{"id":1032,"date":"2020-04-21T17:22:43","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T17:22:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=1032"},"modified":"2020-04-21T17:22:58","modified_gmt":"2020-04-21T17:22:58","slug":"exploring-theme-of-grief-and-suffering-in-anna-akhmatovas-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/ewallace\/exploring-theme-of-grief-and-suffering-in-anna-akhmatovas-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring themes of grief and suffering in Anna Akhmatova&#8217;s poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In Anna Akhmatova\u2019s poems, the simplicity of her writing style and the raw details convey with great clarity and powerful emotion the grief and suffering she and many others faced during the terror of Stalinist rule. <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">To Death<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> is Akhmatova\u2019s address to death itself; she uses direct language to invite death to come and convey her despair and submission to her fate. The motifs of poison, disease, and nausea to symbolize death, the pole star to symbolize destiny, and eyes to communicate fear make the poem extremely accessible and display the raw emotions and inevitability of death. Akhmatova also uses a simple writing style to create a clear contrast between defeated and lifeless nature and material. In <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Dedication, <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Akhmatova writes about the dichotomy between nature and the strength of the negative material aspects of society, such as prisons. She writes that the \u201cmountains bend before this grief, the great river does not flow\u201d; nature becomes a clear parallel for the people living through the Stalinist terror who are more \u201clifeless than the dead\u201d. The oppressiveness of Stalinist rule is symbolized through the theme of prisons in this poem. The use of locks, keys, and captivity strongly communicate how people felt trapped and condemned to a miserable fate. I though it was very interesting how Akhmatova used clearly defined symbols and simple language to create sophisticated and nuances poems that are deeply evocative of separation and grief of the time period. The accessibility, simplicity, and raw emotion in\u00a0 Akhmatova\u2019s poems creates a sense of solidarity between herself and the audience and conveys the universality of the suffering during this time. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Anna Akhmatova\u2019s poems, the simplicity of her writing style and the raw details convey with great clarity and powerful emotion the grief and suffering she and many others faced during the terror of Stalinist rule. To Death is Akhmatova\u2019s address to death itself; she uses direct language to invite death to come and convey [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1026,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-11-stalinism-thaw-and-stagnation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1026"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1032\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}