothers and brides standing in lines at prison windows to hand over simple food and warm clothes to their loved ones.

The syllable and meter change throughout the entire lyrical cycle: sometimes it is a three-foot anapest, sometimes a free verse, sometimes a four-foot trochee. This is not surprising, since Akhmatova created “Requiem”. Analysis of this poem allows us to draw a direct parallel with Mozart, who wrote a funeral dirge for an unknown customer in black.

Same as "Requiem" genius composer, the poem had a customer. The chapter “Dedication” is written in prose. The reader learns that this customer is “a woman with blue lips” who stood in the same line with Akhmatova at the window in the Leningrad Crosses. “Dedication” and “Introduction” once again emphasize the scope of the repressions that have gripped the country: “Where are now the involuntary friends... of the rabid years?” The ten subsequent chapters, which are titled “The Sentence,” “To Death,” and “The Crucifixion,” once again emphasize that Akhmatova wanted to create a “Requiem.” The analysis of the funeral service echoes the Passion of Christ and the agony of a mother - any mother.

The “Epilogue” with which the work ends is very significant. There, the poetess once again recalls the countless women who went through all the circles of hell with her, and gives a kind of lyrical testament: “And if someday in this country they plan to erect a monument to me... [let them put it in front of the Kresty prison], where I stood for three hundred hours and where the bolt was not opened for me.” Analysis of the poems of Akhmatova, whose works were not written on paper for a long time (because they could be imprisoned for them), but were only learned by heart, which were published in in full only during perestroika, tells us that until the poetess’s will is fulfilled and her monument rises at the “Cross”, the shadow of totalitarianism will hang over the country.

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 To a Stray Dog, that this fragile and thin woman would utter such a cry - feminine, maternal, a cry not only for herself, but for all those who suffer - wives, mothers, brides... Where did it come from? male power verse, its simplicity, the thunder of words, seemingly 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 Epigraph, Instead of a foreword, Dedication, Introduction, 10 chapters (three of which are titled: VII - Sentence, VIII- To death, X - Crucifixion) and Epilogue(consisting of three parts).

Almost the entire "Requiem" was written in 1935-1940, section Instead of a Preface And Epigraph labeled 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.

Epigraph And Instead of a Preface- semantic and musical keys of the work. Epigraph(autoquote from Akhmatova’s 1961 poem “So it was not in vain that we suffered together...”) introduces the epic narrative of a people’s tragedy lyrical theme:

I was then with my people, Where my people, unfortunately, were.

Instead of a 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 “recognized” 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 daze that is common to all of us 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.”

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

Before this grief the mountains bend, the great river does not flow, but the prison gates are strong, and behind them are the 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". Next, in Introduction, we encounter an image of great poetic power and precision:

And Leningrad hung like an unnecessary hanger near its prisons.

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

The poem is characterized by a special sound world. IN notebooks Akhmatova has 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 blows 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 heavens 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:

Magdalena struggled and sobbed, the beloved student turned to stone, and where the Mother stood silently, 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.

Closing the poem Epilogue"switches time" to the present, returning us to the melody and general sense Prefaces And Dedications: The image of the prison queue appears again "under the blinding red wall". Voice lyrical heroine growing stronger, part two Epilogue sounds like a solemn chorale, accompanied by the sounds 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 living. 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:

Because even in blessed death I am afraid to forget the thunder of the black marus.

To forget how hateful the door slammed and the old woman howled like a wounded animal. 1.2 Analysis of the poem “Requiem” The poem is both a lyrical diary, and an excited eyewitness testimony of the era, and a work of great

artistic power

, deep in 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. musical composition. 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 the normal, happy life and 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” there is a “we” of all those whose the only creativity there 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. The whole life of people now depended on the verdict that would be passed to 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 thick veil, grows:

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.

“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 Last Judgment:

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 tragic destinies 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 regrets with all her heart home country, who is completely defenseless, mourns for her. 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 presented as 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 was going “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 distinct 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.

Transforming events of terror and human suffering into an aesthetic phenomenon, into piece 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 take 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 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 serious illness, i.e. after “un-learning 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...”

We are not talking here about the upcoming resurrection from the dead, the ascension into heaven and other miracles 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 in 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 Kremlin towers” and “threw herself at the feet of the executioner,” John is the quiet numbness of a man trying to “kill his 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 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 bitter cold, and in the July heat

Under the blinding red 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 those falling, how autumn leaves, faces, about the fear trembling in every look and voice, about silent universal humility, 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 be overgrown,” rewarding the poet posthumously for the fact that he “glorified freedom” in his not so much, compared to his twenties, “ cruel age“and “he 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”, 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) - 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 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 - sometimes a simple woman, then suddenly a poetess, then 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. Rationality 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 “I clasped my hands under 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 unimpacted crack, weighs as much as the loud “hundred-million-ton” 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?..

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

Detailed analysis folklore elements nothing significant will be added 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 fate of millions, with the most terrible page our history. And there is no need to recall either the “Requiems” of Mozart, Cherubini or Verdi, or the pathetic church service, in order to assess the legitimacy of the name of this cycle of poems and 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 “ lyrical hero Akhmatova completely merges with the author” and reveals “the character of the poet himself,” but also that “the craving for what is close, lying nearby,” 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 had the most difficult years in the most incredible country in the world: two revolutions, two wars, the terrible era of Stalinist 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 only 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 appeared better memory to those innocent victims, to 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 in the world great poem.

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...”. Akhmatova once gave even Pasternak only a “B” in 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)

IN to the greatest extent A. Akhmatova’s name is associated with poetry, which continues to interest us even to this day. 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 course 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, publishing house “ Modern writer» 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 “ water society "in the novel by M.Yu. Lermontov "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. ... The poems that made up Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” which we will analyze, were created from 1936 to 1940 and for many years were kept only in the memory of the author and people close to her. In new historical conditions

In 1962, Akhmatova submitted the text she had prepared to the New World magazine, but it was not published. A year later, “Requiem” was published abroad (Munich, 1963) with a note that it was published “without the knowledge or consent of the author.” An attempt to publish the poem in the book “The Running of Time” (1965) also did not take place, and for a quarter of a century it existed in our country only in the form of “samizdat” lists and copies, and was published in 1987 - in two magazines at once (“October ", No. 3, "Neva", No. 6).

The very title of the work already contains a ritual-genre designation. Requiem is a funeral service according to the Catholic rite, a memorial prayer, or, if we transfer this to Russian soil, weeping, lamentation for the deceased, going back to folklore tradition. For Akhmatova, this form was highly characteristic - just remember Tsvetaeva’s 1916 poem dedicated to her, beginning with the line “O Muse of Lamentation, most beautiful of muses!”

At the same time, the genre of Akhmatova’s “Requiem” is in no way reduced only to the funeral ritual - funeral prayer and lamentation. In addition to the specific mourning coloring, it represents a complexly organized artistic whole, incorporating a wide variety of genre modifications the poems included in it. The very most general concept of a “cycle poem,” on which a number of researchers agree, means the internal integrity of the work, which is a kind of lyric epic, or, in the words of S.A. Kovalenko, - " lyrical epic people's life." It conveys the destinies of people and people through personal perception and experience, and ultimately recreates a portrait and monument of the era.

Compositionally, Akhmatova's Requiem consists of three parts. In the first, following two epigraphs introduced by the author into the manuscript in the early 1960s, three important elements appear preceding the main part: the prosaic “Instead of a Preface,” dated 1957, “Dedication” (1940) and “Introduction.” Then there are nine numbered chapters of the central part, and everything ends with a monumental two-part “Epilogue”, which reveals the theme of the monument to the people's suffering, the poet and the era.

In the cycle poem, everything is subordinated to the principle formulated by Akhmatova herself: “to accept events and feelings from different time layers.” Hence the artistic structure, the plot and compositional structure of the “Requiem”, based on the movement of the author’s thought and experience, absorbing and realizing the “running of time” - from the chronicle of events of personal and general destinies in the 30s to the facts of domestic and world history, biblical myths, plots and images. At the same time, the movement of time is noticeable not only in the text, but is also reflected in the dating of the poems, epigraph, dedication, epilogue, etc.

Two correlating epigraphs provide the key to the content of the poem; they allow you to see and feel personal pain as part of general misfortune and suffering. The first of them, addressed to his son, is taken from the novel “Ulysses” by J. Joyce (“You cannot leave your mother an orphan”), and the second represents the capacious final stanza from his own poem “It was not in vain that we suffered together...” dated 1961.

Akhmatova’s “Requiem” is marked by a special density of artistic fabric, concentrating space and time, and the capacity of characteristics of episodic figures that form an idea of ​​the people. Nature itself freezes before human suffering: “The sun is lower, and the Neva is foggy...” But in its eternal existence there is healing power. And at the same time, this natural, cosmic background highlights human tragedy in all the horror of its everyday reality, shadowed in the “Introduction” by even more cruel and terrible generalized images of trampled, trampled, desecrated Russia.
Feeling like a small part of her homeland and people, the mother mourns not only her son, but also all those convicted innocently, and those who waited with her for many months for the verdict in the fatal line. The central part of the Requiem" - ten poems, very different in genre and rhythmic-intonation shades and subtly interacting within the framework of a single lyrical whole. These are appeals to his son (“They took you away at dawn...”, etc.), to oneself (“I wish I could show you, mocker...”), and finally, to Death (“You will still accept...”).

Already in the first chapter, the appeal to the son carries very specific signs of the night arrests of the 30s and at the same time - the motive of death, death, funeral, mourning - while in the finale the historical scale of what is happening unusually expands - to the Streltsy tortures and executions of the Peter the Great era.

Likening herself to the “streltsy wives,” Akhmatova at the same time feels and conveys the pain and grief of her mother with tenfold force, using a variety of poetic genres and ritual forms for this. Thus, in the second chapter there is a unification, a merging of the melody and intonation of a lullaby (“The quiet Don flows quietly, / The yellow moon enters the house”) and crying, a funeral lamentation (“Husband in the grave, son in prison, / Pray for me” ).

The author’s amazing ability to absorb feelings and events from different time layers is manifested in Chapter IV in the form of an appeal to himself, to two eras of his own life, which connected the brilliant beginning of the century and the ominous middle and second half of the 30s.

And after this, in chapter VI, there is again a soothing motif of a lullaby addressed to his son, but its imaginary enchanting lightness and apparent enlightenment only set off, by contrast, the cruel reality of imprisonment and martyrdom, sacrificial death. Finally, Chapter X - “The Crucifixion” - with an epigraph from the “Holy Scripture”: “Do not weep for Me, Mother, see in the grave” - switches the earthly tragedy of mother and son into a universal, biblical plan and scale, elevating them to the level of the eternal.
In the “Epilogue,” the important themes and motifs of “Requiem” are heard with renewed vigor, receiving an in-depth, this time largely historical and cultural interpretation. At the same time, this is a kind of “memorial prayer” for the unheard of victims of terrible and tragic years in the life of Russia, refracted through the deeply personal experience of the author.

The lines of the “Epilogue” directly lead to the theme of “monument”, traditional for world poetry, which receives a deeply tragic coloring from Akhmatova. Remembering those with whom she “spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad,” Akhmatova feels like their voice and memory.

The very words “memory”, “remember”, “commemoration”, “memorial”, speaking about the impossibility of oblivion, inevitably lead to reflection on the monument, in which the poet sees captured the “petrified suffering” shared by him with millions of his fellow citizens.

Anna Akhmatova sees her possible monument - and this is the main and only condition - here, near the St. Petersburg Kresta prison, where, waiting in vain for a meeting with her arrested son, as she now sadly recalls, “I stood for three hundred hours.” The monument created by the poet’s imagination is humanly simple and deeply psychological.

In this melting snow flowing from the “Bronze Ages” like tears, and the quiet cooing of a prison pigeon and ships sailing along the Neva, one can hear, despite everything experienced and suffered, the motive of a triumphant, ongoing life.

Analysis of the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

Requiem (excerpt)

And the stone word fell on my still living chest. It’s okay, because I was ready, I’ll deal with it somehow. I have a lot to do today: I need to completely kill my memory, I need my soul to turn to stone, I need to learn to live again. Otherwise... The hot rustle of summer is like a holiday outside my window. I have long anticipated this Bright day and an empty house. 1939, Fountain House

Almost the entire “Requiem” was written in 1935-1940, the section “Instead of the Preface” and the epigraph are marked 1957 and 1961. For a long time, the work existed only in the memory of Akhmatova and her friends, only in the 1950s. she decided to write it down, and the first publication took place in 1988, 22 years after the poet’s death.
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 was seriously engaged in studying 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, in Mozart’s “Requiem” there are 12 parts, in Akhmatova’s poem there are the same number ( 10 chapters + Dedication and Epilogue).
The Epigraph and Instead of the Preface are unique semantic and musical keys of the work. The epigraph (lines from the 1961 poem “So it was not in vain that we suffered together...”) introduces the lyrical theme:

I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.

Instead of the Preface (1957), picking up the theme of “my people”, it 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 in the poem are fused together: talking about her grief (the arrests of her son - L.N. Gumilyov, husband - N.N. Punin), 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 dedication continues the theme of the prosaic 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...

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

And dangled like an unnecessary pendant
Leningrad is near its prisons.

Here, in the Introduction, it appears biblical image from the Apocalypse, accompanying the heroine throughout her entire way of the cross: “the stars of death stood above us...”, “...and a huge star is threatened with imminent death,” “... the Polaris star is shining.”
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 censer ringing, the hot rustle of summer, the words of the last consolations. From the underworld (“prison convict holes”) - “not a sound - and how many / Innocent lives end 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...

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 the Mother has already gone through: 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,” is resolved with a cry-requiem, but not only for her son, but for all the “millions killed cheaply, / Who trampled the path in the void” (O.E. Mandelstam). This is her duty now.
The Epilogue that closes the poem “switches time” to the present, returning us to the melody and general meaning of the Preface and Dedication: the image of the prison queue “under the red blinding wall” appears again (in the 1st part).
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 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:

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.
Critic B. Sarnov called Akhmatova’s human and poetic position “courageous stoicism.” Her fate is an example of a humble and grateful acceptance of life, with all its joys and sorrows. Akhmatova’s “Royal Word” harmoniously connected the here and the other:

And the voice of eternity calls
With an unearthly irresistibility,
And over the cherry blossoms
The radiance of the light month is pouring.
And it seems so easy
Whitening in the emerald thicket,
The road, I won’t tell you where...
There among the trunks it is even brighter,
And everything looks like an alley
At the Tsarskoye Selo pond.