Anna Akhmatova: short biography, history of the pseudonym

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Anna Andreevna Akhmatova: biography

Anna was born in Odessa on June 11, 1889 in the noble family of the collegiate assessor Andrei Gorenko and his wife Inna Erasmovna Stogova, a distant relative of the poet Anna Bunina. The family had six children. After the birth of Ani, the whole family moved to Tsarskoe Selo.

Ten-year-old Anya was assigned to the Mariinsky Women’s Gymnasium. In the summer, the girl was sent on vacation to the suburbs of Sevastopol, where local young ladies called her “savage”. Anya loved to walk barefoot, did not wear a hat, jumped from a boat into the sea. I swam in a storm, and I sunbathed so that my skin peeled off …

The ancient Chersonesos made a strong impression on her. Subsequently, she often recalled her childhood and not only the Black Sea, but also Tsarskoe Selo, the hippodrome. Later she will write an ode to this city. Since 1906, Anna continued her studies in Kiev, and then in the capital of Russia.

The wedding of Anna Gorenko and poet Nikolai Gumilyov took place in 1910. Two years later, the couple had a son, Levushka. In 1910-1912. the poetess visited Italy and visited Paris, where a significant acquaintance with A. Modigliani took place for her.

Anna Akhmatova: pseudonym

In 1911, poems were first published under the pseudonym “Akhmatova”. The young poetess took the maiden name of the great-grandmother Praskovya, which came from the old Tatar family of the Akhmatovs.

In 1918, Anna divorced Gumilyov and officially took the name Akhmatova. After a short time, she marries a scientist who studies the history of Assyria, Vladimir Shileiko. But the relationship did not work out, and the marriage broke up three years later, although the divorce was officially formalized in 1926.

Period of repression

In August 1921 Nikolai Gumilyov was arrested and 20 days later shot. A year later, Anna Akhmatova becomes the common-law wife of Nikolai Punin. The poetess’s works are subject to strict censorship and merciless correction.

In the fall of 1935, N. Punin and L. Gumilyov were arrested, and a week later they were released. In 1938, Akhmatova’s son, Lev, was sent to prison camps for five years.

In the period 1925 – 1939. and 1946 – 1955. Akhmatova’s poems were not published.

The poem “Requiem”, written in 1935-1940, was published in Munich in 1963, in the USSR – a quarter of a century later. This is the first work in poetry dedicated to the victims of repression.

The war found Anna Andreevna in Leningrad, and in the fall she was sent to evacuation. The path was long: Moscow, Chistopol, Kazan and, finally, Tashkent, where she stayed until the summer of 1944.

In 1946, Akhmatova’s works were sharply criticized, she was expelled from the Writers’ Union. The repressions continued in 1949. In August, N. Punin was arrested again, two months later – Lev Gumilyov. He was sentenced to 10 years in the camps. Anna Andreevna did everything possible to free her only son.

One of these desperate attempts was to write a series of poems “Glory to the world!”

Lev Nikolayevich Gumilyov was released in 1956. He had no idea how many letters she wrote, heartbroken, to Stalin and the KGB minister V. Abakumov. The relationship between Akhmatova and her son has been cool over the years.

Death of Anna Akhmatova

The poet was allowed to travel abroad, to Italy, in 1964. There she was awarded the Etna-Taormina literary prize. In 1965, in England, Akhmatova was awarded an honorary doctorate from Oxford. World recognition comes.

The poet of the Silver Age died of heart failure on March 5, 1966, while being treated in a sanatorium near Moscow.

Buried in the village. Komarovo near Leningrad. Lev Gumilyov himself erected a monument-wall of stones, symbolizing the wall of the “Crosses”, where his mother so often stood with the parcels. Since 1969 there has been a bas-relief and a cross created by sculptors A. Ignatiev and V. Smirnov.

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