"When the American national poet Robert Frost had visited her at a dacha in 1962, Akhmatova wrote: 'I've had everything - poverty, prison lines, fear, poems remembered only by heart, and burnt poems. And humiliation and grief. And you don't know anything about this and wouldn't be able to understand it if I told you...' Two years before her death at the age of 76, Akhmatova was chosen president of the Writers' Union. She did not live to see the publication of her collected works in 1986 in Moscow."
So, you know, for this alone, I would love Anna, even if I can't quite access her poems yet.
What do you think of this? I like it as well as I've like anything of her, i think.
When you're drunk it's so much fun --
An early fall has strung
The elms with yellow flags.
We've strayed into the land of deceit
And we're repenting bitterly,
Why then are we smiling these
Strange and frozen smiles?
We wanted piercing anguish
Instead of placid happiness. . .
I won't abandon my comrade,
So dissolute and mild.
1911 (Paris)
-- translated by Judith Hemschemeyer
4 comments:
Will there ever be a time in our lives again when Bushco does not provide the prism by which life is understood?
I ask, because I see in this poem the futility of false gods; we will have to feel the anguish of our failed state and, until then, the mask of a forced smile and cushion of stiff drinks continue.
I do fear that anguish, but welcome it, as well. Because that pain will, I hope, mean the end of Bushco's reign.
Query: what makes you think you cannot access Akhmatova's poems?
I just love her. That's all I can say.
NTodd,
Well, I have to work to get at what she's saying. With other poets -- Mary Oliver, for example -- I understand exactly what I think the poet meant for me to feel as soon as I read the poem. Akhmatova, I have to work at. That's one of my reasons for blogging one of her poems a week: to try and understand her.
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