Akhmatova, "Requiem": interpretation of the poem

A truly significant figure in Russian literature is Anna Akhmatova.

"Requiem" researchers call the top of itlyrics. All topics are organically intertwined in the poetess's work: love experiences, poet and history, poet and power, 19th century culture, "silver" age, Soviet realities ... Akhmatova lived a long life: a spoiled girl born in pre-revolutionary Russia, a young poetess from Beaumonde was destined to know the whole weight of the Soviet stone stall. It is natural therefore that the breadth of its creative range can be called comprehensive: love lyrics, civic poetry, folkloric elements, ancient themes, biblical subjects.

"Requiem", Akhmatova: summary

Work on the poem continued from 1935 to 1940, in the most difficult,bloody and terrible time. In it, the poetess managed to organically combine the chronicle line and the genre tradition of funeral crying. From the Latin language "Requiem" translates as calm. Why did this name give its work to Akhmatov? Requiem is a funeral service, traditional for the Catholic and Lutheran churches. Later this term acquired a broader meaning: they began to designate the commemoration of the deceased. The poet, as it were, buries himself, and his friends in misfortune, and all of Russia.

Akhmatova, "Requiem": semantic plans

Modern literary scholars distinguish in the poemfour layers: the first is obvious and is as it were "on the surface" - the grief of the lyrical heroine, describing the night arrest of a loved one. Here it should be noted that the poet relies on personal experience: in the same way her son L. Gumilev, husband N. Punin and fellow O. Mandelstam were arrested in due time. Fear, confusion, confusion - who can know more about this than Akhmatova? "Requiem", however, is not limited to this: the tears of the lyrical heroine in the text merge with the weeping of thousands of Russian women who suffered from the same trouble. Thus, the personal situation is expanding, becoming more global. In the third semantic layer of the poem, the fate of the heroine is treated as a symbol of the epoch. Here researchers point to the emerging in this connection the theme of the "monument", which goes back to the works of Derzhavin and Pushkin. However, for Akhmatova, the monument is not a symbol of glory, but, rather, an embodiment of lifetime and posthumous suffering. That's why she asks to be placed near the prison, where the woman spent so many terrible hours together with her unwilling "girlfriends". The image of the monument from the stone merges with the motif of the "fossil" - this epithet is one of the most frequent in "Requiem". In the epilogue, the monument becomes, as it were, the visible embodiment of the metaphor of the "petrified affliction". The image of the suffering poetess merges with the image of the terrible era tearing to pieces, dying Russia - this is Anna Akhmatova.

"Requiem" has a fourth semantic plan. This is the grief of the mother who was repressed by her son. It correlates with the torments of the Mother of God observing the ascent of Jesus Christ to Calvary. According to the poetess's thoughts, the torments of every mother who loses her son are comparable to the sufferings of the Virgin Mary. So the personal tragedy of one woman and one child becomes all-human.

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