Anna Akhmatova, Requiem
Introduction
We observed how the Enlightenment shifted literature’s focus from the social to the personal, and then in the 20th century how the focus in literature shifted in many cases, from emphasis on content to emphasis on form. Akhmatova brings together a number of these trends, blending the personal experience of waiting daily in the cold to get information or get a package to her imprisoned son. Her personal tragedy expands to relate the story of an oppressive government who held its citizens without trial and without reason, exerting its force over bodies, and attempting to exert force over ideas as well.
Akhmatova’s poetry exhibits her devotion to the Russian Orthodox church with its many Christian images of suffering.
Read the poem, considering how each “moment” in this larger poem, contributes to the overall effect of the piece. How does it go from the personal to the political, from the tale of one family’s suffering to a chronicling of national suffering?
