The fourth monument to Akhmatova, a poet of the Silver Age, was erected in St. Petersburg on the Robespierre embankment in 2006. An amazing touching image created by the sculptor G.V. Dodonova, causes both admiration and sympathy.
Anna Akhmatova in bronze
The figure of a woman, mounted on a high pedestal at houses 12 and 14, is clearly visible from the waterfront. Its height is about three meters. The poetess, slowly moving away from the city prison building, paused to look back at the place to which her mother's love pulled and which made her heart ache. In “Crosses”, according to a “political” article, her son was sitting.
What does she hope to see there, beyond the river, where there is a formidable red brick building? Meetings with the "political" were not allowed, often nothing was known about their fate, sentence. Women of St. Petersburg still went to these walls, carried programs, stood in lines for a long time and hoped to learn at least something about loved ones.
But on the monument to Akhmatova in St. Petersburg - not a grieving, desperate woman. Realizing her impotence, she still did not lower her shoulders. Hiding pain and tension from prying eyes, she continues her long-suffering life path.
"Crosses"
The complex of structures for the temporary detention of detainees was built in the 19th century by the architect A.I. Tomishko. It got its name because of the shape of the main buildings. Red brick structures are known not only to the townspeople - they are often seen by viewers in series and feature films, since over the past years of their existence there have been many events.
The “Crosses” contained not only criminal elements, there were also those detained under “political” articles. So it was in the tsarist time, and in the revolutionary period, and in the Soviet years.
Anna Akhmatova wrote that no one had such a fate as her generation. Her husband, Nikolai Gumilev, was accused of a counter-revolutionary conspiracy and shot in 1921. Son Lev Gumilyov was arrested four times and received two sentences, 5 and 10 years. He was rehabilitated in 1956. Nikolai Punin, a common-law husband, was detained in the 30s. The poetess knew the road to Kresty very well, she was familiar with many who shared her grief. Suffered and hid her suffering.
"Requiem"
The famous poem "Requiem" was launched in 1934. She is about the feelings and lives of women who, like her, came to the walls of the Crosses. Work on the work continued over the years. The poetess read work options to people whom she trusted, and then burned sheets. The poem became widely known in the 1960s, spread by "samizdat."
Sculptor G. Dodonova worked on the monument to Anna Akhmatova, taking this work as the basis of her composition. On a high pedestal the words are knocked out of it:
“And I’m not praying for myself alone,
And about everyone who stood there with me,
And in the fierce cold, and in the July heat,
Under the red blinded wall. "
Sculptor Galina Dodonova about the monument
The fate of the appearance of the monument to Akhmatova in St. Petersburg was not easy. The first competition for his project was held back in 1997. Everyone could participate in it. The results did not satisfy the commission. The second stage involved only professional sculptors. The monument to the work of Galina Dodonova and architect Vladimir Reppo was recognized as the best. However, it became possible to install it only eight years later, in 2006, thanks to the sponsorship of a resident of St. Petersburg.
Galina Dodonova said that creating the image of a poetess, she reread her verses many times, relived her feelings every time. In addition, she learned a lot from mythology. This is Isis, wandering around the water and looking for the bodies of her son and husband. And Lot's wife, frozen with a salt foot for the last look back. Akhmatova understood this heroine well.
The author of the monument is convinced that she was able to create not a tragic image, but a sublime and clarified experience of suffering. Experts define it even as "Orthodox." The monument to Akhmatova was consecrated by Father Vladimir.
The testament of the poet
In the poem "Requiem" there are such lines:
"And if ever in this country
Construct a monument to me to erect ...
... Here, where I stood for three hundred hours
And where the bolt was not opened for me. ”
Anna Akhmatova chose a place near the Crosses. But to fulfill her testament accurately was not possible. The modern prison complex has very little space: a narrow embankment, a busy highway nearby. In addition, the city authorities and the authors of the project believe that today the Krestov contingent has changed a lot. She did not write about them in her poem.
Across the Neva, on the Robespierre embankment, the choice of the location of the monument to Akhmatova was also complicated. Over the years since the project was approved, an underground parking lot was built on the allotted territory. The installation of a heavy pedestal with the figure of a poetess required additional technical solutions and means.
Passion raged for a long time around the installation, but the monument still took its place. The will of the great poetess St. Petersburg fulfilled. She turns her sorrowful gaze across the river, onto the walls of the Crosses.
Akhmatova’s monument has a copy. A plaster figure, slightly smaller than the original, is installed in the prison building. Employees of the Office of Punishment installed a sculpture in the service corridor of the “Crosses” on the way to the temple.