A truly iconic figure in Russian literature is Anna Akhmatova.
Researchers call the “Requiem” the peak of her lyrics. In the work of the poetess all themes are organically intertwined: love, poet and history, poet and power, culture of the 19th century, the “silver” century, Soviet realities ... Akhmatova lived a long life: a spoiled girl born in pre-revolutionary Russia, a young poetess from the elite was destined to know the severity of the Soviet stone day. It is therefore logical that the breadth of her creative range can be called comprehensive: love lyrics, civic poetry, folklore elements, antique themes, biblical subjects.
Requiem, Akhmatova: summary
Work on a poem lasted from 1935 to 1940, in the most difficult, bloody and terrible time. In her, the poetess managed to organically combine the annalistic line and the genre tradition of the funeral commemoration. From the Latin language “Requiem” is translated as reassurance. Why is this name given to her work by 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 poetess, as it were, buries herself and her friends in misfortune, and all of Russia.
Akhmatova, Requiem: semantic plans
Modern literary scholars distinguish four layers in the poem: the first is obvious and is, as it were, “on the surface” - the grief of the lyrical heroine who describes the night arrest of a loved one. It should be noted here that the poetess is based on personal experience: in the same way her son L. Gumilyov, her husband N. Punin and fellow O. Mandelstam were arrested at the 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 cry of thousands of Russian women who suffered from the same disaster. 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 era. Here, researchers point to the theme of the “monument” arising in this connection, dating back to the work of Derzhavin and Pushkin. However, for Akhmatova, the monument is not a symbol of fame, but rather the embodiment of lifetime and posthumous suffering. That is why she asks to be put near the prison, where the woman spent so many terrible hours with her involuntary “friends”. The image of the stone monument merges with the motif of "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 “petrified suffering”. The image of the suffering poetess merges with the image of Russia, torn to pieces, perishing, a terrible era - this is Anna Akhmatova.
Requiem has a fourth semantic plan. This is the grief of the mother whose son was repressed. It correlates with the torment of the Mother of God, who observes the ascension of Jesus Christ to Calvary. According to the poet, the torment of every mother losing her son is comparable to the suffering of the virgin Mary. So the personal tragedy of one woman and one child becomes universal.