Anna Akhmatova - 1913

The winter of 1913 will forever hold a special place within Russian literature, because this was the year eulogized by Anna Akhmatova in her "Poem without a Hero," written amidst the cold and hunger that was Leningrad in late 1940. Even before the blockade, Akhmatova's life was fraught with misery. She had recently lost relatives and her son was imprisoned in a labor camp. It was under these circumstances that she composed "Poem without a Hero," which is filled with reminiscences of prerevolutionary Russia's final year of peace.

Bonfires warmed the Christmas holidays,
And carriages slid off the bridges,
And the whole mournful city floated
Toward some mysterious goal
With the Neva's current or against it –
Only away from its graves.
The Galernaya arch darkened,
In the Summer Garden the weathervane squealed,
And the silver crescent moon brightly chilled
Over the Silver Age.

...

And ever-present in the freezing, prewar,
Lecherous, terrible, stifling air,
Lurked an incomprehensible rumble...
But then it was barely audible,
It scarcely reached the ear
And it sank into the snowdrifts by the Neva.

On the surface, this poem told the tale of a young poet's tragic love and suicide in that long-ago prewar age, but in fact, it is a work about the entire twentieth century and about the death of the Silver Age. It is also a piece of Akhmatova's autobiography.

Under the roof of the Fountain House
Where the evening languor wandered
With a lantern and a bunch of keys –
I called out to a distant echo,
Stirring, with my inappropriate laughter,
The deep sleep of things, where,
A witness to everything in the world,
From dusk to dawn,
The old maple looks into the room
And, foreseeing our separation
Stretches out to me, as if to help…
Its desiccated black hand.

Были святки кострами согреты.
И валились с мостов кареты,
И весь траурный город плыл
По неведомому назначенью
По Неве, иль против теченья, —
Только прочь от своих могил.
В Летнем тонко пела флюгарка
И серебряный месяц ярко
Над серебряным веком стыл.

...

И всегда в тишине морозной,
Предвоенной, блудной и грозной,
Потаенный носился гул.
Но тогда он был слышен глухо,
Он почти не касался слуха
И в сугробах Невских тонул

 Так под кровлей Фонтанного Дома,

Где вечерняя бродит истома

С фонарем и связкой ключей, —
Я аукалась с дальним эхом

Неуместным тревожа смехом
Непробудную сонь вещей,—

Где свидетель всего на свете,
На закате и на рассвете

Смотрит в комнату старый клен,
И, предвидя нашу разлуку,

Мне иссохшую черную руку,

Как за помощью тянет он.

Poem excerpt translations by Judith Hemschemeyer, from The Complete Poems of Anna Akhmatova, Expanded Edition (Zephyr Press, 1997). Get the book: zephyrpress.org