Anna Akhmatova

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Standard Name: Akhmatova, Anna
Birth Name: Anna Andreevna Gorenko
Used Form: Anna Andreyevna Gorenko
Writing through the turmoils of the twentieth century, AA (Anna of all the Russias as she was solemnly called by her fellow poet Marina Tsvetaeva ) was one of the greatest poets of Russian literature.
Feinstein, Elaine. Anna of all the Russias: The Life of Anna Akhmatova. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2005.
xi
She is also an icon of the intelligentsia that was repressed by the Soviet regime. She was courageous enough to carry her literary talent (which produced translation and a lost play as well as poetry) through illness, poverty, and suffering with immense dignity and complete dedication. She has become a metaphor for rebellion and resistance to every attempt to suppress her muse.
Haight, Amanda. Anna Akhmatova : A Poetic Pilgrimage. Oxford University Press, 1976.
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Photograph of a painted portrait of Anna Akhmatova, 1922. She is shown from the shoulders up, at a three-quarter turn, against a blue background which incorporates another, sketched figure behind her in similar shades of blue.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Friends, Associates Ruth Fainlight
Visiting Leningrad in 1965, RF tried hard to engineer a meeting with Anna Akhmatova , an upstairs neighbour of people she did meet. She is on terms of acquaintance with many poets writing in London...
Intertextuality and Influence U. A. Fanthorpe
UAF was anthologized by Adrian Barlow in Calling Kindred: Poems from the English Speaking World, 1993. At Poetry International 2000, she chose Robert Browning as her Presiding Spirit.
qtd. in
Connolly, Sally. “Woolly whispers of the past”. Times Literary Supplement, 13 Apr. 2001, p. 25.
25
Other influences she claimed are...
Intertextuality and Influence Elaine Feinstein
Of the translations which EF provides of Pushkin's poetry, some are written by herself. She ends her work by quoting Anna Akhmatova writing of the way Pushkin's reputation has risen.
Beer, Patricia. “Two Hares and a Priest”. London Review of Books, 13 May 1999, pp. 27-9.
29
Intertextuality and Influence Gillian Slovo
The first part has an epigraph from Pushkin about trackless snow; later parts are headed from other Russian writers such as Yevgeni Yevtushenko and Anna Akhmatova . Slovo's examination of the intersection of politics with...
Intertextuality and Influence Adrienne Rich
As in other texts, Rich's concerns here are significantly though not exclusively feminist. The first poem in the book, Orion, addresses the well-known hunter constellation as my fierce half-brother: he burns for all...
Intertextuality and Influence Germaine Greer
The chapters are headed with quotations ranging eclectically through the international canon and counter-canon from Sophocles and The Ramayana of Valmiki (an ancient Indian epic) to Spike Milligan , via Charles Baudelaire , T. S. Eliot
Intertextuality and Influence Edna O'Brien
EOB has named many women writers as important to her: she includes among these Jane Austen , Emily Dickinson , Elizabeth Bowen , Anna Akhmatova , Anita Brookner , and Margaret Atwood , adding: Every...
Textual Features Penelope Shuttle
The early influences on PS as a poet included Rilke , Akhmatova , and Lorca ; they were more important to her than her English contemporaries, whose realism did not appeal to her.This first collection...
Textual Features Frances Cornford
The book includes translations of poems by Anna Akhmatova , Ivan Krylov , Mihail Lermontov , and Alexander Pushkin .
Poems from the Russian. Translators Cornford, Frances and Esther Polianowsky Salaman, Faber and Faber, 1943.
5-6
Textual Features Carol Ann Duffy
Many poems here feature women answering back to canonical male voices: Liz Lochhead to Donne , Jenny Joseph to W. S. Gilbert , U. A. Fanthorpe to Walt Whitman , Wendy Cope to A. E. Housman
Textual Production Elaine Feinstein
EF published Anna of All the Russias: A Life of Anna Akhmatova, an account taking in both Tsarist and StalinistRussia and extremes of wealth and poverty.
Blackwell’s Online Bookshop. http://Bookshop.Blackwell.co.uk.
Blackwell
Textual Production Elaine Feinstein
In 2003 EF was awarded a Wingate Scholarship for the purpose of researching and writing her biography of Anna Akhmatova .
“Poetry Society News: News Archive”. The Poetry Society, London.
Textual Production Carol Rumens
Since this year, 2007, CR has been picking a Poem of the Week for the Guardian newspaper, which prints the poem along with her commentary and analysis. Rumens like to pay attention to context and...
Textual Production Ruth Fainlight
The title comes from the colour of the walls in a Leningrad flat RF visited in 1965, where the occupant above was the poet Anna Akhmatova .
British Council Film and Literature Department, in association with Book Trust. Contemporary Writers in the UK. http://www.contemporarywriters.com.
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elaine Feinstein
Subjects of poems here include Dickens , Thomas and Jane Carlyle, Siegfried Sassoon , Anna Akhmatova , Bella Akhmadulina , Billie Holliday , and Raymond Chandler . In Betrayal, a reply to Shakespeare

Timeline

1992: The city of Leiden in the Netherlands initiated...

Writing climate item

1992

The city of Leiden in the Netherlands initiated its Tegen-Beeld , or Wall Poems, by painting on a wall a poem by Marina Tsvetajeva or Tsvetaeva: the design is important as well as the words.
The Wall Poems of Leiden. http://www.muurgedichten.nl/wallpoems.html.

Texts

Akhmatova, Anna. Anno Domini MCMXXI. Petropolis, 1921.
Akhmatova, Anna. Chetki. Knigoizd–vo S. Efron, 1921.
Akhmatova, Anna. The Akhmatova Journals. Volume I: 1938-41. Editor Chukovskaya, Lydia, HarperCollins Publishers , 1994.
Akhmatova, Anna. The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova. Editor Reeder, Roberta, Translator Hemschemeyer Judith, Zephyr Press, 1990, 2 vols.
Akhmatova, Anna. The Flight of Time. Sovetsky Pisatel’, 1965.
Akhmatova, Anna. The Word That Causes Death’s Defeat: Poems of Memory. Editor Anderson, Nancy K., 1st edition, Yale University Press, 2004.
Akhmatova, Anna. White Flock. Giperborei, 1917.