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.
Cynthia Haven, blogger at the Stanford Book Haven [https://bookhaven.stanford.com] and biographer of many of the great poets and thinkers of our times, sent me this comment in an email:
She was a Russian Millay! Both were symbols of an era – Millay was the bold “new woman” of the 1920s; Akhmatova burst on the Russian poetry scene [some years earlier] at the end of the Belle Epoque, before the outbreak of the Great War. Personal tragedy led her to become one of the great poets of World War II and the terrible years of Communism after. She is included among the great “Silver Age” poets, and considered one of Russia's finest poets ever.
She's also my grandteacher, since I was a student of Joseph Brodsky, her protégé. Incidentally, he said that Akhmatova, by example, taught him what it meant to be Christian.
He also credited W.H. Auden as the best role model he had for Christianity. Alongside Anna A. ...
Another email comment: I love that you’re introducing us to poets like this. Thank you!---Emily
Received this comment via email, from Denali Delmar: "So informative and well written! I’m glad to have read it."
Cynthia Haven, blogger at the Stanford Book Haven [https://bookhaven.stanford.com] and biographer of many of the great poets and thinkers of our times, sent me this comment in an email:
She was a Russian Millay! Both were symbols of an era – Millay was the bold “new woman” of the 1920s; Akhmatova burst on the Russian poetry scene [some years earlier] at the end of the Belle Epoque, before the outbreak of the Great War. Personal tragedy led her to become one of the great poets of World War II and the terrible years of Communism after. She is included among the great “Silver Age” poets, and considered one of Russia's finest poets ever.
She's also my grandteacher, since I was a student of Joseph Brodsky, her protégé. Incidentally, he said that Akhmatova, by example, taught him what it meant to be Christian.
He also credited W.H. Auden as the best role model he had for Christianity. Alongside Anna A. ...