"Requiem", analysis of Akhmatova's poem. Analysis of the poem "Requiem" The historical scale of the poem "Requiem"

Akhmatova A. A. How does the tragic theme unfold in A. A. Akhmatova's poem "Requiem"?
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The death stars were above us
And innocent Russia writhed
Under the bloody boots
And under the tires of black "marus".

A. A. Akhmatova

The name of Anna Andreevna Akhmatova is often combined with love lyrics. Undoubtedly, in her works, Akhmatova breathed a fresh air into a seemingly long-trodden theme. Alexander Trifonovich Tvardovsky spoke about the work of the poetess: “Indeed, the theme of love in various, mostly dramatic shades is the most developed theme of Akhmatova’s poems. may not be of the liveliest interest to everyone. However, Akhmatova's poems are least of all the so-called female poetry, with its limitations of thought and feeling itself.

Contemporaries were disposed to see in Akhmatova's poems only the confessions of a woman, the confession of a loving heart. But even then, many began to be confused by the unexpectedly broad projection of the spiritual world that was revealed in these verses. What helped Akhmatova's verse to let in the anxieties of the big world? Why in her love story, intertwined with the eternal and traditional music of the heart, sounded incomprehensible to herself, hoarse, like the "howl of a wild blizzard", the inevitable tragic "rumble"?

Akhmatova is persistently looking for a historical understanding of the era, about which another poetess, Marina Tsvetaeva, will say: "A century has not thought about the poet." The originality of Akhmatova is also in the fact that she especially acutely felt the pain of time as her own, and the tragedy of Russia was reflected in the personal fate of the poetess.

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

The "Requiem", dedicated to the most "cursed dates" of massacres, when the whole country turned into a single prison queue, when each personal tragedy merged with the national one, became a monument to a terrible era. Akhmatova and became the voice of the national tragedy.

The artistic world of the poem "Requiem" is built like the gospel artistic world. The lyrical heroine is a generalized image of a Russian woman. The mother pities her son, who took upon himself the sins of people, but is also proud of him. This poem is the last hope for justice.

In Requiem, speaking of archery wives howling under the Kremlin towers, Akhmatova draws an analogy with the bloody road stretching from the darkness of time to the present: this terrible road, unfortunately, never stopped, and during the years of repression became even wider, forming whole seas of innocently shed blood.

Most of the attention in "Requiem" is given to personal tragedy, that is, to how the lyrical heroine endures torment. The loss of loved ones has an extremely strong effect on a person, his soul. Akhmatova was expecting a sentence for her son, Lev Gumilyov. She experienced everything herself and wrote what she felt. Undoubtedly, other mothers whose sons were in "hard labor" felt the same way. If they felt anything at all. After all, in the introduction to the poem, Akhmatova writes: ".. woke up from the stupor characteristic of us all."

It seems to be alive, since "it goes ... staggers", but "life from the heart" was taken out. What lives in the heart? Isn't it the human soul? What happens? The soul perishes, but the body does not. So Akhmatova writes in the chapter "Sentence":

And the stone word fell
On my still living chest.

As if the lyrical heroine is making a to-do list for the near future, like a housewife is making a shopping list. No emotions, "because" she "was ready." I just don't think you can prepare for it. It's just impossible. To what extent should the soul "petrify", cover itself with an impenetrable crust of indifference, hatred? The gospel plot, on which Akhmatova considered herself entitled to rely, expands the scope of the "Requiem" to an all-human scale. From this point of view, the poem "Crucifixion" can be considered the poetic-philosophical center of the entire work, although it is placed immediately before the "Epilogue". The lyrical heroine turns to death, asks her to come. The woman "doesn't care now." I am sure that every mother at the walls of the Crosses has seriously thought more than once about death, which can save her from torment and give peace.

The consciousness of the lyrical heroine Akhmatova splits into two. One part of him, feeling, suffers, and the second, thinking, as if watching the suffering from the outside. But even this part of the consciousness does not stand up, it knocks down the classical structure of the verse and, it seems, speaks, it is not clear what. What do "black cloths" and a night without lanterns mean? Maybe the heroine is so difficult that she is not able to express her thoughts to the end? It is almost impossible to think in such situations, thoughts are paralyzed by grief.

The final part of the "Requiem" forms the theme of the Monument, which has long been well known in Russian literature, acquiring an absolutely unusual - completely tragic - meaning and face under Akhmatova's pen. Never before in Russian and world literature has an unnatural image appeared to such an extent - a monument to the Poet, who, at his own request, is located at the walls of the prison. This work is truly a monument to all the victims of Stalin's repressions. "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova is a truly national work, not only in the sense that it reflects a colossal folk tragedy, but also in its poetic form, close to a folk parable. As a result, it is necessary to add to what was said only the statement of Viktor Astafiev, which accurately conveys the state of mind of the lyrical heroine, the main idea of the entire poem: "Mothers! Mothers! Why did you submit to wild human memory, reconcile with violence and death? you are talking about your primitive loneliness in your sacred and bestial longing for children.

Features of the poetic world of Anna Akhmatova:

Gold rusts and steel rots,
Marble is crumbling, everything is ready for death...
Sadness is the strongest thing on earth
And the royal word is more durable.

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Prove that in the poem "Requiem" it is not the personal tragedy of the poetess that sounds, but the grief of the whole people is shown ... Akhmatova and got the best answer

Answer from GALINA[guru]
For two and a half decades, Anna Akhmatova kept Requiem in her memory, afraid to entrust to paper lines that could turn into a death sentence. The verses of the poem were composed when "only the dead smiled," when
The death stars were above us
And innocent Russia writhed
Under the bloody boots
And under the tires of black "marus".
Akhmatova turns her poem, her cry from the heart, her "Requiem" to "the involuntary girlfriends of my two rabid years" and to herself today - "no, it's not me, it's
someone else is suffering, ”and to that“ Tsarskoye Selo merry sinner ”which
forever ousted from the world standing under the Crosses (prison in Leningrad)
woman, three hundredth with a transfer for her son. The poem is addressed to the son, to those whom “I would like to name everyone by name. Yes, they took away the list, and there is nowhere to find out "
How could she ever think that she would be 300th in line at the Crosses? And now her whole life in these queues.
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.
It is impossible to make out who is the “beast”, who is the “man”, because innocent people are arrested, and all the thoughts of the mother involuntarily turn to death.
And then the verdict sounds - “stone word”, and you have to kill the memory, make the soul petrified and learn to live again. And the mother again thinks about death, only now about her own. She seems to be her salvation, and it doesn’t matter what form she takes: “poisoned shell”, “weights”, “typhoid child” - the main thing is that she will relieve suffering and spiritual emptiness.
These sufferings are comparable only to the sufferings of the Mother of Jesus, who also lost her Son.
But Mother understands that this is only madness, because death will not allow
Not a son of terrible eyes -
petrified suffering,
Not the day when the storm came
Not an hour of prison rendezvous,
Not the sweet coolness of hands,
Not linden agitated shadows,
Not a distant light sound -
Words of last consolation.
So you have to live. To live in order to name those who died in Stalin's dungeons, to remember, to remember always and everywhere who stood "both in the bitter cold and in the July heat under the blinded red wall."
A. Akhmatova fulfilled her duty as a wife, mother, poet, telling in a poem about the tragic pages of our history. Biblical motives allowed her to show the scale of this tragedy, the impossibility of forgiving those who did this madness, and the impossibility of forgetting what happened, because it was about the fate of the people, about millions of lives. Thus, the poem "Requiem" became a monument to the innocent victims and those who suffered with them.

Answer from Yatiana Isaeva[guru]
And, innocent, writhed Russia
Under bloody boots
And under the tires of black "marus"

Answer from Vera Orekhovskaya[guru]
Lyricism is only a personal feeling: the whole history of poetry confirms this. Legends are born later. Who could recognize a poetess in a wrapped woman, approach, assuming that she will become famous for centuries, and not be taken away right there and it is better not to approach? Surely, Akhmatova suffered alone in that queue, she also wrote poetry alone in her grief, and it is base and unworthy to build her personal grief into a template for opportunistic motives.

Answer from Love[guru]
How to prove? The poem was born when she was standing in line to give her son a parcel in prison. Someone from the queue, recognizing her, asked - And write about it? She replied - I will write. Doesn't this prove the grief of the whole people?

Anna Akhmatova ... The name and surname of this poetess is known to everyone. How many women read her poems with rapture and wept over them, how many kept her manuscripts and bowed before her work? Now the poetry of this outstanding author can be called priceless. Even a century later, her poems are not forgotten, and often appear as motifs, references and appeals in modern literature. But her poem "Requiem" is especially often remembered by the descendants. She will be discussed.

Initially, the poetess planned to write a lyrical cycle of poems dedicated to the period of reaction, which caught the heated revolutionary Russia by surprise. As you know, after the end of the civil war and the reign of relative stability, the new government staged demonstrative reprisals against dissident and alien to the proletariat representatives of society, and this persecution ended with a real genocide of the Russian people, when people were imprisoned and executed, trying to keep up with the plan given "from above" . One of the first victims of the bloody regime were the closest relatives of Anna Akhmatova - Nikolai Gumilyov, her husband, and their common son, Lev Gumilyov. Anna's husband was shot in 1921 as a counter-revolutionary. The son was arrested only because he bore his father's surname. We can say that it was with this tragedy (the death of a spouse) that the history of writing the Requiem began. So, the first fragments were created back in 1934, and their author, realizing that the losses of the Russian land would not end soon, decided to combine the cycle of poems into a single body of the poem. In 1938-1940 it was completed, but for obvious reasons it was not published. It was in 1939 that Lev Gumilyov was put behind bars.

In the 1960s, during the thaw, Akhmatova read the poem to devoted friends, but after reading it she always burned the manuscript. However, its copies were leaked to samizdat (forbidden literature was copied by hand and passed from hand to hand). Then they got abroad, where they were published "without the knowledge and consent of the author" (this phrase was at least some kind of guarantor of the immunity of the poetess).

The meaning of the name

Requiem is a religious term for a mourning church service for a deceased person. This name was used by famous composers to designate a genre of musical works that served as an accompaniment for the funeral Catholic mass. Widely known, for example, Mozart's Requiem. In the broad sense of the word, it means a certain ritual that accompanies a person's departure to another world.

Anna Akhmatova used the direct meaning of the title "Requiem", dedicating the poem to prisoners condemned to death. The work seemed to sound from the lips of all mothers, wives, daughters, who accompanied their loved ones to death, standing in lines, unable to change anything. In Soviet reality, the only funeral ritual allowed to prisoners was the endless siege of the prison, in which women silently stood in the hope of at least saying goodbye to dear, but doomed family members. Their husbands, fathers, brothers and sons seemed to have been stricken with a fatal illness and were waiting for a denouement, but in fact this illness turned out to be dissent, which the authorities were trying to eradicate. But it eradicated only the color of the nation, without which the development of society proceeded with difficulty.

Genre, size, direction

At the beginning of the 20th century, a new phenomenon in culture captured the world - it was wider and larger than any literary movement, and was divided into many innovative trends. Anna Akhmatova belonged to acmeism, a trend based on clarity of style and objectivity of images. Acmeists strove for a poetic transformation of everyday and even unsightly life phenomena and pursued the goal of ennobling human nature through art. The poem "Requiem" became an excellent example of a new trend, because it fully corresponded to its aesthetic and moral principles: objective, clear images, classical rigor and directness of style, the author's desire to convey atrocities in the language of poetry in order to warn posterity from the mistakes of their ancestors.

No less interesting is the genre of the work "Requiem" - a poem. According to some compositional features, it belongs to the epic genre, because the work consists of a prologue, main part and epilogue, covers more than one historical era and reveals the relationship between them. Akhmatova reveals a certain tendentious nature of maternal grief in Russian history and urges future generations not to forget about it so as not to allow the tragedy to repeat itself.

The poetic meter in the poem is dynamic, one rhythm overflows into another, and the number of stops in the lines also varies. This is due to the fact that the work was created in fragments over a long time, and the style of the poetess changed, as did her perception of what happened.

Composition

The features of the composition in the poem "Requiem" again indicate the original intention of the poetess - to create a cycle of complete and autonomous works. Therefore, it seems that the book was written in fits and starts, as if it had been repeatedly abandoned and spontaneously supplemented again.

Prologue: the first two chapters ("Initiation" and "Introduction"). They bring the reader up to date, show the time and place of action.
The first 4 verses show historical parallels between mothers of all times. The lyrical heroine tells fragments from the past: the arrest of her son, the first days of terrible loneliness, the frivolity of youth, which did not know its bitter fate.
Chapters 5 and 6 - the mother predicts the death of her son and is tormented by the unknown.
Sentence. Message about exile to Siberia.
To death. The mother, in desperation, calls out for death to come to her too.
Chapter 9 is a prison date, which the heroine carries away in her memory along with the madness of despair.
Crucifix. In one quatrain, she conveys the mood of her son, who urges her not to weep at the grave. The author draws a parallel with the crucifixion of Christ - the same innocent martyr as her son. She compares her motherhood with the anguish and confusion of the Virgin.
Epilogue. The poet calls on people to build a monument to the suffering of the people, which she expressed in her work. She is afraid to forget what they did to her people in this place.

What is the poem about?

The work, as already mentioned, is autobiographical. It tells how Anna Andreevna came with parcels to her son, imprisoned in a prison fortress. Lev was arrested because his father was executed because of the most dangerous sentence - counter-revolutionary activity. Entire families were destroyed for such an article. So Gumilyov Jr. survived three arrests, one of which, in 1938, ended in exile to Siberia, after which, in 1944, he fought in a penal battalion, and then was again arrested and imprisoned. He, like his mother, who was forbidden to publish, was rehabilitated only after Stalin's death.

First, in the prologue, the poetess is in the present tense and informs her son of exile about the verdict. Now she is alone, because she is not allowed to follow him. With bitterness from the loss, she wanders the streets alone and remembers how she waited for this verdict in long lines for two years. Hundreds of the same women stood there, to whom she dedicates the Requiem. In the introduction, she plunges into this memory. Then she tells how the arrest took place, how she got used to the thought of him, how she lived in bitter and hateful loneliness. She is afraid and tormented by waiting for the execution for 17 months. Then she learns that her child was sentenced to a prison term in Siberia, so she calls the day “bright”, because she was afraid that he would be shot. Then she talks about the meeting that took place and about the pain that the memory of her son's "terrible eyes" causes her. In the epilogue, she talks about what these queues did to women who withered before our eyes. The heroine also notes that if a monument is erected to her, then this must be done in the very place where she and hundreds of other mothers and wives were kept for years in a feeling of complete obscurity. Let this monument be a harsh reminder of what inhumanity reigned in that place at that time.

Main characters and their characteristics

Lyrical heroine. Akhmatova herself was her prototype. This is a woman with dignity and willpower, who, nevertheless, "threw herself at the feet of the executioner", because she loved her child madly. She is bloodless with grief, because she has already lost her husband through the fault of the same brutal state machine. She is emotional and open to the reader, does not hide her horror. However, her whole being hurts and suffers for her son. About herself, she says distantly: "This woman is sick, this woman is alone." The impression of detachment is intensified when the heroine says that she could not worry like that, and someone else does it for her. Previously, she was "the mocker and favorite of all friends", and now the very embodiment of torment, calling for death. On a date with her son, madness reaches its climax, and the woman surrenders to him, but soon her composure returns, because her son is still alive, which means that there is hope as an incentive to live and fight.
A son. His character is less fully revealed, but a comparison with Christ gives us a sufficient idea of him. He is also innocent and holy in his humble torment. He tries his best to console his mother on their only date, even though his scary look does not hide from her. About his bitter fate of his son, she succinctly reports: “And when, mad with flour, the already condemned regiments marched.” That is, a young man holds himself with enviable courage and dignity even in such a situation, since he is trying to maintain the self-control of loved ones.
Women's images in the poem "Requiem" are filled with strength, patience, selflessness, but at the same time, inexpressible torment and anxiety for the fate of loved ones. This anxiety withers their faces like autumn leaves. Waiting and uncertainty destroy their vitality. But their grief-stricken faces are full of determination: they stand in the cold, in the heat, just to achieve the right to see and support their relatives. The heroine affectionately calls them friends and prophesies Siberian exile for them, because she has no doubt that all those who can will follow their loved ones into exile. The author compares their images with the face of the Mother of God, who silently and meekly experiences the martyrdom of her son.

Topic

The theme of memory. The author urges readers to never forget the grief of the people, which is described in the poem "Requiem". In the epilogue, he says that eternal sorrow should serve as a reproach and a lesson to people that such a tragedy happened on this earth. With this in mind, they must prevent this cruel persecution from recurring. Mother calls to witness her bitter truth all those who stood with her in these lines and asked for one thing - a monument to these unreasonably ruined souls that languish on the other side of the prison walls.
The theme of motherly compassion. The mother loves her son, and all the time she is tormented by the realization of his captivity and her helplessness. She imagines how the light makes its way through the prison window, how the lines of prisoners go, and among them is her innocently suffering child. From this constant horror, waiting for a sentence, standing in hopelessly long lines, a woman becomes clouded in her mind, and her face, like hundreds of faces, falls and fades in endless anguish. She raises her mother's grief above the others, saying that the apostles and Mary Magdalene wept over the body of Christ, but none of them even dared to look at the face of his mother, who stood motionless next to the tomb.
Homeland theme. About the tragic fate of her country, Akhmatova writes as follows: "And innocent Rus writhed under bloody boots and under the tires of black marus." To some extent, she identifies the fatherland with those prisoners who fell victim to repression. In this case, the method of impersonation is used, that is, Russia is writhing under the blows, like a living prisoner trapped in prison dungeons. The grief of the people expresses the sorrow of the motherland, comparable only to the maternal suffering of a woman who has lost her son.
The theme of people's suffering and sorrow is expressed in the description of a living queue, endless, oppressive, stagnant for years. There, the old woman “howled like a wounded beast”, and the one “that was barely brought to the window”, and the one “that the dear one does not trample the ground”, and the one “that beautifully shook her head, said: “I come here as if I were home "". Both old and young were bound by one misfortune. Even the description of the city speaks of universal, unspoken mourning: “It was when only the dead smiled, glad for peace, and Leningrad swayed like an unnecessary appendage near its prisons.” The steamboat horns sang of separation to the rhythm of the trampling of the ranks of condemned people. All these sketches speak of a single spirit of sadness that has engulfed the Russian lands.
Time theme. Akhmatova in "Requiem" unites several eras, her poems are like memories and forebodings, and not a chronologically built story. Therefore, in the poem, the time of action is constantly changing, in addition, there are historical allusions, appeals to other centuries. For example, the lyrical heroine compares herself to the archery wives who howled at the walls of the Kremlin. The reader constantly jerks from one event to another: arrest, sentencing, everyday life in the prison queue, and so on. For the poetess, time has acquired the routine and colorlessness of expectation, so she measures it by the coordinates of the events that have taken place, and the gaps before these coordinates are filled with monotonous longing. Time also promises danger, because it brings oblivion, and this is what a mother who has experienced such grief and humiliation is afraid of. Forgetfulness means forgiveness, and she will not go for that.
Theme of love. Women do not betray their loved ones in trouble and selflessly expect at least news about their fate. In this unequal battle with the system of suppression of the people, they are driven by love, before which all the prisons of the world are powerless.

Idea

Anna Akhmatova herself erected the monument she spoke about in the epilogue. The meaning of the poem "Requiem" is to erect an immortal monument in memory of the ruined lives. The silent suffering of innocent people was to result in a cry that would be heard through the ages. The poetess draws the reader's attention to the fact that her work is based on the grief of the whole people, and not her personal drama: “And if they clamp my exhausted mouth, with which a hundred million people scream ...”. The title of the work also speaks about the idea - it is a funeral rite, the music of death that accompanies the funeral. The motive of death permeates the entire narrative, that is, these verses are an epitaph for those who unjustly sunk into oblivion, who were quietly and imperceptibly killed, tortured, destroyed in the country of victorious lawlessness.

Problems

The problems of the poem "Requiem" are multifaceted and topical, because even now innocent people become victims of political repression, and their relatives are not able to change anything.

Injustice. The sons, husbands and fathers of women standing in line suffered innocently, their fate is determined by the slightest belonging to phenomena alien to the new government. For example, the son of Akhmatova, the prototype of the hero of Requiem, was convicted for bearing the surname of his father, who was convicted of counter-revolutionary activities. The symbol of the demonic power of the dictatorship is a blood-red star, pursuing the heroine everywhere. This is a symbol of new power, which in its meaning in the poem is duplicated with the star of death, an attribute of the Antichrist.
The problem of historical memory. Akhmatova is afraid that the grief of these people will be forgotten by new generations, because the power of the proletariat ruthlessly destroys any sprouts of dissent and rewrites history for itself. The poetess brilliantly predicted that her "exhausted mouth" would be shut up for many years, forbidding publishing houses to print her works. Even when the ban was lifted, she was ruthlessly criticized and silenced at party congresses. The report of the official Zhdanov is widely known, who accused Anna of being a representative of "reactionary obscurantism and renegade in politics and art." “The range of her poetry is limited to poverty, the poetry of an enraged lady, rushing between the boudoir and the prayer room,” said Zhdanov. She was afraid of this: under the auspices of the struggle for the interests of the people, he was ruthlessly robbed, depriving him of the enormous wealth of national literature and history.
Helplessness and lawlessness. The heroine, with all her love, is powerless to change the situation of her son, like all her friends in misfortune. They are only free to wait for news, but there is no one to wait for help. There is no justice, as well as humanism, sympathy and pity, everyone is captured by a wave of stuffy fear and they speak in a whisper, so as not to frighten away their own lives, which can be taken away at any moment.

Criticism

The opinion of critics about the poem "Requiem" did not develop immediately, since the work was officially published in Russia only in the 80s of the 20th century, after the death of Akhmatova. In Soviet literary criticism, it was customary to belittle the dignity of the author for ideological inconsistency with the political propaganda that has been unfolding throughout the 70 years of the existence of the USSR. For example, Zhdanov's report, which has already been quoted above, is very indicative. The official clearly has the talent of a propagandist, so his expressions do not differ in argumentation, but are colorful in stylistic terms:

Her main theme is love-erotic motifs intertwined with motifs of sadness, melancholy, death, mysticism, doom. A sense of doom, ... gloomy tones of near-death hopelessness, mystical experiences mixed with erotica - such is the spiritual world of Akhmatova. Not a nun, not a harlot, but rather, a harlot and a nun, in whom fornication is mixed with prayer.

Zhdanov, in his report, insists that Akhmatova will have a bad influence on young people, because she “propagates” despondency and longing for the bourgeois past:

Needless to say, such sentiments or the preaching of such sentiments can only have a negative influence on our youth, can poison their minds with a rotten spirit of lack of ideas, apoliticality, and despondency.

Since the poem was published abroad, Soviet emigrants spoke about it, who had the opportunity to familiarize themselves with the text and speak about it without censorship. For example, a detailed analysis of the "Requiem" was made by the poet Joseph Brodsky, while in America after he was deprived of Soviet citizenship. He spoke admiringly about Akhmatova’s work, not only because he was in solidarity with her civil position, but also because he was personally acquainted with her:

"Requiem" is a work that constantly balances on the verge of insanity, which is introduced not by the catastrophe itself, not by the loss of a son, but by this moral schizophrenia, this split - not consciousness, but conscience.

Brodsky noticed that the author was torn from internal contradictions, because the poet must perceive and describe the object from a distance, and Akhmatova experienced personal grief at that moment, which could not be objectively described. There was a battle between the writer and the mother, who saw these events in different ways. Hence the forced lines: "No, it's not me, it's someone else who is suffering." The reviewer described this internal conflict as follows:

For me, the most important thing in Requiem is the theme of duality, the theme of the author's inability to respond adequately. It is clear that Akhmatova describes all the horrors of the "great terror". But at the same time, she keeps talking about being close to madness. Here is the biggest truth.

The critic Antoly Naiman argued with Zhdanov and did not agree that the poetess was alien to Soviet society and harmful to it. He convincingly proves that Akhmatova differs from the canonical writers of the USSR only in that her work is deeply personal and filled with religious motives. For the rest, he said:

Strictly speaking, "Requiem" is Soviet poetry, realized in the ideal form that all its declarations describe. The hero of this poetry is the people. Not called so from political, national and other ideological interests, a greater or lesser multitude of people, but the whole people: every single one participates on one side or the other in what is happening. This position speaks on behalf of the people, the poet is with him, a part of him. Its language is almost newspaper-like, understandable to the people, its methods are frontal. And this poetry is full of love for the people.

Another review was written by art historian V.Ya. Vilenkin. In it, he says that the work should not be tormented by scientific research, it is already understandable, and lofty, ponderous research will not add anything to this.

Its (cycle of poems) folk origins and its folk poetic scale are self-evident. Personally experienced, autobiographical sinks in it, retaining only the immensity of suffering.

Another literary critic, E.S. Dobin, said that since the 30s, “Akhmatova’s lyrical hero completely merges with the author” and reveals the “character of the poet himself”, but also that “thrust for the close, nearby lying”, which distinguished Akhmatova’s early work, now replaces the principle of “approaching the far. But the distant is not extramundane, but human.”

The writer and critic Y. Karyakin most succinctly expressed the main idea of the work, which captured his imagination with its scale and epicness.

This is truly a folk requiem: weeping for the people, the focus of all their pain. Akhmatova's poetry is the confession of a man who lives with all the troubles, pains and passions of his time and his land.

It is known that Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the compiler of introductory articles and the author of epigraphs to Akhmatova's collections, spoke of her work with due respect and especially appreciated the poem "Requiem" as the greatest feat, the heroic ascent to Golgotha, where the crucifixion was inevitable. She miraculously managed to save her life, but her “exhausted mouth” was shut up.

"Requiem" has become a single whole, although there is heard a folk song, and Lermontov, and Tyutchev, and Blok, and Nekrasov, and - especially in the finale - Pushkin: "... And let the prison dove roam in the distance, And ships quietly go along the Neva" . All the lyrical classics are magically combined in this, perhaps the tiniest great poem in the world.

The tragic chronicle of the era in the poem by A. A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

Lesson summary

Goals:

educational- to acquaint students with the personality and characteristics of A. Akhmatova's work; show how the history of the country is refracted and reflected in its work;
developing - develop a sense of beauty, the ability to read poetry and respond emotionally to them, improve the skills of analyzing a poetic text;
educational - cultivate respect for the feelings of another person, emotional and intellectual responsiveness, patriotic feeling, set an example of civic courage.

Teaching methods - frontal survey, student reports, reading poems by heart, viewing presentations and CDs using a projector and computer, analyzing a poem.

Equipment: multimedia projector for presentations.

Lesson type - combined.

During the classes

EPIGRAPH TO THE LESSON ON THE BOARD “I was then with my people

Where my people, unfortunately, were ... "

A. Akhmatova

Organizing time. Activation of students' knowledge.

We continue to study the lyrics of Akhmatova. I ask you to recall the main themes that have been developed in her work. It is true that the poetess came to Russian poetry at the beginning of the 20th century with a theme traditional in world lyrics - the theme of love. But today we cannot imagine it without civil, patriotic poems. Which of them do you remember from the last lesson?

Many of Akhmatov's poems are an appeal to the tragic fate of Russia. The beginning of severe trials for our country was the First World War in Akhmatova's poetry. In 1915, the poetess writes “ prayer (read by a trained student).

The revolution of 1917 was perceived by Akhmatova as a catastrophe. The new era that came after the revolution was felt by her as a tragic time of loss and destruction. But the revolution for the poetess is also retribution, retribution for the past sinful life. And even if the lyrical heroine herself did not do evil, she feels her involvement in the common guilt, and therefore is ready to share the fate of her homeland and her people, she refuses to emigrate. Let's remember how it is said in the poem " I had a voice ..” (reading a poem by a trained student). For Akhmatova, the words "Motherland" and "power" have never been synonymous. For her, there was no choice - to leave Russia or stay. She considers flight a betrayal, and this is how she talks about it in the poem “I am not with those who left the earth(reading a poem).

IN In connection with this, I recalled another poem written in the last years of my life, it is called “Native Land”:

We do not carry in treasured amulets on the chest,
We do not compose verses sobbingly about her,
She does not disturb our bitter dream,
Doesn't seem like a promised paradise.
We do not do it in our soul
The subject of buying and selling,
Sick, distressed, silent on her,
We don't even remember her.
Yes, for us it is dirt on galoshes,
Yes, for us it is a crunch on the teeth.
And we grind, and knead, and crumble
That unmixed dust.
But we lay down in it and become it,
That is why we call it so freely - ours.

The poem is light in tone, despite the premonition of imminent death. In fact, Akhmatova emphasizes the fidelity and inviolability of her human and creative position.

New material.

Back in the 30s, Akhmatova's lyrics appearedmotif of an orphaned mother, which reaches its peak in the "Requiem" as a Christian motif of eternal maternal fate - from epoch to epoch to give sons as a sacrifice to the world: "Magdalene fought and sobbed, The beloved disciple turned to stone, And where Mother stood silently, So no one dared to look" . And here again, the personal of the poetess is combined with the national tragedy and the eternal, universal. This is the originality of Akhmatova's poetry: she felt the pain of her era as her own pain. Akhmatova became the voice of her time, she was not close to power, but she did not stigmatize her country either. She wisely, simply and mournfully shared her fate. The Requiem became a monument to a terrible era.

Writing in notebooks the topic and epigraph of the lesson.

In previous years, there was a fairly common idea of the narrowness, intimacy of Akhmatova's poetry, and it seemed that nothing foreshadowed her evolution in a different direction. Compare, for example, B. Zaitsev's review of Akhmatova after he read the poem "Requiem" in 1963 abroad: Stray Dog, that this fragile and thin woman will utter such a cry - feminine, maternal, a cry not only about herself, but also about all those who suffer - wives, mothers, brides ... Where did the masculine power of the verse come from, its simplicity, the thunder of words, as if ordinary, but buzzing with death bells, breaking the human heart and causing artistic admiration?

vocabulary work: how do you understand poem title ? (Writing the term in a notebook.) The word "Requiem" is translated as "requiem mass", a Catholic worship service for the deceased. At the same time, it is the designation of a mournful piece of music. Many composers turned to this genre, Mozart's Requiem was the most famous.(audio sounds).

About history of the creation of the poemtrained students say.

Today in the lesson we are reading a poem with an amazing story: please count how many years have passed from the beginning of work on it to publication? And how many years did it exist only in the memory of people before it was written down, just written down on paper?

So, let's open the text of the poem. What do we see at the very beginning of it? E pygraph , strictly, accurately and concisely reflecting the civil and creative position of the author:

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. 1961

IN THE PREFACE Akhmatova wrote to the poem:

During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison queues in Leningrad. Once, someone "identified" me. Then the woman standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard my name, woke up from the stupor characteristic of all of us and asked in my ear (there everyone spoke in a whisper):
- Can you describe it?
And I said
- Can.
Then something like a smile flickered across what had once been her face.April 1, 1957, Leningrad

The laconic “Instead of a Preface” is written in prose: both the content and the unusual form of this text attract special attention. The story of seventeen months spent in queues near the prison, as it were, explains the epigraph. Akhmatov's "Requiem", as well as Mozart's, was written "on order", but "a hundred million people" act as the "customer" in the poem. The poet swears that he will be able to write about the experience, and the text itself confirms this. This means that the poem is a materialized oath, the realization of the highest mission undertaken by the artist.

vocabulary work- "Yezhovism" - a trained student gives a certificate. (Ezhovshchina - the period of 1936-1938, when the People's Commissar of Internal Affairs was Yezhov N.I., with the help of which Stalin "purged" the Leninist guard, the party and state apparatus, military, government, scientific and other figures. During the Yezhovshchina, c.12 -14 million people were sent to camps and prisons, and more than a million people were shot)

The next part of the poem is called "DEDICATION". It contains a number of concrete pictures of the nationwide misfortune of the "mad years". This specificity is then combined with high generalization. Therefore, it becomes logical to turn to Pushkin where we are talking about "convict holes" (reading the Dedication).

Further - "INTRODUCTION", which exposes the truth on the verge of fantasy. And very naturally grotesque images arise here: “... only the dead smiled, glad to be at peace. And Leningrad dangled with an unnecessary appendage near its prisons. Please note that the city is called Leningrad, but the country is not the USSR, but “innocent Russia” (reading the Introduction).

vocabulary work- "Marusi".

CHAPTER 1 built like a folk lament. This is a mother's lament for her son being taken to prison, which is suddenly combined with peasant lamentation for the dead. Finally, these are the cries and groans of archery wives heard from the depths of centuries. But all these voices merge into one common howl, unbearable in its tragedy (reading of the chapter).

CHAPTER 2 dated 1939. What is depicted on the ground is viewed through the eyes of the “yellow month”. The poetess expressed her personal grief in short lines of a poem, rooted in folklore (reading a chapter).

CHAPTER 3 very short, in it the author writes about himself in the third person. This is no longer a woman - a shadow. After all, it is impossible for a person to endure this:No, it's not me, it's someone else suffering.

I couldn't do that, but what happened

Let the black cloth cover

Night.

(remember that the scale of the tragedy is already set in the first lines of the “Dedication”: “Mountains bend before this grief, The great river does not flow…”)

IN CHAPTER 4 the heroine of the poem tries to look at herself from the outside and notices with horror herself, the former “merry sinner”, in the crowd under the Crosses, where so many “innocent lives end ...” The verse breaks off in mid-sentence, on ellipses (reading of the chapter).

Chapter 5 . In the next passage, the mother's despair seems to culminate. Everything is confused in her mind, she hears “the ringing of the censer”, she sees “lush flowers” and “footprints somewhere to nowhere”. And the luminous star (traditional romantic image) becomes fatal and “threatens with imminent death” (reading of the chapter).

CHAPTER 6 dated the same year 1939. The heroine is in a kind of stupor. All her thoughts about her son, they have in common now - white nights that look into prison, but do not bring light and joy, but speak of the cross and death (reading the chapter).

And in this state of stupor, another blow falls on the heroine - a sentence to her son. CHAPTER 7 so it's called - "Sentence» (reading the chapter).

But the heroine does not have the strength to live in an “empty house”, and she calls for death: “You will come anyway - why not now? I'm waiting for you - it's very difficult for me." This is how it startsCHAPTER 8 - "To death."The heroine is ready to accept any death: a poisoned shell, a bandit's weight, typhoid fumes, and even seeing the "top of a blue hat" is the worst thing at that time (reading the chapter).

But death does not come - madness comes. Everything that happens in life and in the heart is crazy. And now death takes on its new form - mental illness: "Already madness has covered half of the soul with the wing." Reason is replaced by its eclipse, former stamina is replaced by weakness, speech turns into delirium, memory into unconsciousness. And if there are still signs of something holy, then these are vague influxes from the past. Madness acts as the last limit of the deepest despair and grief, unbearable by a sound mind, and therefore detached. About it 9 CHAPTER (reading the chapter).

The very name - "Requiem" - sets in a solemn, mourning, gloomy mood, it is associated with death, mournful silence, which comes from the exorbitance of suffering. The tragedy of the people is so great that it does not fit into the framework of a mourning requiem. The tragedy brings to mind the most terrible of the crimes in the history of mankind - the crucifixion of Christ. The tragedy connects the reader's consciousness to the fate of the Mother, who brought the Son-Redeemer into the world. Note,nowhere in the poem is the motive of retribution, revenge. The whole poem is a terrible accusation to the era of lawlessness and inhumanity.. IN CHAPTER 10 the biblical theme is embodied. She was prefaced with the gospel epigraph: "Do not cry, me, Mati, in the coffin of seeing." This epigraph breaks off in mid-sentence in a short quatrain: “Oh, do not weep for Me…” (reading of the chapter).

In this chapter, the author operates with lofty universal symbols of the Mother, Magdalene and the Crucifixion of Christ. The personality of Christ in a special way excited Akhmatova both with her human essence and with her fate. And now she connects the history of God's Son with the fate of her own, and therefore the particular and the general, the personal and the universal again merge into one.

This theme is continued and completed in the EPILOGUE:

I learned how faces fall,

How fear peeks out from under the eyelids,

Like cuneiform hard pages

Suffering brings out on the cheeks,

Like curls of ashen and black

Suddenly become silver

The smile withers on the lips of the submissive,

And fear trembles in a dry laugh.

And I'm not praying for myself alone

And about everyone who stood there with me,

And in the bitter cold, and in the July heat

Under the blinding red wall.

The poem ends with the 2nd part of the EPILOGUE, in which it becomes clear what kind of resurrection awaits its heroes - eternal life in creativity. Akhmatova tries not to forget, but on the contrary, to always remember the terrible time. The verses now begin to sound like the sound of a tocsin bell. The mother's despair is boundless, but she triumphs over her son's executioners. The voice of the lyrical heroine grows stronger, the 2nd part of the EPILOGUE sounds like a solemn choral, accompanied by the blows of a funeral bell. There are iron-hard couplets with masculine rhymes, which testify to the resilience and victorious power of the female poet. And therefore she is worthy of a monument, this embodiment of memory, inflexibility and another symbol of petrification. Continuing the theme of the monument, traditional in Russian poetry, Akhmatova interprets it very powerfully, proudly and bitterly:

Again the hour of the funeral approached.

I see, I hear, I feel you:

And the one that was barely brought to the window,

And the one that does not trample the earth, dear,

And the one that beautifully shook her head,

She said: "I come here as if I were home."

I would like to name everyone

Yes, the list was taken away, and there is nowhere to find out.

For them I wove a wide cover

Of the poor, they have overheard words.

I remember them always and everywhere,

I will not forget about them even in a new trouble,

And if my exhausted mouth is clamped,

To which a hundred million people shout,

May they also remember me

On the eve of my memorial day.

And if ever in this country

They will 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 broken,

Not in the royal garden at the treasured stump,

Where the inconsolable shadow is looking for me,

And here, where I stood for three hundred hours

And where the bolt was not opened for me.

Then, as in blissful death I fear

Forget the rumble of black marus,

Forget how hateful the door slammed

And the old woman howled like a wounded animal.

And let from motionless and bronze eyelids

Like tears, melted snow flows,

And let the prison dove roam in the distance,

And the ships are quietly moving along the Neva.

These lines were written in the terrible 1930s, when a huge number of innocent people were in camps, and Akhmatova's poems were not published. They were not published even later, in the 1940s and 1950s, when schoolchildren learned by heart not Akhmatova’s poems, but the Communist Party’s decree, in which the poetess was accused in the most rude form of lack of ideas. Therefore, there was no question of any monuments, awards, and the poem "Requiem" was still kept in the memory of faithful people. But you and I live in a time when Akhmatova's wish came true and a monument to her courage was erected where she bequeathed. About it - presentation "Monuments of Akhmatova in St. Petersburg" (prepared by students).

GENERALIZATION.

The monument to Akhmatova near the walls of the prison is a monument not only to the poet, but to all mothers and wives, to all victims of arbitrariness, this is a monument to Courage itself. Let us note that in the "Epilogue" the functions of the poet and poetry are connected, as it were, with the idea of great intercession for people. And this is the great heritage of Russian literature, which makes Akhmatovanational, folk poet.

Summing up the lesson. Evaluation of student work in class.

Notebook entry:
1. The poem "Requiem" was created from 1935 to 1940, the epigraph and preface were written later, after the debunking of the cult of Stalin, but the poem was published only in 1987.

2. The leading theme of the poem is the years of Stalin's repressions of 1935-1938. The suffering of the mother and the suffering of the people are depicted in unity - the personal is intertwined with the public. Akhmatova truthfully depicts her time, generalizing, comparing the tragedy of the country with the biblical one.

Literature:

Lesson notes for a teacher of literature: 11th grade: The Silver Age of Russian Poetry: In 2 hours / Ed.L.G. Maksidonova. - M.: Humanitarian publishing center VLADOS, 2000.- Part 2.
Russian Literature: A large educational reference book for schoolchildren and those entering universities. - 3rd ed. - M., Bustard, 2001.
Exam questions and answers. Literature. 9th and 11th grades. Tutorial. - M.: AST-PRESS SCHOOL, 2002.
Pavlovsky A.I. Anna Akhmatova// Literature at school. - 2005. - No. 1.

Analysis of the poem "Requiem"

Poem - this is both a lyrical diary, and an excited eyewitness account of the era, and a work of great artistic power, deep in its content. Over the years, a person becomes wiser, perceives the past more sharply, observes the present with pain. So Akhmatova's poetry became deeper over the years, I would say - sharper, more vulnerable. The poetess thought a lot about the ways of her generation, and the result of her thoughts is the Requiem. In a small poem, one can, and indeed should, peer into every line, experience every poetic image.

First of all, what does the title of the poem mean?

The very word "requiem" (in Akhmatova's notebooks - Latin Requiem) means "departure mass" - a Catholic service for the dead, as well as a mourning piece of music. The Latin name of the poem, as well as the fact that in the 1930s - 1940s. Akhmatova was seriously engaged in the study of the life and work of Mozart, in particular his "Requiem "a", suggests the connection between Akhmatova's work and the musical form of the requiem. By the way, Mozart's "Requiem" e" has 12 parts, and Akhmatova's poem has the same number ( 10 chapters + Dedication and Epilogue).

« Epigraph" And "Instead of a Preface"- original semantic and musical keys of the work. " epigraph" to the poem lines became (from the poem of 1961 “So it was not in vain that we were in trouble together ...”), which, in essence, is a recognition of complicity 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 retrospectively, recalling the events of past years, Anna Andreevna is re-aware of those phenomena that drew a line in people's lives, separating a normal, happy life and a terrible inhuman reality.

The poem "Requiem" is short enough, but what a strong effect it has on the reader! This work cannot be read with indifference, the grief and pain of a person with whom terrible events have occurred make one accurately imagine the whole tragedy of the situation.

"Instead of a Preface"(1957), picking up the theme " my people", takes us to " then”- the prison line of Leningrad in the 30s. Akhmatov's "Requiem", like Mozart's, was written "on order"; but in the role of "customer" - "a hundred millionth people." Lyrical and epic the poem is merged together: talking about her grief, Akhmatova speaks on behalf of millions of "nameless"; behind her author's "I" is the "we" of all those whose only creativity was life itself.

The poem "Requiem" consists of several parts. Each part carries its own emotional and semantic load.

"Dedication" continues the theme of prose "Instead of a Preface". But the scale of the described events changes:

Mountains bend before this grief,

The great river does not flow

But the prison gates are strong,

And behind them "convict holes"

And deadly sadness.

The first four verses of the poem, as it were, outline the coordinates of time and space. Time is no more, it has stopped (“the great river does not flow”);

“The wind is blowing fresh” and “the sunset is basking” - “for someone”, but no longer for us. The rhyme "mountains - burrows" forms a spatial vertical: "involuntary girlfriends" found themselves between heaven ("mountains") and the underworld ("burrows" where they torture their relatives and friends), in earthly hell.

"Dedication" is a description of the feelings and experiences of people who spend all their time in prison lines. The poetess speaks of "mortal anguish", of hopelessness, of the absence of even the slightest hope of changing the current situation. The whole life of people now depended on the sentence that would be pronounced on a loved one. This sentence forever separates the convict's family from normal people. Akhmatova finds amazing figurative means to convey her state and others:

For someone the fresh wind blows,

For someone, the sunset basks -

We don't know, we're the same everywhere

We hear only hateful rattle of keys

Yes, the steps are heavy soldiers.

There are still echoes of Pushkin-Decembrist motifs, a call in common with a clearly bookish tradition. It's more of a poetic declaration of grief than grief itself. But a few more lines - and we are immersed in the immediate sensation of grief - an elusive, all-encompassing element. This grief, dissolved in everyday life, in everyday life. And from the boring prosaic nature of grief, the consciousness of the ineradicability and incurability of this misfortune, which has covered life with a dense veil, grows:

We got up as if for an early mass,

We walked through the wild capital,

We met there, the dead lifeless,

The sun is lower and the Neva is foggy,

And hope still sings in the distance.

“Fresh wind”, “sunset” - all this is a kind of personification of happiness, freedom, which are no longer available to those languishing in prison lines and those behind bars:

The verdict ... And immediately the tears will gush,

Already separated from everyone

As if life is taken out of the heart with pain,

As if rudely overturned,

But it goes... It staggers... Alone.

Where are the unwitting girlfriends now

My two crazy years?

What does it seem to them in the Siberian blizzard,

What does it seem to them in the lunar circle?

To them I send my farewell greetings.

Only after the heroine gives the "involuntary girlfriends" of her "rabid years" "farewell greetings", begins "Introduction" in a requiem poem. The extreme expressiveness of images, the hopelessness of pain, harsh and gloomy colors amaze with stinginess and restraint. Everything is very specific and at the same time as generalized as possible: it is addressed to everyone and everyone, to the country, its people and to the lonely suffering, to the human individuality. The gloomy, cruel picture that appears before the reader's mind evokes associations with the Apocalypse - both in terms of the scale of universal suffering, and in terms of the feeling of the “last times” that have come, after which either death or the Last Judgment is possible:

It was when I smiled

Only the dead, I am glad for peace.

And dangled with an unnecessary pendant

Near the prisons of their Leningrad.

And when, mad with torment,

There were already condemned regiments,

And a short parting song

The locomotive horns sang.

The death stars were above us.

And innocent Russia writhed

Under the bloody boots

And under the tires of "black marus".

How sad that a talented person had to face all the hardships of a monstrous totalitarian regime. The great country of Russia allowed such a mockery of itself, why? All lines of Akhmatova's work contain this question. And when reading the poem, it becomes harder and harder to think about the tragic fate of innocent people.

The motif of the "wild capital" and "rabid years" "Dedications" in "Introduction" embodied in an image of great poetic power and precision.

Russia is crushed, destroyed. The poetess from the bottom of her heart pities her native country, which is completely defenseless, mourns for her. How do you deal with what happened? What words to find? Something terrible can happen in a person's soul, and there is no escape from it.

In Akhmatov's "Requiem" there is a constant shift of 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 grasp of eerie reality complement each other, interpenetrate, combine. And, as it were, at all levels of reality - one incessant nightmare. So, after the initial part "Intros"(“It was when I smiled…”), majestic, looking at the scene from some superstellar cosmic height (from which Leningrad is visible - a kind of giant swinging pendulum;

moving "shelves of convicts"; all of Russia, writhing under the boots of the executioners), is given, almost a chamber, family scene. But from this, the picture is no less heartbreaking - with the utmost concreteness, grounding, fullness of signs of everyday life, psychological details:

They took you away at dawn

Behind you, as if on a takeaway, I walked,

Children were crying in the dark room,

At the goddess, the candle swam.

Icons on your lips are cold,

Death sweat on the brow... Don't forget! -

I will be like archery wives,

Howl under the Kremlin towers.

In these lines fit a huge human grief. Walked "like a takeaway" - this is a reminder of the funeral. The coffin is taken out of the house, followed by close relatives. Crying children, a swollen candle - all these details are a kind of addition to the painted picture.

Intertwining historical associations and their artistic counterparts (“Khovanshchina” by Mussorgsky, Surikov’s painting “Morning of the Streltsy Execution”, A. Tolstoy’s novel “Peter 1”) are quite natural here: from the end of the 20s to the end of the 30s, Stalin was flattered by the comparison of his tyrannical rule from the time of Peter the Great, who eradicated barbarism by barbaric means. The cruelest, merciless suppression of the opposition to Peter (the Streltsy revolt) was transparently associated with the initial stage of Stalin's repressions: in 1935 (this year the "Entry" into the poem dates from) the first, "Kirov" flow into the Gulag began; revelry of the Yezhov meat grinder 1937 - 1938 was yet to come... Akhmatova commented on this part of "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 for about 10 hours, and then he will hand over the letter himself. Therefore, Akhmatova compared herself with the "shooter's wives."

1938, which, along with new waves of violent fury of the soulless State, brought 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 not clear who and to whom can sing it - either a mother to an arrested son, or a descending Angel to a woman distraught with hopeless grief, or a devastated house for a month ... The point of view "from outside" imperceptibly enters the soul of Akhmatov's lyrical heroines; in her lips the lullaby is transformed into a prayer, no - even into a request for someone's prayer. There is a distinct feeling of a split in the consciousness of the heroine, a splitting of the very lyrical "I" of Akhmatova: one "I" vigilantly and soberly observes what is happening in the world and in the soul; the other - indulges in madness, despair, hallucinations uncontrolled from the inside. The lullaby itself is like some kind of delirium:

The quiet Don flows quietly,

The yellow moon enters the house,

He enters with a cap on one side.

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 break in the rhythm, which becomes nervous, choking in a hysterical patter, interrupted along with a spasm of breathing and clouding of consciousness. The suffering of the poetess reached its climax, as a result, she practically does not notice anything around. All life has become like an endless nightmare. And that is why the lines are born:

No, it's not me, it's someone else suffering.

I couldn't do that, but what happened

Let black cloth cover

And let them carry the lanterns ...

The theme of the duality of the heroine develops, as it were, in several directions. Then she sees herself in a serene past and compares with her present:

I would show you, mocker

And the favorite of all friends,

Tsarskoye Selo merry sinner,

What will happen to your life

Like a three hundredth, with a transmission,

Under the Crosses you will stand

And with my hot tear

New Year's ice to burn.

The transformation of the events of terror and human suffering into an aesthetic phenomenon, into a work of art, produced unexpected and contradictory results. And in this respect, the work of Akhmatova is no exception. In Akhmatov's Requiem, the usual balance of things shifts, phantasmagoric combinations of images, bizarre chains of associations, obsessive and frightening ideas, as if getting out of control of consciousness, are born:

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 is messed up,

And I can't make out

Now who's the beast, who's the man

And how long to wait for the execution.

And only lush flowers,

And the ringing of the censer, and traces

Somewhere to nowhere

And looks straight into my eyes

And threatened with imminent death

Huge star.

Hope flickers, even though 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 salutary appeals to prayer, but also by the whole atmosphere of the suffering of a mother who gives her son to inevitable, inevitable death. The suffering of the mother is associated with the state of the Mother of God, the Virgin Mary; the sufferings of the son - with the torments of Christ crucified on the cross:

Light weeks fly by.

What happened, I don't understand

How do you, son, go to jail

White nights looked

How do they look again?

With a hawk's hot eye,

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 transmission, to the reception of officials, with mute sobs in solitude, and a fictional one - where everyone is alive and free in thoughts and memory?

And the stone word fell

On my still living chest.

Nothing, because I was ready

I'll deal with it somehow.

The announced verdict and the gloomy, mournful forebodings associated with it conflict with the natural world, the surrounding life: the “stone word” of the verdict falls on the “still living chest”.

Parting with her son, pain and anxiety for him dry up the mother's heart.

It is impossible even to imagine the whole tragedy of a person with whom such terrible trials happened. It would seem that everything has a limit. And that is why you need to “kill” your memory so that it does not interfere, does not press on the chest with a heavy stone:

I have a lot to do today:

We must kill the memory to the end,

It is necessary that the soul turned to stone,

We must learn to live again.

But not that ... The hot rustle of summer,

Like a holiday outside my window.

I've been anticipating this for a long time.

Bright day and empty house.

All the 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 a serious illness, i.e. after having “unlearned to live”).

Everything experienced by Akhmatova 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 so the poetess addresses "Towards Death", calls her, hopes not her imminent arrival. Death appears as liberation from suffering.

You'll still come - why not now?

I'm waiting for you - it's very difficult for me.

I turned off the light and opened the door

You, so simple and wonderful.

Take any form for this<…>

I don't care now. The Yenisei swirls

The polar star is shining.

And the blue sparkle of beloved eyes

The last horror covers.

However, death does not come, but madness comes. Man cannot bear what has befallen him. And madness turns out to be salvation, now you can no longer think about the reality, so cruel and inhuman:

Already madness wing

Soul covered half

And drink fiery wine

And beckons to the black valley.

And I realized that he

I must give up the victory

Listening to your

Already as if someone else's delirium.

And won't let anything

I take it with me

(No matter how you ask him

And how not to bother with a prayer ...)

Numerous variations of similar motifs, characteristic of the Requiem, are reminiscent of musical leitmotifs. IN "Dedication" And " Introduction» those main motives and images that will develop further in the poem are outlined.

In Akhmatova's notebooks there are words that characterize the special music of this work: "... a mourning Requiem, the only accompaniment of which can only be Silence and sharp distant strikes of a funeral bell." But the Silence of the poem is filled with sounds: the hateful rattle of the keys, the parting song of locomotive whistles, the crying of children, the female howl, the rumble of black marus ("marusi", "raven", "funnel" - this is what the people called cars for transporting arrested people), the squelching of the door and the howling of the old woman... Through these "hellish" sounds are barely audible, but still audible - the voice of hope, the cooing of a dove, the splashing of water, the ringing of censers, the hot rustle of summer, the words of last consolations. From the underworld (“prison hard labor 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 glorified the great hour,

And the heavens went up in flames.

He said to his father: “Almost left me!”

And mothers: "Oh, don't cry for me..."

Here we are not talking about the upcoming resurrection from the dead, the ascension to heaven and other miracles of the gospel history. The 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 quite earthly. Those who turn to God - reproach, bitter lamentation about their loneliness, abandonment, helplessness. The words spoken to the mother are simple words of consolation, pity, a call for reassurance, in view of the irreparable, irreversible nature of what happened. God the Son is left alone with his human destiny and death; what he said

Divine parents - God the Father and the Mother of God - are hopeless and doomed. At this moment of his destiny, Jesus is excluded from the context of the Divine historical process: he suffers and perishes before the eyes of his father and mother, and his soul "sorrows to death."

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 are three: Mary Magdalene (beloved woman or loving), 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, in the second quatrain there is a “triangle”: Beloved, beloved Disciple and loving Mother. In the second "triangle", as in the first, there is no harmony.

"Crucifixion"- 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 sobbed,

The beloved student turned to stone,

And to where silently Mother stood,

So no one dared to look.

The grief of the beloved is expressive, visual - this is the hysteria of the inconsolable grief of a woman. The grief of a male intellectual is static, silent (which is no less understandable and eloquent). As for the grief of the Mother, it is generally impossible to say anything about it. The scale of her suffering is incomparable to either women's or men's: it is boundless and inexpressible grief; her loss is irreparable, because this is her only son and because this son is God, the only Savior for all time.

Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple, as it were, embody those stages of the Way of the Cross that the Mother has already passed: Magdalene - rebellious suffering, when the lyrical heroine "howled under the Kremlin towers" and "threw at the feet of the executioner", John - the quiet stupor of a man trying to "kill the memory ”, distraught with grief and calling for death.

The terrible ice star that accompanied the heroine disappears in Chapter X - “heaven melted into fire". The silence of the Mother, on whom "so no one dared to look", but also for all, "millions of those killed cheaply, / Who trodden a path in the void." This is her duty now.

"Crucifixion" in "Requiem" - the universal verdict to the inhuman System, dooming the mother to immeasurable and inconsolable suffering, and her only beloved son to non-existence. In the Christian tradition, the crucifixion of Christ is the way 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 for the Son and Mother is hopeless, how endless the Great Terror, how innumerable the line of victims and the prison queue of their wives, sisters, mothers ... "Requiem" does not give an exit, does not offer an answer. Doesn't even open up hope that it will end.

Followed by "Crucifixion" in "Requiem" "Epilogue":

I learned how faces fall,

How fear peeks out from under the eyelids,

Like cuneiform hard pages

Suffering brings out on the cheeks,

Like curls of ashen and black

Suddenly become silver

The smile withers on the lips of the submissive,

And fear trembles in a 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 the bitter cold, and in the July heat

Under the blinding red wall

Closing the poem "Epilogue""switches time" to the present, returning us to the melody and the general meaning "Instead of Foreword" And "Dedications": the image of the prison queue “under the red blinded wall” appears again (in the 1st part).

Again the hour of the funeral approached.

I see, I hear, I feel you.

It is not the description of tormented faces that turns out to be the finale of a 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 narration again in the prison-camp line - stretching across long-suffering Russia: from Leningrad to the Yenisei, from the Quiet Don to the Kremlin towers. It 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 nowhere to find out

For them I wove a wide cover

Of the poor, they have overheard words.

I remember them always and everywhere,

I will not forget about them even in a new trouble.

And if my exhausted mouth is clamped,

To which a hundred million people shout,

May they also remember me

On the eve of my funeral day.

Finally, the heroine of Akhmatova is at the same time a suffering woman - a wife and a mother, and - a poet who is able to convey the tragedy of the people and the country, which have become hostages of perverse democracy, who has risen above personal suffering and fear, his unfortunate, twisted fate. The poet, called upon to express the thoughts and feelings of all the victims of totalitarianism, to speak in their voice, without losing his own - individual, poetic; the poet, who is responsible for making the truth about the great terror known to the whole world, reaching the next generations, turned out to be the property of History (including the history of culture).

But as if for a moment, forgetting about the faces falling like autumn leaves, about the fright trembling in every look and voice, about the silent universal humility, Akhmatova foresees the monument erected to herself. World and Russian poetry knows many poetic meditations on the theme of "a monument not made by hands." Akhmatova’s Pushkin is closest, to which “the folk path will not overgrow”, rewarding the poet posthumously for the fact that he “glorified freedom” in his not-so-compared to the twentieth, “cruel age” and “called mercy for the fallen” .. The Akhmatov monument was erected in the middle of the folk path leading to the prison (and from the prison to the wall or to the Gulag):

And if ever in this country

They will 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 broken,

Not in the royal garden at the treasured stump,

Where the inconsolable shadow is looking for me...

"Requiem" became a monument in the word to Akhmatova's contemporaries - both the dead and the living. She mourned all of them with her "weeping lyre." personal, lyrical theme Akhmatova completes epic. She gives consent to the celebration of the erection of 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 the bolt was not opened for me.

Then, as in blissful death I fear

Forget the rumble of black marus.

Forget how hateful squelched the door

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 accusation 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 all the innocent victims, but also those whose lives were sadly reflected in their death:

And let from motionless and bronze eyelids,

Like tears, melted snow flows,

And let the prison dove roam in the distance,

And the ships are quietly moving along the Neva.

Akhmatova is convinced that “in this country” people will survive who will openly condemn the “Yezhovshchina” and glorify those few who resisted terror, who implicitly created an artistic monument to the annihilated people in the form of a requiem, who shared with the people their fate, hunger, deprivation, slander...