I had no idea until my daily Bloomsbury Day in Literary History e mail arrived in my inbox, that today was the anniversary of the death of Russian poet Anna Akhmatova. Requiem would rate in my top ten poetry choices if ever required, some previous thoughts on Anna Akhmatova here.
Here's a transcript of that e mail and suddenly perhaps it adds a yet another perspective to my choice of book today
Anna Akhmatova dies 1966 in Leningrad
Her other close contemporary Marina Tsvetayeva committed
suicide in 1941.
Akmatova ensured her own survival, and that of her work
during these years, by committing her poems to memory and writing nothing down.
Respect for the Word was a Acmeist principle and Akhmatova is seen as a true
keeper of the Word:
'we will preserve you our Russian Language,
the great
Russian word.
Pure and free we will uphold you
and hand you on to our
children's children,
and save you from captivity
forever!'
(from 'Courage').
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