She clasped her hands under a dark veil...
"Why are you pale today?"
- Because I have tart sadness
Got him drunk.
How can I forget? He came out staggering
The mouth twisted painfully...
I ran away without touching the railing,
I ran after him to the gate.
Gasping for breath, I shouted: “It’s a joke.
All that has gone before. If you leave, I'll die."
Smiled calmly and creepily
And he told me: "Don't stand in the wind"
You can't confuse real tenderness
With nothing, and she is quiet.
You are in vain carefully wrapping
My shoulders and chest are covered in fur.
And in vain are the words submissive
You talk about first love
How do I know these stubborn
Your unsatisfied glances!
We are all hawkmoths here, harlots,
How sad we are together!
Flowers and birds on the walls
Longing for the clouds.
You smoke a black pipe
The smoke above it is so strange.
I put on a tight skirt
To appear even slimmer.
The windows are forever blocked:
What is it, frost or thunderstorm?
On the eyes of a cautious cat
Your eyes are similar.
Oh, how my heart yearns!
Am I waiting for the hour of death?
And the one who is dancing now,
Will definitely be in hell.
Everything has been taken away: both strength and love.
A body thrown into a disgraceful city
Not happy about the sun. I feel like there's blood
I'm already completely cold.
I don’t recognize the cheerful Muse’s disposition:
She looks and doesn’t say a word,
And he bows his head in a dark wreath,
Exhausted, on my chest.
And only conscience gets worse every day
He is furious: the great one wants tribute.
Covering my face, I answered her...
But there are no more tears, no more excuses.
Twenty first. Night. Monday.
The outlines of the capital in the darkness.
Composed by some slacker,
What love happens on earth.
And from laziness or boredom
Everyone believed, and so they live:
Looking forward to dates, afraid of separation
And they sing love songs.
But to others the secret is revealed,
And silence will rest on them...
I came across this by accident
And since then everything seems to be sick.
Everything was stolen, betrayed, sold,
The wing of the black death flashed,
Everything is devoured by hungry melancholy,
Why did we feel light?
During the day the breath of cherry blossoms blows
An unprecedented forest under the city,
At night it shines with new constellations
The depth of the transparent July skies, -
And the wonderful comes so close
To the crumbling dirty houses...
Unknown to anyone,
But what we have desired since the ages.
And you thought I was like that too
That you can forget me
And that I will throw myself, begging and sobbing,
Under the hooves of a bay horse.
Or I’ll ask the healers
There's a root in the slander water
And I'll send you a strange gift -
My treasured fragrant scarf.
Damn you. Not a groan, not a glance
I will not touch the damned soul,
But I swear to you by the garden of angels,
I swear by the miraculous icon,
And our nights are a fiery child -
I will never return to you.
Somehow we managed to separate
And put out the hateful fire.
My eternal enemy, it's time to learn
You really need someone to love.
I'm free. Everything is fun for me, -
At night the Muse will fly down to console,
And in the morning glory will come
A rattle crackles over your ear.
There's no need to pray for me
And when you leave, look back...
The black wind will calm me down,
The golden leaf fall makes me happy.
I will accept separation as a gift
And oblivion is like grace.
But tell me, on the cross
Do you dare to send another?
Why did you poison the water?
And they mixed my bread with my dirt?
Why the last freedom
You turn into a nativity scene -
Because I didn't mock
Over the bitter death of friends,
Because I remained faithful
To my sad homeland.
So be it, without the executioner and the scaffold
There will be no poet on earth,
We have shirts of repentance,
We should go and howl with a candle...
Will they forget? - That's what surprised me,
I've been forgotten a hundred times
A hundred times I lay in my grave,
Where maybe I am now,
And the Muse became deaf and blind,
The grain rotted in the ground,
So that after, like a Phoenix from the ashes,
Rise blue on the air.
Updated 12/09/13 16:47:
And now you are heavy and sad,
Renounced glory and dreams,
But for me irreparably dear,
And the darker, the more touching you are.
You drink wine, your nights are unclean,
What's in reality, you don't know what's in a dream,
But the tormenting eyes are green, -
Apparently, he did not find peace in wine.
And the heart only asks for a quick death,
Cursing the slowness of fate.
More and more often the western wind brings
Your reproaches and your pleas.
But do I dare to return to you?
Under the pale sky of my homeland
I only know how to sing and remember,
And don’t you dare remember me.
So the days go by, multiplying sorrows.
How can I pray to the Lord for you?
You guessed it: my love is like this
That even you couldn't kill her.
I learned to live simply and wisely,
Look at the sky and pray to God,
And wander for a long time before evening,
To tire out unnecessary anxiety.
When the burdocks rustle in the ravine
And the bunch of yellow-red rowan will fade,
I write funny poems
About life that is perishable, perishable and beautiful.
I'm coming back. Licks my palm
Fluffy cat, purrs sweetly,
And the fire burns bright
On the turret of the lake sawmill.
Only occasionally the silence cuts through
The cry of a stork flying onto the roof.
And if you knock on my door,
I don't think I'll even hear it.
Updated 12/09/13 17:03:
He loved three things in the world:
Behind the evening singing, white peacocks
And erased maps of America.
I didn't like it when children cried
Didn't like raspberry tea
And female hysteria.
...And I was his wife.
The poem “Clenched her hands under a dark veil” was written by Anna Akhmatova in 1911, a year after her wedding to Gumilyov. Please leave this point in memory, as it will be useful in further analysis of the strings for their deep understanding.
The poem does not have a complete basis for depicting feelings; the poetess compressed it so that each line had its own weight. Let us pay attention to the key words of the work: “dark veil”, “tart sadness”, “joke” and “don’t stand in the wind”. In 1911, the relationship with Gumilyov was in its prime, so it is unlikely that the lines were written based on the real pain of parting; rather, it was the fear of separation.
The first line sets the tone for the entire poem:
She clasped her hands under a dark veil.
Clenched hands symbolize the pain of separation, and the dark veil is mourning for yesterday's relationship. The heroine of the poem experiences the pangs of parting with her loved one, which is why she is pale and clasps her trembling hands under the cover of a dark veil. The sadness is tart and the heroine drinks it to her drunken lover, trying to bring him back. Why tart? Because just yesterday in its place there was the joy of intimacy, and there were no clouds in the sky.
Dear, does not succumb to the spell and leaves, reeling from the astringency of sadness. The heroine runs after him all the way to the gate, which symbolizes complete separation - the boundary of the relationship. She says she will die if he leaves, but nothing can reignite the fire in the man's heart. He is cold and calm:
Smiled calmly and creepily
The phrase “Don’t stand in the wind” kills. They run after you, literally throw themselves on your neck, and in response you show steely coldness. Where is the last kind word, where is the farewell glance? The last phrase says that there are no more emotions, everything has gone out, and the ash has cooled down.
It seems to me that with this poem Akhmatova inoculates herself against separation - it is better to experience some of the pain in advance in your imagination, then when parting it will be a little easier.
... The separation was still far away - a whole 10 years. Let me remind you that Gumilyov was shot in 1921, but this was not the only blow of fate for Anna Akhmatova.
She clasped her hands under a dark veil...
“Why are you pale today?”
- Because I have tart sadness
Got him drunk.
How can I forget? He came out staggering
The mouth twisted painfully...
I ran away without touching the railing,
I ran after him to the gate.
Gasping for breath, I shouted: “It’s a joke.
All that has gone before. If you leave, I will die."
Smiled calmly and creepily
And he told me: “Don’t stand in the wind.”
January 1911.
Listen to these lines performed by the recognized master of the stage - Alisa Freundlich.
Beloved... I will never contradict
And I don’t take my anger out on the dishes.
We will solve everything calmly and with love,
As he tells me, so in my opinion it will be!
I woke up and thought..."Lord, give me..." And I stopped...What should I ask Him for?...I have a family...I have friends...I hear and see...I eat and I drink... They love me and I love... And what do I need?... That's what... "God, thank you for everything"
If I could meet God, I would thank him for giving me such a mother.
Tell me and I will forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I will learn.
Tell me and I will forget, show me and I will remember, let me do it and I will understand.
When I told him that I didn’t want to see him, he turned off the light. And you would just get offended and leave, that’s why I’m with him.
A happy wife means a happy life. It took me 30 years to get to this point. When you're going to argue, make sure there's something more serious than the TV remote control. Now I know how to get a fantastic, gorgeous wife. Now I can write, I can think and I feel like I have something to prove.
I just want to enjoy life! I don’t want to be rude, scandalous or prove anything to anyone, I don’t want to waste time communicating with those who are unpleasant to me, with people who don’t understand me, and trying to reach them. I don’t want to try to fit my thoughts into someone else’s head. I am busy! I want to live in my present.
Anna Andreevna Akhmatova
Clasped her hands under a dark veil
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© AST Publishing House LLC, design
From the book EVENING
La fleur des vignes pousse
Et j'ai vingt ans ce soir.
André Theuriet
Then like a snake, curled up in a ball,
He casts a spell right at the heart,
That whole day as a dove
Coos on the white window,
It will shine in the bright frost,
It will seem like a lefty in the slumber...
But it leads faithfully and secretly
From joy and from peace.
He can cry so sweetly
In the prayer of a yearning violin,
And it’s scary to guess it
In a still unfamiliar smile.
Tsarskoe Selo
"And the boy who plays the bagpipes..."
And the boy who plays the bagpipes
And the girl who weaves her own wreath,
And two crossed paths in the forest,
And in the far field there is a distant light, -
I see everything. I remember everything
I cherish it lovingly and meekly in my heart.
There's only one thing I never know
And I can’t even remember anymore.
I'm not asking for wisdom or strength.
Oh, just let me warm myself by the fire!
I'm cold... Winged or wingless,
The cheerful god will not visit me.
"Love conquers deceitfully..."
Love conquers deceitfully
In a simple, unsophisticated chant.
So recently, it’s strange
You weren't gray and sad.
And when she smiled
In your gardens, in your house, in your field,
Everywhere it seemed to you
That you are free and at liberty.
You were bright, taken by her
And drank her poison.
After all, the stars were larger
After all, the herbs smelled different,
Autumn herbs.
Autumn 1911
“I clenched my hands under a dark veil...”
She clasped her hands under a dark veil...
“Why are you pale today?”
- Because I am tartly sad
Got him drunk.
How can I forget? He came out staggering
The mouth twisted painfully...
I ran away without touching the railing,
I ran after him to the gate.
Gasping for breath, I shouted: “It’s a joke.
All that has gone before. If you leave, I’ll die.”
Smiled calmly and creepily
And he told me: “Don’t stand in the wind.”
Kyiv
“The memory of the sun in the heart is weakening...”
The grass is yellower.
The wind blows early snowflakes
Just barely.
It no longer flows in narrow channels -
The water is getting cold.
Nothing will ever happen here -
Oh, never!
The willow spread out in the empty sky
The fan is through.
Maybe it's better that I didn't
Your wife.
The memory of the sun in the heart weakens.
What is this? Dark?
Maybe!.. He will have time to come overnight
Kyiv
“High in the sky the cloud was turning grey...”
High in the sky the cloud turned gray,
Like a squirrel skin spread out.
He told me: “It’s not a pity that your body
It will melt in March, fragile Snow Maiden!”
In the fluffy muff, my hands were cold.
I felt scared, I felt somehow vague.
Oh how to get you back, quick weeks
His love, airy and momentary!
I don't want bitterness or revenge,
Let me die with the last white blizzard.
I wondered about him on the eve of Epiphany.
I was his girlfriend in January.
Spring 1911
Tsarskoe Selo
"The door is half open..."
The door is half open
Linden trees blow sweetly...
Forgotten on the table
Whip and glove.
The circle from the lamp is yellow...
I listen to the rustling sounds.
Why did you leave?
I don't understand…
Joyful and clear
Tomorrow will be morning.
This life is beautiful
Heart, be wise.
You're completely tired
Beat slower, slower...
You know, I read
That souls are immortal.
Tsarskoe Selo
“You drink my soul like a straw...”
You drink my soul like a straw.
I know that its taste is bitter and intoxicating.
But I will not break the torture with prayer.
Oh, my peace lasts for many weeks.
When you finish, tell me. Not sad
That my soul is not in the world.
I'll go the short way
Watch children play.
Gooseberries bloom on the bushes,
And they are carrying bricks behind the fence.
Who are you: my brother or lover,
I don’t remember, and I don’t need to remember.
How bright it is here and how homeless,
A tired body rests...
And passers-by think vaguely:
That's right, I just became a widow yesterday.
Tsarskoe Selo
“I have fun with you when I’m drunk...”
I'm having fun with you when I'm drunk -
There is no point in your stories.
Early autumn hung
Yellow flags on elms.
Both of us are in a deceitful country
We wandered and bitterly repent,
But why a strange smile
And we smile frozen?
We wanted stinging torment
Instead of serene happiness...
I won't leave my friend
And dissolute and tender.
Paris
“My husband whipped me with a patterned…”
My husband whipped me with a patterned one,
Double folded belt.
For you in the casement window
I sit with the fire all night.
It's dawning. And above the forge
Smoke rises.
Ah, with me, the sad prisoner,
You couldn't stay again.
For you I share a gloomy fate,
I took my share of the flour.
Or do you love blonde
Or is the redhead cute?
How can I hide you, loud moans!
There is a dark, stuffy hop in the heart,
And the rays fall thin
On an unrumpled bed.
Autumn 1911
"Heart to heart is not chained..."
Heart to heart is not chained,
If you want, leave.
Much happiness is in store
To those who are free on the way.
I don't cry, I don't complain
I won't be happy.
Don't kiss me, tired, -
Death will come to kiss you.
The days of acute yearning are over
Together with the white winter.
Why, why are you
Better than my chosen one?
Spring 1911
I'm at sunrise
I sing about love
On my knees in the garden
Swan field.
I tear it out and throw it away -
Let him forgive me.
I see the girl is barefoot
Crying by the fence.
The warm smell is getting stronger
Dead quinoa.
There will be stone instead of bread
My reward is evil.
Tsarskoe Selo
“I came here, you slacker...”
I came here, a slacker
I don’t care where I’m bored!
A mill sleeps on a hillock.
You can remain silent here for years.
Over the dried dodder
The bee floats softly;
I call the mermaid by the pond,
And the mermaid died.
Dragged with rusty mud
The pond is wide, shallow,
Over the trembling aspen
The light month began to shine.
I notice everything as new.
The poplars smell damp.
I'm silent. I'm silent, I'm ready
To become you again, earth.
Tsarskoe Selo
White night
Oh, I didn't lock the door,
Didn't light the candles
You don’t know how, you’re tired,
I didn't dare to lie down.
Watch the stripes fade
In the sunset darkness the pine needles,
Similar to yours.
And know that everything is lost
That life is a damned hell!
Oh I was sure
That you will come back.
Tsarskoe Selo
“It’s hot under the canopy of the dark barn...”
It's hot under the canopy of the dark barn,
I laugh, but in my heart I cry angrily.
An old friend mutters to me: “Don't croak!
May we not meet good luck along the way!”
But I don’t trust my old friend.
He is funny, blind and poor,
All his life he measured his steps
Long and boring roads.
“Ah, the travel knapsacks are empty,
And tomorrow there will be hunger and bad weather!”
Tsarskoe Selo
“Bury, bury me, wind!..”
Bury me, bury me, wind!
My family didn't come
The wandering evening is above me
And the breath of the quiet earth.
I was, like you, free,
But I wanted to live too much.
You see, the wind, my corpse is cold,
And there is no one to lay hands on.
Close this black wound
Veil of evening darkness
To make it easy for me, lonely,
Go to the last dream,
Make a noise with the tall sedge
About spring, about my spring.
December 1909
Kyiv
“Believe me, it’s not a sharp snake’s sting...”
Believe me, it’s not a sharp snake sting,
And my melancholy drank my blood.
In the white field I became a quiet girl,
And for a long time another road has been closed to me,
My prince is in the high Kremlin.
Will I deceive him, will I deceive him? - Don't know!
I live on earth only by lies.
Don’t forget how he came to say goodbye to me,
I didn't cry: it was fate.
I cast a spell so that the prince will dream at night,
Very quickly, almost in the very first published poems, Anna Akhmatova found her own style, unlike anyone else. It is very difficult for us, brought up on the poems of Akhmatova and her students, today to understand the reaction of our contemporaries to Akhmatova’s first experiments. At the same time, they literally stunned the reading public with their originality and courage. "More!. More!. Read more,” I muttered, enjoying the new, unique melody, the subtle and pungent fragrance of living poetry.” This is how symbolist Georgy Chulkov recalled his first impression of Akhmatova’s poems, and his delight, with one or another nuance, was shared by all reading Russia. If not after Akhmatova’s debut book “Evening” (1912), then certainly after Akhmatova’s second collection “The Rosary” (1914).
Novella by Maupassant
Here, for example, is one of the business cards of Akhmatova the debutante, her poem dated January 8, 1911:
She clasped her hands under a dark veil...
“Why are you pale today?”
Because I am tartly sad
Got him drunk.
How can I forget? He came out staggering
The mouth twisted painfully...
I ran away without touching the railing,
I ran after him to the gate.
Gasping for breath, I shouted: “It’s a joke.
All that has gone before. If you leave, I’ll die.”
Smiled calmly and creepily
And he told me: “Don’t stand in the wind.”
Here we already encounter all the signature features of Akhmatova’s style. The text is structured like an impeccable Maupassant novella, in which it is easy to identify the beginning (“I got him drunk...”), the climax (“Gasping, I screamed...”) and the denouement (“He smiled calmly and terribly...”). Two dialogues are inserted into it at once. The first is probably between friends, at the beginning; the second - between the heroine and the hero - in the finale. And, most importantly, almost all emotions are conveyed through external signs. “I clasped my hands under a dark veil” (implying: I am in terrible excitement). “I ran away without touching the railing” (I wanted to stop him so much that I wasn’t afraid to fall, but I was probably wearing heels). The emotion openly breaks through once: “If you leave, I’ll die,” but the answer to it is a demonstrative refusal of dialogue - a pseudo-caring remark, which actually means exactly the opposite of what is said out loud: “Leave me alone, I don’t want to see you again!”
"More!. More!. “Read more,” I muttered, enjoying the new, unique melody, the subtle and pungent fragrance of living poetry.” This is how symbolist Georgy Chulkov recalled his first impression of Akhmatova’s poems
Let us pay special attention to perhaps the main mystery of the poem, which is often simply not noticed by not too attentive readers: what was behind the “tart sadness” of the “drunk” heroine who “drunk” the lyrical hero of the poem? A clear hint of the answer is contained in the beginning of the last stanza: “A joke // Everything that was...” What “was”? Apparently, there was betrayal, there was a confession of betrayal, and now the heroine begs the hero not to take all this seriously.
Changing the scale
Before Akhmatova, no one knew how to construct their texts in this way, and this head start over his predecessors lasted for a very long time for the author of “Evening” and “Rosary.” Akhmatova skillfully and consistently extended the techniques for depicting reality developed in her early poems to an increasingly wider range of phenomena. When the First World War began, the theme of Russia arose and sounded powerfully in its poems. This led to the emergence of a new, Christianly sacrificial intonation in Akhmatova’s creative range, but not to a radical renewal of Akhmatova’s poetics.
Give me the bitter years of illness,
Choking, insomnia, fever,
Take away both the child and the friend,
And the mysterious gift of song -
So I pray at Your liturgy
After so many tedious days,
So that a cloud over dark Russia
Became a cloud in the glory of the rays.
In Akhmatova’s previous poems, her remarks were addressed to her lover or to the heroine’s circle of intimate friends. In the poem “Prayer” (1915), the poetess appeals to God. The scale has been radically and decisively changed. However, the poem is still a line of dialogue. As before, it ends with a hammered formula, and this formula provokes the reader to remember the subject picture seen many times: a dark thundercloud, being penetrated by the sun’s rays, literally before our eyes turns into a cloud shining from within.
Woman with blue lips
Poetics, the foundations of which were laid in Akhmatova’s first poems, reached its utmost perfection in her heroic cycle “Requiem.” Let's try to look at her prose “Instead of a Preface”, which precedes the cycle, from the point of view that interests us:
“During the terrible years of the Yezhovshchina, I spent seventeen months in prison lines in Leningrad. One day someone “identified” me. Then a woman with blue lips standing behind me, who, of course, had never heard my name, woke up from the stupor that is characteristic of us all and asked me in my ear (everyone there spoke in a whisper):
Can you describe this?
And I said:
Then something like a smile crossed what had once been her face.
The epithet “blue”, upon superficial perception, does not attract attention, seeming erased and inconspicuous, is nevertheless charged with powerful explosive force. We read: “...a woman with blue…” and expect a natural continuation - “with eyes”, however, our expectations do not come true. “...A woman with blue lips,” we read, and in the process of reading we understand that we are dealing with a very non-trivial phrase, only masquerading as the idiom “a woman with lips blue from the cold.” “They are blue because of the cold” - they don’t say that. But why do the woman in line have blue lips? “Because she is dead,” is the answer to which Akhmatova pushes us.
It is important not to lose sight of the reader’s grotesque juxtaposition of Akhmatov’s final “something like a smile” with the date written under the preface: “April 1, 1957.” If 1957 is important here, as the first year after the 20th Congress, which denounced the “terrible years of the Yezhovshchina,” then “April 1” inevitably reminds a person with Soviet experience of the notorious “April Fool’s Day,” which was celebrated unofficially but publicly in the USSR. “This is what people remember in this country on April Fool’s Day, on such occasions they smile in this country,” the author of “Requiem” sternly states in the preface to the cycle.
“They are blue because of the cold” - they don’t say that. But why do the woman in line have blue lips? “Because she is dead,” is the answer that Akhmatova pushes us to.
The path to innovation
After achieving such perfection, the author of “The Rosary” and “Requiem” faced a sad prospect: to remain a hostage to his previous poems for the rest of his life. Akhmatova managed to emerge victorious from this situation by starting work on “Poem without a Hero” with its radically innovative and at the same time “remembering the glorious past” manner.
Dialogue, the focus on a prosaic story and the ability to convey the internal through the external have not gone away, but now all this has become in the service of other goals. Previously, Akhmatova wrote simultaneously for both a wide and a close circle of readers, who knew, for example, that in the line “Take away both the child and the friend” what is meant is not an abstract son and father, but quite specific Lev and Nikolai Gumilyov, who fought at that time for that , “so that the cloud over dark Russia // Becomes a cloud in the glory of the rays.”
Now the interests of a wide circle are simply no longer taken into account. Akhmatova in “Poem...” tells a story, the biographical clues from which are deliberately discarded, and the reader is forced to wander in the dark, endlessly make guesses and hypotheses.
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