Wikipedia tells us that in 1910, [Anna Akhmatova] married the boyish poet Nikolay Gumilyov, who very soon left her for hunting lions in Africa, the battlefields of the World War I, and the society of Parisian grisettes. Her husband didn't take her poems seriously and was shocked when Alexander Blok declared to him that he preferred her poems to his.
Wikipedia appears to imagine that this is somehow an interesting fact about Akhmatova. It's not. It doesn't distinguish her from any other female poet married to a male poet. See, recently, e.g., Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes.
Here's some weakly (I imagine; it must be) translated Akhmatova for your Sunday. (And when WAS the last time you read something by Nikolay Gumilyov????? Or Ted Hughes???).
Wild honey has the scent of freedom,
dust--of a ray of sun,
a girl's mouth--of a violet,
and gold--has no perfume.
Watery--the mignonette,
and like an apple--love,
but we have found out forever
that blood smells only of blood.
1933
--Translated by Jane Kenyon
Twenty Poems of Anna Akhmatova
Originally published (in the Russian) in the book Reed, 1924.
"Blood smells only of blood" is a good line. But women know, and I think Akhmatova knew, that different kinds of blood smell different. Menstrual blood smells different from the blood that rushes to the skin of your finger when you're pruning a rose, which smells different from the blood of your child when he's fallen and skinned his knee, which smells different from the beef blood that the butcher sells you for blood pudding. I imagine the whole Earth stinks right now with the blood of dead Lebanese, Israeli, and Iraqi children. Their blood all smells the same to me.
Great post and very well said.
ReplyDeleteHello. I just wanted to say this, and this seems to be an appropriate post to post it at. As a Southern Male student going to an all boys school for Gentlemen (check it out:http://www.woodberry.org/Default.asp?bhcp=1) I would like to thank you for efforts to bring down the patriarchy. Viewing it from the inside, it is obvious that it is still very much alive. The world needs critical thinkers. The problem is, many bigots do not view themselves as such, but still as a metal default sort the world into old, outdated categories of superior and inferior. Thank you.
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