Anna Akhmatova’s last poem in her selected works, “Epilogue,” is very powerful in its resounding solemn and heartfelt remembrance for her experiences. Particularly, with the secret police and other terrors of the Stalin era, as well as serving as a remembrance for the people who lived through it alongside her.
In the first lines of the poem, Akhmatova describes the response of the body to fear. This is her way of delving into her self- awareness. She notes that suffering begins to show on the face, “how faces droop, how terror looks out from under the eyelids, how suffering carves on cheeks…how curls ash-blonde and black turn silver overnight”(287). This physical change caused by the collective pain notes the immortality of people. This also shows the inevitability of death and the passing of time. She also notes the tension of that time, which is present in her description of smiles on submissive lips and the presence of fear in a dry laugh. She highlights the feeling of empty existence in this time in her life, along with those who experienced this with her. She continues her awareness of her physical body to a psychological one, where she immerses herself in her memories. This alludes back to the beginning of the collection, with this poem serving as a type of requiem.
I also think that Akhmatova uses imagery to her advantage, where she subtly alludes to important details of Stalinist rule. Her conclusion to the poem, ending with “let the melting snow stream, like tears from my bronze eyelids, let the prison dove call in the distance and the boats go quietly on the Neva” (288), juxtaposes her desire to keep the memories of the time and the people alive. Additionally, her description of bronze eyelids evoke warmth and a tinge of hope, which greatly opposes the cold and bitter steel, which alludes to Stalin. Her way of expressing her persistence in keeping these places untouched by her presence shows her disdain in staining them with her memories. These contrasting ideas of wanting her experiences to be eternal and not wanting to disturb the presence of the places she mentioned illuminates the tension she feels for her memories. Overall, her poem encapsulates emotions that are haunting and beautiful.
I think something that you mentioned but didn’t dwell on was the idea of fate within Russian culture and specifically within this Akhmatova piece, and how although the idea of fate is something that has been accepted in past cultural works, here it seems to be rejected. The accepting of fate, one that is cruel, is lamented. I wonder if this is a consequence of modernization. One of the key ideas behind capitalism (in theory) and a tenant of America is that one can carve their own path in the world and has a freedom with hard work to excel. Perhaps Akhmatova lament is a consequence as the introduction of modern thoughts poisoning those ancient Russian ideals.
OH, I’m sorry I commented my wrong post! Please read this one: I think the idea of titling a poem Epilogue itself is something really powerful within the times of the purges. When you think of the role of an Epilogue within a story, it is what is heard after the plot is over. In a way this is Akhmatova writing a post death note, something we are supposed to interpret after the fate she is forecasting for herself.
I think idea of this poem as an epilogue is especially interesting Akhmatova’s remarks about a monument built in her honor. Both epilogues and monuments are memorials in a way. She states that she would need her monument to be outside of the prison walls. This choice indicates that this place holds the most meaning out of any in her life. This is a powerful statement to make and it emphasizes the depth of her suffering.
Shandiin, I think that your comments regarding Akhmatova’s use of imagery are great and further add to the intimacy and impact that the poem demonstrates. I was particularly struck by your comments regarding the “tension” between the beauty and horror of Akhmatova’s memories. Keeping this in mind, as I re-read this section of the poem, I was struck by the two lines in the first stanza that read “A smile fades on my submissive lips,/fear trembles in a dry laugh”. I think these lines further reveal the “tension” you talk about–that a smile and laughter are forcing them selves through fear and submission.
I really like how you called attention to the imagery of the physical bodies, which was an important theme throughout the poem. We see her use this quite frequently, and I agree with your and Liam’s notions that the imagery was used to push that narrative of suffering, offering vivid examples of the strain the Terror is putting on the people of Russia. The one I always go back to in this poem is the line about how the stress carves out faces, and it makes sense that the epilogue condensed so much imagery into the one stanza as a way to essentially condense and summarize the pain that she has documented throughout the work
Shandin, I think you bring up some very interesting points! Her remembrance of the these troubled times, particularly the encroachment of liberties by the secret police, is very noticeable throughout “Requiem”. The suffering that was imposed upon her by picking off members of her family that were incredibly dear to her is both saddening and tangible in her poems. I must say that I am not entirely sure the physical collective pain necessarily alludes to the immorality of people so much as the system itself, and the lack of due process during this time evidently leads to very severe and student seizures of people deemed as dissidents.
I found your point about the Akhmatova’s description of the body when it comes to fear and death! Death is almost like an epilogue to life, so the author’s focus on this adds a final wrap-up on her piece. The descriptive language, especially the first quote you drew on, ties nicely to your next ideas on imagery. The impact her imagery has on the ending of the story is particularly powerful. We are able to finish reading with our minds full of rich, yet sorrowful, images.
Shandiin, I really love the connections you drew between time and trauma. Akhmatova lyrically expresses the effect trauma has on our minds and bodies: “how faces droop, how terror looks out from under the eyelids, how suffering carves on cheeks…how curls ash-blonde and black turn silver overnight” (287). The juxtaposition of the aging process, “carves on cheeks” and “turn silver”, and overnight illustrates the contrasting effects trauma has on the soul and body. Inevitably, trauma reorders our way of thinking and, consequently, our actions. If our brains are reordered to operate based on past-experiences, we are taken out of the proper passage of time. Though our minds are trapped in the past, on the exterior the trauma manifests itself as an an acceleration of time, rapid aging. This is a complex phenomenon that even psychologists struggle to explain and Akhmatova managed to explain it in a few lines. An amazing show of her poetic abilities and just how raw and deep her own emotional traumas are.
You indicated an important theme of the work and the broader continuum of Russian poetry: verse as a means of immortalizing human experience. At first, I thought back to Pushkin’s Exegi Monumentum, a testament to the power of poetry to carry a liberating message across space and across death. That poem is a reference to the Roman poet Horace’s work of the same name, reaffirming Pushkin’s thesis before the poem proper even begins. In its numerous allusions to monuments and memorialization, Akhmatova’s work draws from this view. However, its pathos is far more mournful. I love the lines “how suffering carves cheeks/hard pages of cuneiform” in how they liken the entire tradition of expressive writing to physically documenting suffering. Truly a haunting work!
I find your discussion of immortality and memories to be interesting because it really ties into the place Stalinism has in the context of how Russia views its own past. Indeed, in the age of Stalinism, memories seem to be a precious treasure when faced with the constant threat of sudden death.
Perhaps then it makes sense that Stalinist propaganda deals in time so much. We talked about in a previous class how “Someone Else’s Voice” is trying to create the illusion that Stalinism is part of the old order. Before that, the film “Forward March, Time” played around with futurism and progress, becoming itself a time machine through which viewers could experience the future of the Soviet Union.
I hit reply before I could finish.
Stalinist propaganda isn’t just messing with time, but it may be trying to warp it in the minds of those who consume it. The regime sought to appear eternal, and Akhmatova was fighting back internally with similar means.
Shandiin, Jacob, Liam, Thando, Ethan, wonderful discussions of the role of memory, time, and trauma in Akhmatova’s “Requiem,” and its epilogue in particular. Thando, Gabe, Sophie, great comments on the way Akhmatova represents the effects of trauma on the physical body. We can recall Akhmatova’s early poem that we discussed in class a little while ago, where she described her mirror reflection with great precision after a romantic tryst gone wrong. Here, too, we can see the same acuity and precision in her physical descriptions. Eva and Zach, wonderful comments on how all of this links up with the motif of memorialization of poets and poetry in the Russian poetic tradition. In fact, there is another entire layer of memory and memorialization at play in the poem that we did not have a chance to touch upon in class discussion, which Zach seems to intuit: the “Tsar’s Garden” mentioned in the epilogue is in Tsarskoe Selo, the Tsar’s Village where first Pushkin, and later Akhmatova, went to school. There is a statue of Pushkin in the garden… which becomes the inspiration for Akhmatova to speculate about a later monument to herself (the bronze statue that should stand outside the Crosses prison)… and this statue of Pushkin may also be related to the “inconsolable shadow” that seeks her (or, perhaps, that haunting image refers to Akhmatova’s own younger self). So yes, this epilogue is very much in the tradition of Russian “Exegi Monumentum” poems going back to Pushkin and Derzhavin–but, as always in Akhmatova’s work, she puts a feminine spin on the tradition, and wants to be memorialized not as a POET first and foremost, but as a suffering MOTHER representing the millions of other such suffering mothers who cannot speak to posterity for themselves.