Editing Anna Akhmatova (section)

==Early life and family==
Akhmatova was born at Bolshoy Fontan, a resort suburb of the [[Black Sea]] port of [[Odessa]]. Her father, {{ill|Andrey Gorenko|ru|Горенко, Андрей Антонович}}, was a descendant of a [[Ukrainian Cossack]] [[Russian nobility|noble]] family, a naval engineer, later a civil servant in the rank of [[collegiate assessor]], and her mother, Inna Erazmovna Stogova, was from a Russian ''[[pomeshchik]]'' (landowner) family with close ties to Kiev.<ref>{{Cite book |editor=Norris, Stephen M. |editor2=Sunderland, Willard |title=Russia's people of empire life stories from Eurasia, 1500 to the present|date=2012|publisher=Indiana University Press|isbn=978-0-253-00176-4|oclc=866835267|quote="She was born Anna Gorenko by the sea in Bolshoi Fontan, near Odessa in Ukraine, to an unexceptional gentry family. Akhmatova's mother, Inna Stogova, was a descendant of a rich Russian landing family with strong ties to Kyiv, and her father, Andrei Gorenko, was a Ukrainian naval engineer descended from Ukrainian cossacks."}}</ref> She wrote:
<blockquote>No one in my large family wrote poetry. But the first Russian woman poet, [[Anna Bunina]], was the aunt of my grandfather Erasm Ivanovich Stogov. The Stogovs were modest landowners in the [[Mozhaysky District|Mozhaisk]] region of the Moscow Province. They were moved here after the insurrection during the time of [[Marfa Boretskaya|Posadnitsa Marfa]]. In [[Novgorod]] they had been a wealthier and more distinguished family. [[Ahmed Khan bin Küchük|Khan Akhmat]], my ancestor, was killed one night in his tent by a Russian killer-for-hire. [[Nikolay Karamzin|Karamzin]] tells us that this marked the end of the [[Mongol]] yoke on Russia. [...] It was well known that this Akhmat was a descendant of [[Genghiz Khan]]. In the eighteenth century, one of the Akhmatov Princesses – Praskovia Yegorovna – married the rich and famous [[Simbirsk]] landowner Motovilov. Yegor Motovilov was my great-grandfather; his daughter, Anna Yegorovna, was my grandmother. She died when my mother was nine years old, and I was named in her honour. Several diamond rings and one emerald were made from her brooch. Though my fingers are thin, still her thimble didn't fit me.<ref>Polivanov (1994) pp. 6–7</ref></blockquote>

Her family moved north to [[Tsarskoye Selo]], near [[Saint Petersburg]], when she was eleven months old.<ref>Harrington (2006) p.13</ref> The family lived in a house on the corner of Shirokaya Street and Bezymyanny Lane (the building is no longer there today), spending summers from age 7 to 13 in a [[dacha]] near [[Sevastopol]].<ref Name="Martin2" >Martin (2007) p.2</ref> She studied at the Mariinskaya High School, moving to [[Kiev]] (1906–10) and finished her schooling there, after her parents separated in 1905. She went on to study law at [[Kiev University]], leaving a year later to study literature in Saint Petersburg.<ref name="Wells4">Wells (1996) p. 4</ref>

Akhmatova started writing poetry at the age of 11, and was published in her late teens, inspired by the poets [[Nikolay Nekrasov]], [[Jean Racine]], [[Alexander Pushkin]], [[Yevgeny Baratynsky]] and the [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolists]]; however, none of her juvenilia survive.<ref Name="Martin2"/><ref>Wells (1996) p.3</ref> Her sister Inna also wrote poetry though she did not pursue the practice and married shortly after high school. Akhmatova's father did not want to see any verses printed under his "respectable" name, so she chose to adopt her grandmother's distinctly [[Tatars|Tatar]] surname 'Akhmatova' as a pen name.<ref Name="Anderson">[https://archive.today/20121211120536/http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~hbr/issues/6.1winter05/articles/anderson.shtml ''Harvard Book Review''], 2008 ''Reinventing a Good Thing: Anderson Fails to Improve on Older Translations of Akhmatova''. Reviewed: ''The Word That Causes Death's Defeat: Akhmatova's Poems of Memory'', Anderson, Nancy; Yale University Press</ref><ref>Dinega, Alyssa (2001)  ''A Russian Psyche: The Poetic Mind of Marina Tsvetaeva'', University of Wisconsin Press, p. 224; {{ISBN|9780299173340}}.</ref>
[[Image:Ахматова Н.Гумилев Л.Гумилев.jpg|thumb|Anna Akhmatova with her husband [[Nikolai Gumilev]] and their son, [[Lev Gumilev|Lev]], 1915]]

She met a young poet, [[Nikolai Gumilev]], on Christmas Eve 1903. Gumilev encouraged her to write and pursued her intensely, making numerous marriage proposals starting in 1905. At 17 years old, in his journal ''Sirius'', she published her first poem which could be translated as "On his hand you may see many glittering rings" (1907), signing it "Anna G."<ref Name="Martin3">Martin (2007) p. 3</ref> She soon became known in Saint Petersburg's artistic circles, regularly giving public readings. That year, she wrote unenthusiastically to a friend, "He has loved me for three years now, and I believe that it is my fate to be his wife. Whether or not I love him, I do not know, but it seems to me that I do."<ref Name="Martin2"/> She married Gumilev in Kiev in April 1910; however, none of Akhmatova's family attended the wedding. The couple honeymooned in Paris, and there she met and befriended the Italian artist [[Amedeo Modigliani]].<ref name="Volkov2010">{{cite book|last=Volkov|first=Solomon|title=St Petersburg: A Cultural History|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=6JheQS-7drEC&pg=PA163|year=2010|publisher=Simon and Schuster|isbn=978-1-4516-0315-6|pages=162–163}}</ref>

In late 1910, she came together with poets such as [[Osip Mandelstam]] and [[Sergey Gorodetsky]] to form the [[Acmeism|Guild of Poets]]. It promoted the idea of craft as the key to poetry rather than inspiration or mystery, taking themes of the concrete rather than the more ephemeral world of the [[Symbolism (arts)|Symbolists]]. Over time, they developed the influential [[Acmeist]] anti-symbolist school, concurrent with the growth of [[Imagism]] in Europe and America.<ref name="Wells8">Wells (1996) p.8</ref> From the first year of their marriage, Gumilev began to chafe against its constraints. She wrote that he had "lost his passion" for her, and by the end of that year he left on a six-month trip to Africa.<ref Name="Martin3"/>

She had "her first taste of fame", becoming renowned, not so much for her beauty, but for her intense magnetism and allure, attracting the fascinated attention of a great many men, including the great and the good. She returned to visit Modigliani in Paris, where he created at least 20 paintings of her, including several nudes.<ref Name="Martin3"/>

She later began an affair with the celebrated Acmeist poet Osip Mandelstam, whose wife, [[Nadezhda Mandelstam|Nadezhda]], declared later, in her autobiography that she came to forgive Akhmatova for it in time.<ref name="slate">[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/clives_lives/2007/02/anna_akhmatova.2.html ''Slate Magazine''], "Anna Akhmatova: Assessing the Russian poet and femme fatale" by [[Clive James]], 5 February 2007.</ref> Akhmatova's son, [[Lev Gumilyov|Lev]], was born in 1912, and would become a renowned [[Neo-Eurasianism|Neo-Eurasianist]] historian.<ref name="Harrington14">Harrington (2006), p. 14</ref>