Anna Akhmatova: Voice of the People

Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966)

You Thought I Was That Type

You thought I was that type:
that you could forget me,
and that I’d plead and weep and throw myself
under the hooves of a bay mare,

or that I’d ask the sorcerers
for some magic potion made from roots
and send you a terrible gift:
my precious perfumed handkerchief.

Damn you! I will not grant
your cursed soul vicarious tears or a single glance.
And I swear to you by the garden of the angels,
I swear by the miracle-working ikon,
and by the fire and smoke of our nights:
I will never come back to you.

                Translated by Richard McKane¹

Anna Akhmatova was born in Odessa, the Ukraine in 1889.  She was discouraged from becoming a poet by her father who felt it would shame the family.  He also forced her to take a pen name.  Akhmatova chose the last name of her maternal great-grandmother for her pen name, her actual last name was Gorenko.  Akhmatova attended law school in Kiev and married in 1910. 

In 1912 Anna Akhmatova became a mother and her first book Evening was published.  The publication, also made her a cult figure among the intelligentsia and part of the literary scene in St. Petersburg.  Akhmatova encountered much political opposition to her work, even as she remained a beloved poet of the people for voicing their experiences through all the political turmoil. 

Her poetry was unofficially banned from 1925 until 1940 because her first husband, whom she had divorced in 1918, was executed in 1921 by the Bolsheviks.  A book was published in 1940 and then withdrawn.  Akhmatova was accepted into the Writers Union then thrown out.  Her works were officially banned at one point and her son, Lev, was imprisoned and she wrote a poem praising Stalin to try, unsuccessfully, to secure his release.

During the times when she could not get published, Akhmatova devoted herself to literary criticism and translations.  When she was able to write and publish again in 1958 it was under heavy censorship.  In 1964 Akhmatova received the Etna-Taormina prize and in 1965 she received an honorary doctorate from Oxford University.  These were her first travels outside of Russia since 1912.  At the age of 76, Akhmatova became president of the Writers Union.  She died in Leningrad in 1966.²

¹Mulford, W.  (Ed.).  (1990) Love Poems by Women.  New York: Fawcett Columbine.
²Anna Akhmatova Retrieved April 11, 2011 from the Academy of American Poets Web site: http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/1
Photo from Glob-a-log http://gal.darkervision.com/2008/09/20/five-great-20th-century-love-poems/
Featured image (Akhmatova, her son Lev and her first husband Gumilev in 1913 from www.russianpoetry.net: http://web.mmlc.northwestern.edu/~mdenner/Demo/images/akhmatova/sgumilevymil%27vom1913.jpg