Memory Of Sun. A Poem By Anna Akhmatova

Anna Akhmatova is the pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko (1889 - 1966), a Russian poet, credited as one of the most acclaimed poets of the 20th century. Her style, characterized by its economy and emotional restraint, was strikingly original and distinctive to her contemporaries and with her strong female voice, she struck a new chord in Russian poetry. Besides poetry, she wrote prose that includes memoirs, autobiographical pieces, and literary scholarship on Russian writers besides translations of Italian, French, Armenian, and Korean poetry. In her lifetime, Akhmatova experienced both pre-revolutionary and Soviet Russia. Even under the repressive regime, despite many of her friends and contemporaries choosing to emigrate, she refused to leave the Soviet Union. The entire trajectory of her life and work changed course because of this one decision. Like many of her brilliant contemporaries such as Osip Mandelstam, Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva, her work was condemned and censored by Stalinist authorities. She faced immense difficulties living in the shadow of Stalinism and meticulously wrote about it. Her writing can be broadly said to fall into two periods—the early works (1912–25) and the later works (from around 1936 until her death), divided by a decade of reduced literary output. Her perennial themes include meditations on time and memory.

Primary sources of information about Akhmatova's life are relatively scant, as war, revolution and the Soviet regime caused much of the written record to be destroyed. For long periods, she was in official disfavour and many of those who were close to her died in the aftermath of the revolution. Akhmatova's first husband, the famous poet, Nikolay Gumilyov, was executed by the Soviet secret police, and her son Lev Gumilyov and her common-law husband Nikolay Punin spent many years in the Gulag, where Punin died. Although she lived a long life, Akhmatova’s life was darkened disproportionately by many such calamitous moments. Isaiah Berlin, who visited Akhmatova in her Leningrad apartment in November 1945 while serving in Russia as first secretary of the British embassy, is said to have described her as a “tragic queen”. Berlin’s assessment has echoed through generations of readers who understand Akhmatova—her person, poetry, and, more nebulously, her poetic persona as the iconic representation of noble beauty and catastrophic predicament.

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[brianhaynes]

This poem is both fire and ice - exceptional

[expansivegymnast]

Good stuff. I didn’t really get what the poem was all about. The visuals and the reading style helped a ton.

[wolfcamera]

Beautiful oral translation. You can almost imagine the poet herself wrestling with her thoughts

[senk]

Visuals are remarkable, voice is gently emotive. Well made video. Upload more, Reshmi.

[Lili-Benovent]

SOPHIE - Lili

You know you don’t belong to us he said unto the child
We found you poorly in the swamp deep within the mire
Your eyes bright red by moonlight, grey blue before the fire
We knew that you were different, a difference deep and wild
And we were drawn by deepest love this pen cannot explain
No thoughts could ever pass our minds of fleeing from the pain. –

The pain of one so young and cold we took from death’s dark claws
As you grew within our hovel, submissive, bright and smart
A child, a girl with deep black curls, brown skin without a flaw
We loved you more as time passed by and death called once again
To take the man that you called Pa. You never shed a tear
You watched the Moon, you understood as Nature made its claim. –

I noticed then you hardly slept, in silent meditation deep
Things would move before your stare, you never suffered ills
You would sing verse you weren’t taught, draw creatures from their sleep
And they would sing along with you, nightbirds, raccoons and frogs
Until an orchestra of sound rose up so beautiful to hear
Surprising to myself as well, I never suffered fear. –

But when you grew past childhood, when blood began to flow
You ventured nightly through the woods following the song
That seemed to spring from all the trees, song I didn’t know
When young men came along to call, they froze at your red eyes
And went away not to return, then rumors began to grow
Fear from all the Villagers, the stories, hate and cries. –

One bright morning we were taken by a tap upon our door
Standing there all dressed in brown, four girls of Sophie’s age
They came inside and took her hand, outside a man on horse
She knew them all, they took a draught, then all sat on the floor
A chant began, rose to a scream, the sound was tempest worse
They took her then, she bade Goodbye, her happiness I saw. –

I live alone, shunned by all, inside my mind I know
When Moonlight falls and nightbirds sing I feel that I am blessed
She’s watching o’er my life and trials, she brings the sun and snow
And as I age I feel her here when chairs and tables move
A whisper low, a song I hear, the plaintive call of her pet crow.

Blessed be.

[cbartlett]

Came here after hearing LAR sample this.