HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ANNA AKHMATOVA

In her youth, she lived and wrote like a Russian Edna St. Vincent Millay. After the Revolution, her poetry deepened, was permeated with religious images, and bore witness to her hellish times.

Anna Akhmatova was born on June 23, 1889. In 1910, she met the artist Amadeo Modigliani in Paris, where she went on a honeymoon from St. Petersburg with her first of three husbands (the third was a common-law marriage). A renowned six-foot-tall beauty with black hair and a distinctive hooked nose, she was sketched, painted, and courted by Modigliani and depicted often by many other artists and photographers.

Anna Akhmatova from 1911, 1922, 1946, 1965

She also loved and was loved by many important Russian poets, and before the Revolution, her poetry made her famous. Starting with the popularity of her early poetry, first published in 1907 when she was 17, Akhmatova became symbolic of a modern intellectual woman who rejected traditional morality, sort of like a Russian version of Edna St. Vincent Millay.

After the Communists took over Russia, she was silenced during the Reign of Terror. Even though she lived a life of poverty as a result of not being able to make a living from her writing, her first ex-husband was executed, and her son was imprisoned, she did not emigrate to escape the hardships like so many other writers of her time. She stayed on as a witness, even during the long years when she could not publish her work. She is now idolized in Russia.

On Liteinуi Prospekt in Saint Petersburg, stands one of those bookshops which seem to have become more numerous in Russia’s biggest cities over the past few years: quasi-intellectual bastions of hipster culture, where the coffee is good and one can find expensive, but lavishly illustrated art books. The most well-represented author in this bookshop on Liteinyi was Anna Akhmatova. Her aquiline nose and black fringe roamed the bookshop like benevolent ghosts from the past. Apart from her whole oeuvre, one could buy postcards, tote bags, posters and pin-badges decorated with her distinct profile. This was not entirely surprising, as the museum in the Fountain House dedicated to Russia’s most famous female poet is situated on the same street. Nonetheless, it shows how Akhmatova has become an identity marker for young, progressive Petersburgers, who hope to channel her spirit. It is the latest step in a long history of mythologisation, first performed by Akhmatova herself and later by her critics, biographers and fans.—From The Ever-changing Myth of Anna Akhmatova

Akhmatova’s poems were also banned because they were shot through with religious images in the Communist era when religion was banned. She was an Orthodox believer in spite of her amoral lifestyle. The themes of her poetry changed and darkened during the Reign of Terror against the background of the hellish times in which she lived.

Joseph Brodsky spoke of her “note of controlled terror.” He called her “the keening muse.” Brodsky also wrote Translating Akhmatova, which was “a review of Poems of Akhmatova selected, translated, and introduced by Stanley Kunitz and Max Hayward

In Brodsky’s review, which was itself published in translation in the New York Review of Books, he wrote about the skills a translator of Russian poetry needs to have, and he illustrated some pitfalls by pointing out the flaws he found in some of Kunitz’s translations. (This informative review is behind a paywall, but available with a free account.)

Three disparate translations of her first published poem I found at this link are illustrative of the difficulties Brodsky wrote about. The three translations are drastically different even in the titles chosen by the translators. There’s “On his hand you may see many glittering rings...,” and “There are many brilliant rings on his hand...,” and “He flaunts by a lot of bright rings on his hand...” The shocking differences make me wonder if any poem we read in translation can ever be trusted to capture the actual style and meaning of the original. Besides, all three translations on that page seem flaccid and unpoetic to me.

I’d love to know your opinion. If you have one, leave it in the comments, please!

You can find an overview of Anna Akhmatova’s life and work at The Writer’s Almanac.