Analysis of the poem by A.A. Akhmatova "Requiem"

And a stone word fell On my still living chest. It's okay, because I was ready, I'll deal with it somehow. I have a lot to do today: I need to kill my memory to the end, I need my soul to turn to stone, I need to learn to live again. Otherwise... The hot rustle of summer, Like a holiday outside my window. I have long anticipated this bright day and the empty house. 1939, Fountain House

Almost the entire "Requiem" was written in 1935-1940, the section "Instead of a Preface" and the epigraph are marked 1957 and 1961. For a long time, the work existed only in the memory of Akhmatova and her friends, only in the 1950s. she decided to write it down, and the first publication took place in 1988, 22 years after the death of the poet.
The very word "requiem" (in Akhmatova's notebooks - Latin Requiem) means "burial mass" - a Catholic service for the dead, as well as a mourning piece of music. The Latin name of the poem, as well as the fact that in the 1930s - 1940s. Akhmatova was seriously engaged in the study of the life and work of Mozart, in particular his "Requiem" a, suggests the connection between Akhmatova's work and the musical form of the requiem. By the way, Mozart's "Requiem" e has 12 parts, and Akhmatova's poem has the same number ( 10 chapters + Dedication and Epilogue).
The epigraph and instead of the preface are the original semantic and musical keys of the work. The epigraph (lines from the 1961 poem “So it was not in vain that we were in trouble together ...”) introduces a lyrical theme:

I was then with my people,
Where my people, unfortunately, were.

Instead of a Preface (1957), picking up the theme of "my people", takes us to "then" - the prison queue of Leningrad in the 1930s. Akhmatov's "Requiem", like Mozart's, was written "on order"; but in the role of "customer" - "a hundred millionth people." The lyrical and the epic are merged into one in the poem: talking about her grief (the arrest of her son - L.N. Gumilyov, her husband - N.N. Punin), Akhmatova speaks on behalf of millions of "nameless"; behind her author's "I" is the "we" of all those whose only creativity was life itself.
The dedication continues the theme of the prose Preface. But the scale of the described events changes:

Mountains bend before this grief,
The great river does not flow
But the prison gates are strong,
And behind them are hard labor burrows ...

The first four verses of the poem, as it were, outline the coordinates of time and space. Time is no more, it has stopped (“the great river does not flow”); “The wind is blowing fresh” and “the sunset is basking” - “for someone”, but no longer for us. The rhyme "mountains - burrows" forms a spatial vertical: "involuntary girlfriends" found themselves between heaven ("mountains") and the underworld ("burrows" where they torture their relatives and friends), in earthly hell.
The motif of the "wild capital" and the "rabid years" of the Initiation in the Introduction is embodied in the image of great poetic power and precision:

And dangled with an unnecessary pendant
Near the prisons of their Leningrad.

Here, in the Introduction, a biblical image from the Apocalypse appears, accompanying the heroine throughout her entire journey of the cross: “the stars of death stood above us ...”, “... and a huge star threatens with imminent death”, “... the polar star shines."
Numerous variations of similar motifs, characteristic of the Requiem, are reminiscent of musical leitmotifs. In the Dedication and the Introduction, the main motifs and images that will develop further in the poem are outlined.
In Akhmatova's notebooks there are words that characterize the special music of this work: "... a mourning Requiem, the only accompaniment of which can only be Silence and sharp distant strikes of a funeral bell." But the Silence of the poem is filled with sounds: the hateful rattle of the keys, the parting song of the locomotive whistles, the crying of children, the female howl, the rumble of black marus (“marusi”, “raven”, “funnel” - this is what the people called cars for transporting arrested persons), squelching doors and the old woman's howl... Barely audible through these "hellish" sounds, but still audible - the voice of hope, the cooing of a pigeon, the splashing of water, the ringing of censers, the hot rustle of summer, the words of last consolations. From the underworld (“prison hard labor holes”) - “not a sound - but how many / Innocent lives end there ...” Such an abundance of sounds only enhances the tragic Silence, which explodes only once - in the chapter Crucifixion:

The choir of angels glorified the great hour,
And the heavens were on fire...

Crucifixion is the semantic and emotional center of the work; for the Mother of Jesus, with whom the lyrical heroine Akhmatova identifies herself, as well as for her son, the "great hour" has come:

Magdalene fought and sobbed,
The beloved student turned to stone,
And to where silently Mother stood,
So no one dared to look.

Magdalene and the Beloved Disciple, as it were, embody those stages of the Way of the Cross that the Mother has already gone through: Magdalene is a rebellious suffering, when the lyrical heroine “howled under the Kremlin towers” ​​and “threw at the executioner’s feet”, John is the quiet stupor of a person trying to “kill the memory ”, distraught with grief and calling for death.
The terrible ice star that accompanied the heroine disappears in the X chapter - "the heavens melted in fire." The silence of the Mother, whom "so no one dared to look at," is resolved by a lament-requiem, but not only for her son, but for all, "millions killed cheaply, / Who trodden a path in the void" (O.E. Mandelstam). This is her duty now.
The epilogue that closes the poem “switches time” to the present, returning us to the melody and the general meaning of the Preface and Initiation: the image of the prison queue “under the blinded red wall” appears again (in the 1st part).
The voice of the lyrical heroine grows stronger, the second part of the Epilogue sounds like a solemn choral, accompanied by the blows of a funeral bell:

Again the hour of the funeral approached.
I see, I hear, I feel you.

"Requiem" became a monument in words to Akhmatova's contemporaries - both dead and alive. She mourned all of them with her "weeping lyre." Akhmatova completes the personal, lyrical theme epic. She gives consent to the celebration of the erection of a monument to herself in this country only on one condition: that it will be a Monument to the Poet near the Prison Wall:

Then, as in blissful death I fear
Forget the rumble of black marus.
Forget how hateful squelched the door
And the old woman howled like a wounded animal.

"Requiem" can be called without exaggeration Akhmatova's poetic feat, a high example of genuine civic poetry.
Critic B. Sarnov called Akhmatova's human and poetic position "manly stoicism." Her fate is an example of a humble and grateful acceptance of life, with all its joys and sorrows. Akhmatova's "royal word" harmoniously connected the local with the unearthly:

And the voice of eternity is calling
With irresistible unearthly,
And over the cherry blossoms
The radiance of the light moon pours.
And it seems so easy
Whitening in the thicket of emerald,
Road, I won't tell you where...
There among the trunks is even lighter,
And everything looks like an alley
At the Tsarskoye Selo pond.

The poem "Requiem" by Anna Akhmatova is based on the personal tragedy of the poetess. An analysis of the work shows that it was written under the influence of the experience during the period when Akhmatova, standing in the prison queues, tried to find out about the fate of her son Lev Gumilyov. And he was arrested three times by the authorities during the terrible years of repression.

The poem was written at different times, starting in 1935. For a long time this work was kept in the memory of A. Akhmatova, she read it only to friends. And in 1950, the poetess decided to write it down, but it was published only in 1988.

According to the genre, "Requiem" was conceived as a lyrical cycle, and later it was already called a poem.

The composition of the work is complex. It consists of the following parts: "Epigraph", "Instead of a preface", "Dedication", "Introduction", ten chapters. Separate chapters have the title: "Sentence" (VII), "To death" (VIII), "Crucifixion" (X) and "Epilogue".

The poem speaks on behalf of the lyrical hero. This is the "double" of the poetess, the author's method of expressing thoughts and feelings.

The main idea of ​​the work is an expression of the scale of national grief. Epigraph A. Akhmatova takes a quote from her own poem “So it was not in vain that we were in trouble together”. The words of the epigraph express the nationality of the tragedy, the involvement of each person in it. And further in the poem this theme continues, but its scale reaches enormous proportions.

Anna Akhmatova, to create a tragic effect, uses almost all poetic meters, a different rhythm, as well as a different number of stops in the lines. This personal technique of hers helps to sharply feel the events of the poem.

The author uses various tropes that help to comprehend the experiences of people. These are epithets: Rus' "innocent", yearning "deadly", capital "wild", sweat "mortal", suffering "petrified", curls "silver". Lots of metaphors: "faces fall off", "weeks fly by", “Mountains bend before this grief”, "The locomotive whistles sang the song of parting". There are also antitheses: "who is the beast, who is the man", "And a stone heart fell on my still living chest". There are comparisons: "And the old woman howled like a wounded beast".

There are also symbols in the poem: the very image of Leningrad is an observer of grief, the image of Jesus and Magdalene is an identification with the suffering of all mothers.

After analyzing the "Requiem", check out other works:

• "Courage", analysis of Akhmatova's poem
• “She squeezed her hands under a dark veil ...”, analysis of Akhmatova’s poem
• "The Gray-Eyed King", analysis of Akhmatova's poem
• "Twenty first. Night. Monday", analysis of Akhmatova's poem
• "Garden", analysis of the poem by Anna Akhmatova

A comprehensive study of the poem "Requiem" by Akhmatova, analysis of the composition, artistic means, understanding the title, help to feel the deep ideas of the poetic work.

Despite the small volume, each line is significant in content and strength of feelings. The reader is not able to indifferently perceive the events reflected in the poem.

The history of the creation of "Requiem" by A. Akhmatova

The plot is based on the personal drama of Anna Akhmatova. Her son was subjected to brutal arrest procedures three times. In 1949 he was sentenced to death by firing squad. Subsequently, the death penalty was replaced by exile.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova (1889 - 1966)

For the first time Lev Gumilyov was taken into custody in 1935. The most significant parts of the "Requiem" date back to this year. For five years, the poetess worked on a cycle of poems about Russian women who are going through a difficult time, suffering for their men deprived of their liberty.

In the early 1960s, Anna Akhmatova combined disparate works into a single whole, giving the poem the name "Requiem".

Why is the poem called "Requiem"

In Catholicism, a religious rite performed for the dead, and its mourning musical accompaniment, is called a requiem. In manuscripts, the title of the poem is written in Latin letters, which may indicate a connection with musical works.

So "Requiem" by Wolfgang Mozart, whose work Akhmatova was interested in in the 30s and 40s, consists of 12 parts. Anna Andreevna's poem has 10 chapters, Dedication and Epilogue.

Genre, direction and size

"Requiem" can be attributed to a new trend in literature, acmeism, which opposes symbolism and proclaims the clarity and accuracy of the word, the directness of style and the clarity of images.

The goal of literary innovators was to ennoble man through art. Akhmatova, like all acmeists, strove for poetic changes in the ordinary and sometimes unattractive phenomena of life.

The work "Requiem" is fully consistent with the innovative trend of acmeism with its classical rigor of style and the desire to convey atrocities and outrages in poetic language.

The genre of "Requiem" is a poem. But many literary critics cannot unequivocally determine the genre of the work due to the similarity with the poetic cycle. The unity of the idea, the lyrical basis that connects the individual fragments, helps to attribute the "Requiem" to the poem.

A logical and sequentially built plot unfolds before the reader, describing an entire era in abbreviation. The story is told in the first person, acting at the same time as a poet and a lyrical hero.

The poetic meter of the work is not devoid of a peculiar dynamics, characterized by overflowing rhythms and a varying number of stops in the lines.

Composition of the work

The composition of the "Requiem" is distinguished by a ring structure, consisting of a prologue formed by the first two chapters, an epilogue from the last two chapters and the main part.

Each part has a special emotional meaning and carries its own sensual load. The poem is replete with lyrical experiences, and in the prologue and epilogue there is a tendency towards generalizations, epic.

The preface consists of prose text, reminiscent of a newspaper clipping. This technique helps the reader to plunge into the atmosphere of the described era.

In the Dedication following the Preface, the theme of the prosaic introduction is continued, with the scale of the events described intensified:

The biographical theme of the poem - the imprisonment of a son and the moral torment of a suffering mother - sounds in the first chapters of the work. The prologue is followed by four chapters that convey the mourning voices of mothers.

In the first poem, written in the form of a monologue, a woman from the people is sad about her son, who is being led to execution. This eternal heroine of Russian history in poetic lamentation conveys the full depth of grief that tears the soul:

The plot center of the poem is the fifth and sixth passage, dedicated to the son languishing in prison. Each poem is a compositionally complete, integral work of art, united by common mournful motives, a sense of death and the pain of loss.

In the epilogue, thoughts emerge about death, the end of life, the result of which should be a monument to people's suffering.

Characteristics of the main characters

The main lyrical heroine of the poem is the author of the "Requiem", and the mother, worried about the fate of her son, and an ordinary woman from the people. Each of these images is unique and, flowing smoothly, combines into one face, the prototype of which is Anna Akhmatova herself.

The lyrical heroine is a woman with powerful, inexhaustible internal energy, who, in an attempt to save her only child, “threw herself at the feet of the executioner.”

The personal experiences of the heroine are replaced by detachment in the assessments of the behavior of the mother plunged into despair: "This woman is sick, this woman is alone."

The author from the side looks at everything that happens around. It is difficult to imagine how, being in the past "a mocker and favorite of all friends", the heroine turned into a shadow that calls for death. A date with her son causes a storm of emotions in the soul of the mother, but despair is replaced by hope, a desire to fight to the end.

The image of the son is revealed in the work not so fully and multifaceted, but his comparison with Christ emphasizes the innocence and holiness of the hero. He appears as a humble martyr, trying to comfort and support his mother.

Other main characters of the poem are collective female images, worried about the fate of close men. They languish in the unknown, endure bitter cold and scorching heat in anticipation of brief dates. The author personifies them with the Mother of God, meekly enduring adversity.

Themes of the poem "Requiem"

The central theme of the work is the theme of memory, a return to the memories of the past, the preservation of what has been experienced, felt and seen. And this is not only the memory of one person, but also the people's memory of people united by a common grief:

The cry of mothers for their sons, continuing the theme of memory, is heard in verses, starting with the Introduction. Then there is the motive of death, generated by the expectation of execution, the inevitability of an inevitable end. The reader is presented with the image of the mother, which is personified by the Mother of God, who survived the terrible death of her son.

The theme of the suffering Motherland, inextricably linked with the fate of her people, is revealed by Akhmatova in Requiem:

After all, Motherland is the same mother who worries about her sons, who were unjustly accused and fell victims of cruel repressions.

And through all the sorrows, the theme of love shines, conquering evil and life's hardships. Women's selfless love is able to overcome any obstacles in the fight against the system.

Topics covered in the poem "Requiem":

• memory;
• mothers;
• Motherland;
• the suffering of the people;
• time;
• love.

Analysis of each chapter "Requiem" by A. Akhmatova

The poems that make up the Requiem were written between 1935 and 1940. The poem was published in Russia two decades after the death of Anna Andreevna, in 1988.

The prose lines “Instead of a preface” open the narrative, explaining the whole idea.

The reader finds himself in a Leningrad prison queue in the 1930s, where everyone is in a daze and speaks in a "whisper".

And to the question of a woman with "blue lips":

- Can you describe this?

The poet says:

The lines of the poetic epigraph written in the preface explain the meaning of the "Requiem", written in the folk language and addressed to the people. The poet speaks of his involvement in the disasters of the country:

The theme of the Preface continues in the poetic Dedication. The scale of what is happening is intensifying, nature and the surrounding historical reality emphasize the desperate state of people and isolation from a serene life:

It is painful to wait for a court decision, on which the future fate of a loved one will depend.

But sad feelings are experienced not only by people, but also by the motherland, Russia, responding to suffering:

Here also appears the biblical image, the herald of the Apocalypse:

In the introductory part of the Requiem, the most important motives and main images are outlined, which are developed in the subsequent chapters of the poem. A lyrical heroine appears, watching her son being taken away “at dawn”. Loneliness comes instantly

Biographical details of Akhmatova's life, time frame, boundless tenderness and love for her son are described:

In the seventh chapter, “The Sentence,” in simple words, inhuman experiences are described, attempts to understand and come to terms with the terrible reality.

But it is impossible to accept and endure what happened, therefore the eighth chapter is called "Towards Death." The saddened heroine sees no other way out than to die. She longs for oblivion and calls for death:

The ninth chapter tells of the last meeting in prison and the approaching madness:

The next part, "The Crucifixion," serves as the semantic and emotional center of the poem. Here a parallel is drawn with the suffering of the Mother of God, who lost her son Jesus. Akhmatova identifies herself and all unfortunate mothers with Maria:

In the epilogue, which consists of two parts and carries a strong semantic load, the author addresses people. In the first shorter poetic fragment, Anna Andreevna sends her words to everyone who has experienced similar feelings. She prays for all who stood with her in prison lines:

The second part deals with poetry, the role of poets and their purpose. The poetess speaks of herself as a spokesman for the voices of a hundred million people:

And she sees a monument to herself at the prison walls, where so much has been experienced, felt and mourned:

Conclusion

"Requiem" is a special poetic work of Anna Akhmatova, which goes beyond the context of the ordinary perception of life and history. The hero of the poem is the people, and the author is only a part of this mass of people. The poet wrote the poetic lines in a simple, understandable language. They are imbued with love for the motherland and its inhabitants.

Anna Andreevna has been gone for a long time, and her work is still relevant and interesting to the reader. Her poems need to be felt, they have a strong effect on people, forcing them to empathize with the heroes.

Let's analyze the greatest work of the 20th century.

Prison Crosses

The poem "Requiem" by Akhmatova is a monument to the victims of the Stalinist terror. Oh, the horror of the Stalinist terror! We now know a lot from the recollections of eyewitnesses, works, literature, cinema. And in the thirties of the last century they were spoken about in a whisper. Anna Akhmatova, an outstanding Russian poet (that's right, she never called herself a poetess) had to go through the trials of that time in full.

Akhmatova's personal life was not easy. Her husband Lev Gumilyov was shot, and their son Lev was imprisoned. Akhmatova spent a long seventeen months in queues while the fate of her son was being decided. There, in those terrible silent queues “under the red blinded wall”, verses from the Requiem cycle were born, which she later called a poem. In the prose "Prologue" to the poem, Akhmatova tells how once an unfamiliar woman from the prison queue asked the poet if she could describe everything she saw and experienced. And Akhmatova took an oath to herself: despite the mortal danger, she would convey the truth to posterity. During the life of Akhmatova, the work was never printed in the Soviet Union. Requiem first saw the light of day abroad in 1963 in Munich and only in 1988 in Russia.

Although the work is based on real facts from the life of the author, the content of the poem is not reduced to a family tragedy. Not without reason, when handing over the manuscript to Novy Mir, Akhmatova put an epigraph from one of her poems into the work: No, not under an alien firmament, not under the protection of alien wings - I was then with my people. Where my people, unfortunately, were.

The poem "Requiem" sounds from the plural.

“We” are the people, these are all those who suffered, these unfortunate mothers, wives, daughters, with whom Akhmatova stood in endless lines to beg the right to a meeting, to find out about fate, to take the transfer ... For those who stand before the prison, the world became dead. From their grief "the mountains droop", "the river turns to stone". In those days, only the dead smiled, because they rejoiced at death, which was sweeter than life. Beautiful Leningrad, dear to my heart, Leningrad turned into an “extra appendage” to prisons, because in thoughts, in private conversations in a whisper, arrests, imprisonments, Crosses, “prisoners of the regiment” were painful topics. And innocent Rus writhed Under bloody heels And under the tires of black "Marus".

And over the country bound by grief and fear, the cry of the soul of a mother rushes, for which life without a son loses its meaning. The light illuminates a large star as a sign of the apocalypse. The poem consists of a number of episodes, but they, like a mosaic, create an expressive picture of the tragedy of the "hundred millionth people", on whose behalf Akhmatova proclaimed her "Requiem", woven "from the poor words they overheard." This work, which has become a monument to innocent destinies torn off by the totalitarian Stalinist regime, is at the same time evidence of the high feat of Anna Akhmatova - mother, person, poet in the name of her people.

Anna Andreevna Akhmatova's poem "Requiem" is based on the personal tragedy of the poetess. The result of the experienced years of Stalinist repressions was a work, the publication of which for a long time was out of the question. We suggest that you familiarize yourself with the analysis of the poem, which will be useful to students in grade 11 in preparing for a lesson in literature and the exam.

Brief analysis

Year of writing- 1938-1940.

History of creation– The history of writing the poem is closely connected with the personal tragedy of the poetess, whose husband was shot during the reaction, and her son was arrested. The work is dedicated to all those who died during the period of repression only because they dared to think differently than the current government demanded.

Subject– In her work, the poetess revealed many topics, and all of them are equivalent. This is the theme of people's memory, grief, maternal suffering, love and homeland.

Composition- The first two chapters of the poem form the prologue, and the last two - the epilogue. The 4 verses following the prologue are a generalization of maternal grief, chapters 5 and 6 are the culmination of the poem, the highest point of the heroine's suffering. The following chapters deal with the theme of memory.

Genre- Poem.

Direction- Acmeism.

History of creation

The first drafts of "Requiem" date back to 1934. Initially, Anna Andreevna planned to write a cycle of poems dedicated to the reactionary period. One of the first victims of totalitarian arbitrariness were the closest and dearest people of the poetess - her husband, Nikolai Gumilyov, and their common son, Lev Gumilyov. The husband was shot as a counter-revolutionary, and the son was arrested only because he bore his father's "shameful" surname.

Realizing that the reigning regime is merciless in its bloodthirstiness, Akhmatova after a while changed her original plan and began writing a full-fledged poem. The most fruitful period of work was 1938-1940. The poem was completed, but for obvious reasons not published. Moreover, Akhmatova immediately burned the manuscripts of the "Requiem" after she read them to the closest people whom she trusted without limit.

In the 1960s, during the thaw period, Requiem gradually began to spread among the reading public thanks to samizdat. In 1963, one of the copies of the poem went abroad, where it was first published in Munich.

The full version of "Requiem" was officially allowed to print only in 1987, with the beginning of perestroika in the country. Subsequently, the work of Akhmatova was included in the compulsory school curriculum.

Meaning of the title of the poem deep enough: a requiem is a religious term that means holding a funeral church service for a deceased person. Akhmatova dedicated her work to all the prisoners - the victims of the regime, who were destined for death by the ruling power. This is the heartbreaking groan of all mothers, wives and daughters, seeing off their loved ones to the chopping block.

Subject

The theme of folk suffering is revealed by the poetess through the prism of her own, personal tragedy. At the same time, she draws parallels with mothers of different historical eras, who sent their innocent sons to death in the same way. Hundreds of thousands of women literally lost their minds in anticipation of a terrible sentence that would forever separate her from her loved one, and this pain is timeless.

In the poem, Akhmatova experiences not only personal grief, she is sick of her soul for her patronymic, forced to become an arena for senselessly cruel executions of her children. She identifies her homeland with a woman who is forced to look helplessly at the torment of her child.

The poem is beautifully revealed boundless love theme, stronger than which there is nothing in the world. Women are not able to help their loved ones who are in trouble, but their love and loyalty can warm you during the most difficult life trials.

The main idea of ​​the work- memory. The author urges never to forget about the people's grief, and to remember those innocent people who became victims of the merciless machine of power. This part of history, and to erase it from the memory of future generations is a crime. To remember and never allow the repetition of a terrible tragedy is what Akhmatova teaches in her poem.

Composition

Carrying out an analysis of the work in the poem "Requiem", one should note the peculiarity of its compositional construction, indicating Akhmatova's initial intention - to create a cycle of completed individual poems. As a result, one gets the impression that the poem was written spontaneously, in fits and starts, in separate parts.

• The first two chapters ("Dedication" and "Introduction") are the prologue of the poem. Thanks to them, the reader will know what the place and time of the action of the work are.
• The next 4 verses represent historical parallels between the bitter lot of mothers of all times. The lyrical heroine recalls her youth, which did not know any problems, the arrest of her son, the days of unbearable loneliness that followed him.
• In chapters 5 and 6, the mother is tormented by the premonition of the death of her son, she is frightened by the unknown. This is the climax of the poem, the apotheosis of the suffering of the heroine.
• Chapter 7 - a terrible sentence, a message about the son's exile to Siberia.
• Verse 8 - a mother in a fit of despair calls for death, she wants to sacrifice herself, but save her child from the evil fate.
• Chapter 9 - a prison date, forever imprinted in the memory of an unfortunate woman.
• Chapter 10 - in just a few lines, the poetess draws a deep parallel of the suffering of her son with the torment of the innocent crucified Christ, and compares her maternal pain with the anguish of the Virgin.
• In the epilogue, Akhmatova urges people not to forget the suffering that the people endured during those terrible years of repression.

Genre

The literary genre of the work is a poem. However, the "Requiem" also has the characteristic features of the epic: the presence of a prologue, the main part of the epilogue, a description of several historical eras and drawing parallels between them.